Question About RivaTuner

[WabeWalker]

(Core i7 - GTX 275 - Vista 64 - gaming at 1920x1080, full AA/AF)

The fan on my GTX 275 is suddenly ramping up like crazy while I'm playing certain games. If I play Dead Space, for example, for more than 15 minutes then the fans will make my computer start to sound like a very loud hair dryer. It's almost intolerable.

I checked the hardware monitor in RivaTuner and saw that my fans, at one point, had risen all the way to 85% of their capacity (I have an MSI twin frozer card, with two fans on it).

So here's my question really:

I decided to set the GPU fan (in RivaTuner) to remain at 45%. Is there any possibility that I'm going to do damage to my GPU, or to my system, by doing this?

I played Dead Space for an hour after doing this and the fans were nice and quiet the whole time. When I exited Dead Space I immediately went into RivaTuner and allowed the fan setting to be determined by... well, whatever determines how high the fans should be set... and suddenly the fans ramped right up and stayed that way for a good minute before finally calming down.

The weird thing is that a month ago, when I bought Dead Space, I don't seem to recall my fans ramping up like that? Would new drivers have anything to do with this, because I just installed new drivers last week.

EDIT: Sorry for the long-winded post. What I'm really asking here is if I'm damaging my GPU by setting the fan to stay permanently at 45%?

 

[Udgnim]

keep rivatuner on and watch GPU temperatures @ 45% fan speed

find out what Nvidia or the manufacturer considers to be the max GPU temperature tolerance

in all likelihood, the temps @ 45% fan speed will be well below the max tolerance unless there's something affecting air flow detrimentally

regarding drivers possibly affecting fan speed, every time I update to new catalyst drivers fan speed is set to 50%. I always reduce it down to 40%. so I think new Nvidia drivers changing fan speed profiles is a possibility.

 

[WabeWalker]

I actually have two fans on the MSI card.

www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127429&cm_re=GTX_275-_-14-127-429-_-Product

The left fan is completely blocked by an Xfi Xtreme Gamer soundcard, directly below. The GTX 275 takes up two slots, so I only have one slot for the soundcard. It has to go in that slot.

The soundcard is relatively new, and since I installed it I think (though I'm not completely sure of this) that the fans never ramped up like this when the soundcard wasn't there. The next GPU I get, I'll make certain that there's no fan where the soundcard is (there was no way I could've foreseen this... you just live, and you learn, really).

But until then I'd like to set the fan much lower.

Can I ask another question. Let's just assume that the GPU does overheat because I've set the fan too low. What will happen? Will the system shut down before damage is done? Is it possible to damage my motherboard as well as my GPU?

 

[Hypernova]

Can I ask another question. Let's just assume that the GPU does overheat because I've set the fan too low. What will happen? Will the system shut down before damage is done? Is it possible to damage my motherboard as well as my GPU?

You will either get corruptions at load or the rig will freeze.

 

[jeremyshaw]

GPUs try to shut off before damage is done.

But it's like PSUs, once you push the limit... capacity only goes down.

Once the solder starts softening, especially for longer periods, then it will slowly die.

 

[WabeWalker]

I'm confused by this.

Tonight I left the fan settings alone and played Dead Space for an entire hour and the two GPU fans never ramped up past 55% on their own (they stayed nice and quiet). The core GPU temperature never rose about 65 degrees.

And yet, last night, after playing for just 15 minutes, the fans ramped up all the way to 85% - which is just plain weird.

So the only variable that has changed, as far as I can see, has been the weather. Tonight it's cool - I can definitely tell that Fall is on its way. Last night, however, it was kind of muggy out. But seriously, is the weather actually going to have that much of an impact on my fan settings?

I just can't see why there's such a difference from one night to the next?