I just replaced an aging R9 290 (Sapphire vapor-x cooler) with an evga rtx 3080 ftw3 ultra. Performance is great, temperatures are less so. The card reaches 75-80C under gaming load. Today, that's not bad and seems pretty typical for the card. The fans are crazy loud though, much louder than the card I replaced. I'm using the 'OC' bios switch on the card that speeds up the fans a bit.
When summer comes around this system will be sitting in ambient temperatures close to 80F instead of the 65F it sees during the winter. The 290 ran a little below 70C in the winter and around 80C in the summer with the same CPU, so I expect the 3080 will be pushing 90C come summer. I want to improve cooling before then, and I'm not sure what the best route is.
Specs today:
i7-9700k (stock)
beQuiet Dark Rock 4 (not the pro)
Aorus z390 Pro Wifi
G.Skill TridentZ 32GB (CL16 3466)
EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra
SeaSonic Focus 850W PSU
Samsung 860 Evo 1TB
500GB WD Black HDD
Lian-Li PC-X510 (https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811112475)
Right now, I have three 120mm intake on the front and two 120mm exhaust at the rear of the case. The end of the GPU is less than a quarter of an inch from the front intake fans (the 290 it replaced was an even tighter fit). All of the fans are Cougar turbines, decent performing and much cheaper than Noctuas.
This case has a weird layout with hard drive cages above the motherboard rather than in front of it. The HDD area has one of the rear exhaust fans and two upward facing fan mounts I'm not currently using, the whole area is separated from the mobo by an aluminum divider. If I replace my SATA drives with an NVMe drive, I can ditch the cages and have a ton of free space at the top of the case and two upward-facing 120mm fan mounts.
So I've got a few options:
1. Ditch the SATA drives for an NVMe, drill out the divider, and add two upward-facing exhaust fans. I'm not sure how much this will help since those fans will be a good six inches above the top of the mobo, and I'd have more exhaust than intake and conventional wisdom says you want more intake. I'm also a little concerned with heat on a m2 SSD, one of the slots is under the CPU cooler and the other is under the GPU.
2. Buy a 240mm AIO cooler and mount it in the HDD enclosure at the top of the case, in the hope that it will pull heat away from the CPU and give the GPU a bit more breathing room. I'm not sure that a 240mm AIO is going to be much better than the cooler I already have though, and they're pricey.
3. Replace all the fans with something better? I'm open to suggestions, I know better fans can be quieter, but I'm not convinced that they'll make a big difference in temperature.
4. Build a really convoluted open loop? There's not enough space at the front of the case for a 360mm radiator (too thick), so I'd only have 240mm at the top and four individual 120mm mounts to work with.
5. Hope that someone here has a better idea (other than reduce ambient temps or buy a new case...).
So, suggestions? I'm hesitant to spend a few hundred on cooling without knowing if it'll actually improve anything.
When summer comes around this system will be sitting in ambient temperatures close to 80F instead of the 65F it sees during the winter. The 290 ran a little below 70C in the winter and around 80C in the summer with the same CPU, so I expect the 3080 will be pushing 90C come summer. I want to improve cooling before then, and I'm not sure what the best route is.
Specs today:
i7-9700k (stock)
beQuiet Dark Rock 4 (not the pro)
Aorus z390 Pro Wifi
G.Skill TridentZ 32GB (CL16 3466)
EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra
SeaSonic Focus 850W PSU
Samsung 860 Evo 1TB
500GB WD Black HDD
Lian-Li PC-X510 (https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811112475)
Right now, I have three 120mm intake on the front and two 120mm exhaust at the rear of the case. The end of the GPU is less than a quarter of an inch from the front intake fans (the 290 it replaced was an even tighter fit). All of the fans are Cougar turbines, decent performing and much cheaper than Noctuas.
This case has a weird layout with hard drive cages above the motherboard rather than in front of it. The HDD area has one of the rear exhaust fans and two upward facing fan mounts I'm not currently using, the whole area is separated from the mobo by an aluminum divider. If I replace my SATA drives with an NVMe drive, I can ditch the cages and have a ton of free space at the top of the case and two upward-facing 120mm fan mounts.
So I've got a few options:
1. Ditch the SATA drives for an NVMe, drill out the divider, and add two upward-facing exhaust fans. I'm not sure how much this will help since those fans will be a good six inches above the top of the mobo, and I'd have more exhaust than intake and conventional wisdom says you want more intake. I'm also a little concerned with heat on a m2 SSD, one of the slots is under the CPU cooler and the other is under the GPU.
2. Buy a 240mm AIO cooler and mount it in the HDD enclosure at the top of the case, in the hope that it will pull heat away from the CPU and give the GPU a bit more breathing room. I'm not sure that a 240mm AIO is going to be much better than the cooler I already have though, and they're pricey.
3. Replace all the fans with something better? I'm open to suggestions, I know better fans can be quieter, but I'm not convinced that they'll make a big difference in temperature.
4. Build a really convoluted open loop? There's not enough space at the front of the case for a 360mm radiator (too thick), so I'd only have 240mm at the top and four individual 120mm mounts to work with.
5. Hope that someone here has a better idea (other than reduce ambient temps or buy a new case...).
So, suggestions? I'm hesitant to spend a few hundred on cooling without knowing if it'll actually improve anything.