How to control fans on EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA?

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Zorachus

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So I scored a new RTX 3080 last week at Microcenter, long story short, this card seems to get pretty dang warm or hot during heavy long game sessions. But reading up on this, sounds like by default the card fans are set low or conservative? And people say it's best to set the fan speed to aggressive. Do you agree?

I have never had to set my video card fan speed before, this is new to me. Do I use the Precision X1 software from eVga to do this?
 
Can use either X1 (make sure to download the 3000 series specific version of it) or alternatively use MSI Afterburner. Either can adjust the fan curve though X1 can adjust each fan individually (not sure this is particularly useful generally however) and also adjust RGB lighting.

Whichever you choose the software will have to be running in the background for the curve to be applied as the card doesn't save the profile to its memory (though X1 does save the RGB lighting preference to the card memory). Some prefer Afterburner since they consider it more stable and it also offers other useful features like bundling Rivatuner for OSD and screenshot/video capture.
 
EVGA Precision X1 has custom and preset more aggressive fan profiles you can use, but for the extra noise they are not worth it. A XC3 card running 79C may be hot, but its not losing anything vs the FTW3 version running at 71C.

I would not worry too much about the XC3 version running hot. I have both the 3090 XC3 and FTW3 and while the FTW3 runs cooler around low 70s and eats 100W more power, the tale of the scores show they are near identical cards.

The max stable oc for both is in the 2050 to 2100 mhz range, mem speeds near identical. Short of a few degrees difference, they score within 200 pts in timespy and superposition. Gaming wise, I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. In stock form, both run in the 1990-2000mhz range with only a 8C delta between them.

IMHO, the FTW cards are not worth the extra $ unless chasing a benchmark high score. In general use, both get really up there in temps and have the same sound profile when in use. I have gamed a month straight on the XC3 and 5 days straight on the FTW3 (vermintide 2, destiny 2 and watch dogs legion)
 
I use X1 on mine to control fans. I might switch over to afterburner to undervolt it soon though.
 
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