Zotac GTX 1080ti - heating issues

Hi!

I recently received my new rig from PC Specialist and started to test it with a few 4k gaming. However, everything I put on at 4k seems to raise GPU temps quite high 80-85 C (even with fan speed 100%). I was wondering if there is a way to reduce temps to below 80 on load without sacrificing too many fps. Reading around I saw that most ppl under-volt the GPU and get quite stable 6-7 degrees less on average at load with stock fan speed. Is this solution any good? Is there any other to achieve lower temps?

Many thanks!

PS. I truly believe the GTX that has been mounted on the rig is the Zotac 1080ti Mini, for the whole spec see below

Case FRACTAL MESHIFY C BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Overclocked CPU Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7-8700K Six Core (3.7GHz @ up to 4.8GHz)
Motherboard Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM) 16GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card 11GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 Ti - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - GTX VR Ready!
1st Hard Disk 2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive 256GB SAMSUNG SM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3100MB/R, 1400MB/W)
Change to: 256GB SAMSUNG PM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2800MB/R, 1100MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply CORSAIR 750W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling Corsair H100i V2 Hydro Cooler w/ PCS Liquid Series Ultra Quiet Fans
Thermal Paste EK-TIM ECTOTHERM THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking WIRELESS 802.11 AC1200 867Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB Options 2 PORT (1 x TYPE A, 1 x TYPE C) USB 3.1 PCI-E CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS

Those temps aren't actually uncommon for a Pascal GPU under load. Especially the Zotac mini, which isn't the coolest of the 1080 tis (1080 ti is a fairly hot GPU, and the mini, unsurprisingly, doesn't have a giant double-decker tri-fan cooler on it. The temps are safe enough.

Obviously lowering the temps could help maximise the boost clocks you get.

You can try undervolting if you've heard it's helpful and are comfortable doing so.

Does your system have an exhaust fan at the rear? Can it have fans on the bottom, blowing air up at the GPU? Could help a bit.

Oussebon said:

Those temps aren't actually uncommon for a Pascal GPU under load. Especially the Zotac mini, which isn't the coolest of the 1080 tis (1080 ti is a fairly hot GPU, and the mini, unsurprisingly, doesn't have a giant double-decker tri-fan cooler on it. The temps are safe enough.

Obviously lowering the temps could help maximise the boost clocks you get.

You can try undervolting if you've heard it's helpful and are comfortable doing so.

Does your system have an exhaust fan at the rear? Can it have fans on the bottom, blowing air up at the GPU? Could help a bit.

Click to expand...

Yes it does have a fan on the rear, not sure about the bottom as the other fan is at the top of the case. Will eventually try different solutions, but I guess these GPUs are built to reach these temps, only hope that this is not gonna shorten the GPU's life as I just bought it :/

Thanks for your help!

Not sure if you received the PCS Welcome box with your pc, but in mine was a Zotac disc amongst all other things that were left over from the build.

Are you running the Zotac FireStorm software. You can set several gpu profiles as well as controlling the fan.

Fan profiling will help if you can have profiles,

You can replace the terminal paste but this would only help a few degrees if that.

their are also options for taking the stock fan off and getting a better one/ getting a back plate if it does not have one or getting a closed loop water cooler for it and attaching it to the rear fan, look online for full details and if you able to, that will reduce temps.

gavbri said:

Fan profiling will help if you can have profiles,

You can replace the terminal paste but this would only help a few degrees if that.

their are also options for taking the stock fan off and getting a better one/ getting a back plate if it does not have one or getting a closed loop water cooler for it and attaching it to the rear fan, look online for full details and if you able to, that will reduce temps.

Click to expand...

So at the moment I kind of "resolved the issue" using MSI Afterburner and lowering the power limit to 85% (not sure what this does so any comment here is welcome!) and temp limit from 84 to 79. Doing this I get constant 78/79 C under load with custom fan speed at 85%. I could push fan speed a bit more and get to 76/78 C but over 90% it becomes way too loud.

I like MSI Afterburner better than Firestorm due to the fan profiles settings as it allows to have a smoother curve.

I tried undervolting but did not get much gain in terms of temps so I left this as I did not feel extremely comfortable doing so.

I will also check if switch the stock cooler with an aftermarket one is an easy process and eventually try that solution, not easy to cool down this beast and the fact that is "Mini" probably don't allow much room in terms of cooling.

Any recommendation is golden, thank you all!

If you're asking why reducing the power target improves temps, it's because you're making the card use less power than it normally would. So it will not reach as high boost clocks as if you left it to its own devices, and potentially power throttle to below its own spec.

Nerfing the performance isn't really a solution in my books. One of the main points of keeping a Pascal GPU cool to below its target temps is to maximise boost clocks. Starving it of power to lower the temps pretty much defeats the purpose.

In all candour, I think you're obsessing over numbers too much. The cards are designed to live at that kind of temp.

If you decide to proceed with adding a third party GPU cooler, be careful to check the warranty terms of both PCS and Zotac before ripping the cooler off a £700 part (some manufacturers are fine with this as long as you keep the original cooler and return the card intact with any RMA. Some might void the warranty if you remove their cooler)

Oussebon said:

If you're asking why reducing the power target improves temps, it's because you're making the card use less power than it normally would. So it will not reach as high boost clocks as if you left it to its own devices, and potentially power throttle to below its own spec.

Nerfing the performance isn't really a solution in my books. One of the main points of keeping a Pascal GPU cool to below its target temps is to maximise boost clocks. Starving it of power to lower the temps pretty much defeats the purpose.

In all candour, I think you're obsessing over numbers too much. The cards are designed to live at that kind of temp.

If you decide to proceed with adding a third party GPU cooler, be careful to check the warranty terms of both PCS and Zotac before ripping the cooler off a £700 part (some manufacturers are fine with this as long as you keep the original cooler and return the card intact with any RMA. Some might void the warranty if you remove their cooler)

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, and yes - I guess you are right. At the end of the day Nvidia max temps on their website are set to 91 C, so low to mid 80 C load temps should be fine. What I could do is probably check if adding an additional fan blowing air from the bottom directly to the GPU could improve the airflow situation a bit.

I actually tested the pc removing the side window panel and GPU temperatures dropped quite slightly - same fan speed I dropped from 84 C to 76/77 C at load, this makes me think that probably is more of an airflow issue.

That's quite a marked improvement!

I see that you are running a Corsair cooler, and Corsair say to have the air-flow enter the rad from the outside of the case for best cooling. Now that's all fine for the cpu cooling, but its filling the inside of the case with warm/hot air from the rad only adding to other things including the graphics card having to work harder to cool itself.

In mine I changed the direction of the rad cooler fans to exit air out of the case, and saw maybe a 2C rise in cpu temp at full load, my gpu ran 2-3C lower at full load from just doing that change. I do have 3 other fans blowing into the case as that is how it was supplied when built by PCS.

rtho said:

I see that you are running a Corsair cooler, and Corsair say to have the air-flow enter the rad from the outside of the case for best cooling. Now that's all fine for the cpu cooling, but its filling the inside of the case with warm/hot air from the rad only adding to other things including the graphics card having to work harder to cool itself.

In mine I changed the direction of the rad cooler fans to exit air out of the case, and saw maybe a 2C rise in cpu temp at full load, my gpu ran 2-3C lower at full load from just doing that change. I do have 3 other fans blowing into the case as that is how it was supplied when built by PCS.

Click to expand...

Thanks this is quite helpful actually, is there any easy way to change the airflow direction like you said? In the bios? I only have 2 fans included with the case and cannot see how to integrate a third one since the case is quite small (Fractal Meshify C). Probably changing the position of the radiator fans could help (placing them on the top instead of the front like it actually is and place the 2 case fans at the front and integrate a third one that should fit on the front).

Sam70 said:

Thanks this is quite helpful actually, is there any easy way to change the airflow direction like you said? In the bios? I only have 2 fans included with the case and cannot see how to integrate a third one since the case is quite small (Fractal Meshify C). Probably changing the position of the radiator fans could help (placing them on the top instead of the front like it actually is and place the 2 case fans at the front and integrate a third one that should fit on the front).

Click to expand...

It's just a matter of unscrewing the fans and turning them around. You need to determine what direction they are actually blowing first.

athman8 said:

The best 1080 Ti I could find. Really, how can someone complain about this thing's performance? Max everything out, run it on 1440p, and still getting 100+ frames per second. It's quiet, fast, and has neat LEDs!

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Definitely not complaining about performances which are outstanding. It runs everything I threw at it so far in 4K at 40+ fps on ultra settings :tt1: It just runs super hot, also the fans are not that quiet above 80% speed but that's quite normal at high speeds I guess.

rtho said:

It's just a matter of unscrewing the fans and turning them around. You need to determine what direction they are actually blowing first.

Click to expand...

Thanks, might try that!

Where is your radiator mounted? If at the top of the case, I would definitely have it as an exhaust, blowing air out of the case. If at the front, intake would be best to get more air into the case. Before I started modifying my current PCS build myself, it arrived with the rad at the top with fans exhausting. At the time I had SLI 980ti's. I moved the rad to the front as an intake and did not notice any change in temperature at all for the GPUs.
To increase airflow through the front I did double up the fans having them in push-pull which has made an improvement to temps (and noise as they run slower to push more air). If you venture down that route you will need to get a set of screws to mount the extra fans and a splitter cable for the fan power.

Here is how I have mine setup, but note that my 200R case has cooling holes at the bottom and a large area on the side panel to exhaust the air.



If this is your case then there seems several options.



RIGHT CLICK THE IMAGES(s) and Open link in a new tab

jerpers said:

Where is your radiator mounted? If at the top of the case, I would definitely have it as an exhaust, blowing air out of the case. If at the front, intake would be best to get more air into the case. Before I started modifying my current PCS build myself, it arrived with the rad at the top with fans exhausting. At the time I had SLI 980ti's. I moved the rad to the front as an intake and did not notice any change in temperature at all for the GPUs.
To increase airflow through the front I did double up the fans having them in push-pull which has made an improvement to temps (and noise as they run slower to push more air). If you venture down that route you will need to get a set of screws to mount the extra fans and a splitter cable for the fan power.

Click to expand...

So the radiator is mounted at the front - and this is where i think the problem is- pulling in hot air and 2 fans exhausting on the top and in the back. It would be great if I could mount the radiator at the top exhausting hot air together with a case fan at the back + 3 fans pulling in cold hair from the front. Will try to upload a screen of the configuration so you could actually see.



The fact is that the radiator seems so big and it might not fit with the ram in place.

Sam70 said:

The fact is that the radiator seems so big and it might not fit with the ram in place.

Click to expand...

That might be why PCS installed it in that configuration in your case?

I mean you can still give it a go of course and see for yourself If you're feeling keen!

I believe on that case the top mounting holes are off-set to one side. This should be enough to clear the RAM I would have thought. It is a little difficult to see from that angle. You do look like you have room for an extra set of fans on the other side of the rad which would increase the flow in.