I have been enjoying my referb EVGA 960 FTW from newegg for about a week, and what has been driving me nuts is the passive cooling thing.
When I play Skyrim or DOW 2 retribution I am annoyed by moments in both games where adaptive power allows the GPU temp to drop below my fan curve and stop the fans, then resume spinning a second later. Is this start/stop effect going to kill the fan motors?
I can get around the start/stop issue by having a low idle zone (analog), example 49C @ 0%, 50-60C @ 5%, 100C @ 100%. This does make desktop passive cooling tricky because opening say firefox surges the GPU and can bump the temp over 50C while the card is still passive cooling above 47C. Setting the idle zone hotter at 69C/0%, 70C/5%, 75C/5%, 80C/15%, 85C/30%, 100C/100% shortens the time it takes the card to passive cool below desktop surging a lot, but also means games will still go into start/stop moments often due to adaptive power. Not using a buffer zone (59C/0%, 60C/5%, 100C/100%) causes the fan to accelerate too fast and cool below 59C causing start/stops.
I have tried using performance mode, it hasn't helped much, and hysteresis makes my brain hurt.
So what I would like to know is this: Do you think it is better for the fan motors to have the fans always running when gaming (with a 960), or am I worrying about the start/stop effect too much?