Hi all,
I am having (believe I have) issues with my graphics cards, I am suspecting that the graphics cards temperatures are going up too fast and that the fan on 1 of the graphics cards is busted (since day 1)
here is my system set up
Windows 10 Pro
Monitor: PG279Q 27" (refresh rate 60, resolution 2560,1440 (native))
2 EVGA Geforce 980Ti graphics cards, put in SLI. (driver version 382.05)
Corsair 900d Computer case (bought it mainly because of my desire to insure good ventilation)
Corsair H100i GTX (CPU closed loop water cooler)
 
the first time I noticed this issue was when I first installed the 2 Graphics card (these were both bought along with a completely new system, to replace a 10 year old Dell PC (note: At this time I didn't own the PG279Q monitor and relied on the 19" Dell LCD monitor I had for 10 years). The first game I tried out was Assassin Creed and as most people would, I placed the graphics up to max on the game, it didn't take long for the graphics card to go absolutely insane. With headphones on I could hear the graphics card fan speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down and speed up again, it was a persistent whirring sound which peaked then fell off slightly and would peak again less than a second later, eventually the fans would settle down and just furiously belt out heat, I immediately took action and dropped the graphics settings on the game and eventually the whirring on and off would start again before the graphics card would finally start idling out. I am unsure if people in this community have heard the sound of a server room with aggressive number crunching going on, I have and these graphics cards made it feel like I was in one.
 
After the above event, I kind of stopped playing Assassin's creed as this heat issue would in turn cause the sound issue to reappear even on low graphics settings, I was willing to dismiss this issue as an expected outcome of new games requiring more out of the graphics cards since my 10 year old PC is really the only benchmark I had to work off. However I recently reinstalled Eve-Online and the monitor (19" was subsequently replaced by the new PG279Q) and hoping that the graphics in Eve wouldn't be as taxing as Assassins would I started playing again, but was almost immediately hit by the exact same issue.  So then I decided to do what I did in Assassin's, I turned down the graphics.
There are 3 screengrabs taken the tempProblems.png comes from Corsair link, this screenshot represents the temperatures and the fan speed including both graphics cards, the EVGAperf.png is from EVGA precision 16 to show the current config (i.e no overclocking) and the final screenshot (eveScreenLowGraphics.png) shows a screenshot of the current graphics settings on the game, bare in mind all 3 screenshots reflect exact settings after changing the EVE graphics settings  1 hour prior so the current temperature would be considered as the current idle temp.
 
Using an android application called Sound Meter I measured the DB as 58 DB during high fan spin, this was done with the graphics for Eve online as max
note the following URLs as they have reviewed the sound levels
https://www.kitguru.net/c...ied-acx-2-0-review/13/
 
 
My questions are as follows:
1: Is it normal for games to send the graphics card over 80 Celsius?
2: Am I the only one to experience the whirring drop on drop off of the fans?
3: Should i RMA a card?
4: Is there any other data/information that I should collect in order to conclusively determine a fault?
 
thanks in advance
 
 

Run Fire Strike and post a link to your results - to see if your GPU work well
 
Hysteresis sets the threshold for the fan to change state:   If Hysteresis is set to 2 C and fan auto increases at 68 C then temp needs to drop to 66C before the fan will slow again
 
Your fan speed looks very low for 68C
 
You could also set a fixed fan speed or custom curve
 
I like GPU Temp in C + 10 = fan speed %
30C = 40% fan
50C = 60% fan
70C = 80% fan
 
 
 

Scores look very good
 
Temps are a function of: Room Temp, Airflow and Watts (power) consumed by components / GPU in this case
 
No ---> changing the fan speed or making a custom curve is not "ill advised" --> unless you hold the fan speed down regardless of temps
 
The end user has to balance "noise" and temps which impact performance.
 
My other comment about Hysteresis - addresses your concerns in excerpt below
 

niroshido
 With headphones on I could hear the graphics card fan speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down and speed up again, it was a persistent whirring sound which peaked then fell off slightly and would peak again less than a second later, eventually the fans would settle down and just furiously belt out heat,
 
My questions are as follows:
1: Is it normal for games to send the graphics card over 80 Celsius?
2: Am I the only one to experience the whirring drop on drop off of the fans?