Upgrade cooler or Upgrade to 780?

D

Dextar

Gawd
Joined
Nov 5, 2010
Messages
584
I have a 680 OC'd to 1228MHz and ram at 6682MHz, because of this I've had to adjust the fan curve to 76% and it's still hovering around 71c, it's really freaking loud. The performance is fine with my OC but I figure with a 780 it wouldn't need to be OC'd to keep up. So I thought either replace the cooler ($130) or give the 680 to my wifes PC, sell her 560 Ti and just buy one of the fancy 780 cards. Thoughts?

I found this closed loop liquid VGA cooler that fits and would help lower my noise AND temps but I've never used this company before so I like to get input from people who have.
http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga/569/accelero-hybrid.html?c=2182

If nothing else I'd step up to the EVGA 780 Classified ACX or the Galaxy HOF (I won't do SLI, I did it with my 460s and had microstutter) so I wouldn't have to use an OC to keep playing games at max settings.
 
Do you live in a furnace? Even for a reference 680 those clock speeds are pretty low to be experiencing heat issues. I would look at my case cooling and maybe re-applying TIM to the card before spending any extra money.
 
If you are so inclined......and wish to buy a GTX 780, the reference coolers are very good and near silent, even highly overclocked.

Even though that Arctic cooling cooler looks good, the money is better spent on the GPU upgrade.
 
its simple. don't spend on cooler. if you have the money get a EVGA classified 780 or Galaxy HOF 780. :)
 
LigTasm said:
Do you live in a furnace? Even for a reference 680 those clock speeds are pretty low to be experiencing heat issues. I would look at my case cooling and maybe re-applying TIM to the card before spending any extra money.
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It's actually kept in our family room which is the coolest room in our house. It's not causing issues from heat like artifacting and such the fan is just insanely loud. I have a HAF 932 and an extra fan blowing over the top of the card.

I don't want to buy a 780 just to buy one, I get a little bit of lag when I don't have the OC going in some games with max settings turned on but when I do have the OC going if I'm not wearing my headset it's incredibly distracting even with my speakers turned up.

I'd be spending probably close to $600 for the 780, which is a lot for the small gain in performance over the 680 where I could just slap this cooler on and bump up the power on the 680 for now. I was hoping to wait until the next set of nvidia cards releases which should be completely new architecture.
 
That is still really warm with that high of a fan speed. Maybe just get an accelero cooler? They are like $60-70 IIRC. I would re-TIM the stock cooler first and see what happens.
 
you can dissamble the cooler shroud and put some 80-120mm fans over the heatsink directly cooling the card, like i did to my old furnace 1950Pro:D
 
If u don't want to buy 780 just for the hell of it first thing u should do is repaste the heatsink with something decent like mx4. Yours temps are higher than they should be so either you have a very high ambient 30°C+, crappy airflow in your case, or you need a repaste. Your temps are pretty much exactly what I was getting with my reference 670. The 680 has a SIGNIFICANTLY better heatsink setup.

I just realized you never told us what exact GPU you have. This would definitely be helpful.

I wouldn't touch that aio water cooler. Its decent for the core but the vrm and vram heatsinks that come with it are garbage. Will most certainly increase vrm temps and likely lessen overclock as a result. If u can find out for a fact you can use the stock vrm/vram plate then its decent, but I doubt that'll happen.
 
You're right, I have the EVGA GTX 680. No fancy cooler or anything.
This is the inside of my case, not much airflow comes from the front fan that's why I have the little one in the drive bay to help push air over the top.
xCZZG0Rl.jpg


It's possible that I need to repaste it. Our basement is generally only 22c or lower. I'm pushing 71c at 76% fan speed while playing Crysis 3.
 
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Looks like you have quite a bit of dust in there. Maybe take the shroud off and see if you have some dust built up in the card. Repaste may help as well. I used to have that exact same card and I ran it about 65% fan and it stayed right around 70-75°C and for some reason whatever bios that was on it did not throttle at all when it hit 70°C. Had to go right up to 80°C before it would throttle. There is a huge sound difference between 70°C and 75°C on these cards. I'm surprised you even notice it in a haf 932 tho. Also are you running the side fan, it will help a lot. I was only using a fractal r4 with way less airflow than your case with about the same ambient at the time.
 
I'd go for the 780 if money ain't a thang. I'm stepping up my 680 to a 780.
 
HOODedDutchman said:
Looks like you have quite a bit of dust in there. Maybe take the shroud off and see if you have some dust built up in the card. Repaste may help as well. I used to have that exact same card and I ran it about 65% fan and it stayed right around 70-75°C and for some reason whatever bios that was on it did not throttle at all when it hit 70°C. Had to go right up to 80°C before it would throttle. There is a huge sound difference between 70°C and 75°C on these cards. I'm surprised you even notice it in a haf 932 tho. Also are you running the side fan, it will help a lot. I was only using a fractal r4 with way less airflow than your case with about the same ambient at the time.
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The dust just looks like quite a bit more because of the flash, I bring it out to my shop every couple of weeks and blow it out with my compressor. Mine throttles back if I go beyond 73c but nothing else, I've heard they can go up to 75c before they throttle so you got really lucky. My HAF is pretty quiet still in all honesty but I have replaced all of the fans over time with much nicer ones so it's fairly quiet.
 
I vote for a GTX 780, Asus DCII if cool n' quiet is a concern...
 
I put a Twin Turbo 2 on my 680 this past week. It's about as loud as the stock fan at 40% and it stays cooler, like 65 degrees in BF3, 55 to 60 in Deus Ex. I wouldn't waste $600 on a 780 coming from a 680.
 
skadebo said:
I put a Twin Turbo 2 on my 680 this past week. It's about as loud as the stock fan at 40% and it stays cooler, like 65 degrees in BF3, 55 to 60 in Deus Ex. I wouldn't waste $600 on a 780 coming from a 680.
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I upgrade a lot of stuff that's really not needed and I can't find the justification to move from the 680 to the 780, especially when it's still running off the same architecture. Hence why I'm leaning towards just using the cooler and waiting for the Maxwell chips but I will NOT ever be buying a reference card again.
 
Dextar said:
I upgrade a lot of stuff that's really not needed and I can't find the justification to move from the 680 to the 780, especially when it's still running off the same architecture. Hence why I'm leaning towards just using the cooler and waiting for the Maxwell chips but I will NOT ever be buying a reference card again.
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The big die chips are a whole different animal than the little keplers. The Titan was the first GPU I've been impressed with since the 8800 cards came out. Regardless, if your card does the job you want, no reason to spend a lot on a new one. I would shoot for the accelero cooler like was mentioned before, I've used that one and it was really nice and quiet. Very well made. Maybe you can find one used on ebay and save a few bucks.
 
LigTasm said:
The big die chips are a whole different animal than the little keplers. The Titan was the first GPU I've been impressed with since the 8800 cards came out. Regardless, if your card does the job you want, no reason to spend a lot on a new one. I would shoot for the accelero cooler like was mentioned before, I've used that one and it was really nice and quiet. Very well made. Maybe you can find one used on ebay and save a few bucks.
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True but if the AMD "Hawaii" cards battle the 700 series or even the titan it might cause nvidia to come out with the newer maxwell cards sooner than expected.. then I'd REALLY be kicking myself.. but the hall of fame edition is so nice looking.. but no samsung ram makes me a sad panda.
 
Dextar said:
True but if the AMD "Hawaii" cards battle the 700 series or even the titan it might cause nvidia to come out with the newer maxwell cards sooner than expected.. then I'd REALLY be kicking myself.. but the hall of fame edition is so nice looking.. but no samsung ram makes me a sad panda.
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Yeah, I'm waiting patiently for the 9000 series to come out. I hope the rumors are founded in reality. I would love to see and AMD card that at least beats the 780, I don't much care about the Titan as it is so far out there in price. A $599 Hawaii part that matches the 780 would be an instant buy for me, probably two of them haha.
 
Dextar said:
True but if the AMD "Hawaii" cards battle the 700 series or even the titan it might cause nvidia to come out with the newer maxwell cards sooner than expected.. then I'd REALLY be kicking myself.. but the hall of fame edition is so nice looking.. but no samsung ram makes me a sad panda.
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wait till oct to buy the faster card. HD 9970 or GTX 780. its rumoured that Hawaii is 40% faster than HD 7970 ghz. so be patient.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20130819PD204.html

also 20nm Maxwell GPUs are not expected till next July.
 
I would just reapply the thermal paste or use a better cooler and wait for Maxwell, the GTX 780 die size is about twice bigger than the GTX 680, but yet, the performance boost in games is less than 40%, doesn't worth the spending as Kepler proved to be underpowered for DX11 features like DirectCompute. By today's standards, the GTX 680 is still a powerful card and very efficient, I would hold onto it and wait for the next generation.
 
evolucion8 said:
I would just reapply the thermal paste or use a better cooler and wait for Maxwell, the GTX 780 die size is about twice bigger than the GTX 680, but yet, the performance boost in games is less than 40%, doesn't worth the spending as Kepler proved to be underpowered for DX11 features like DirectCompute. By today's standards, the GTX 680 is still a powerful card and very efficient, I would hold onto it and wait for the next generation.
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I think that's what I'm going to do, I made a post on the EVGA forums and they suggested I try re-timing the card too. Thanks guys!
 
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