Hitting Thermal limits on GTX980 Reference

stoke1863 · 16 Jan 2017 at 23:00

Help guys,

I have corsair Obsidian 750D with stock fans and configuration.

I have a reference MSI GTX980 with a crappy blower and with my GPU and case fans at 100% my graphics card is hitting 86c while gaming.

What would you recommend to remedy this? More fans at the top? At the moment i have one rear and two front.

Thanks

benjii · 16 Jan 2017 at 23:11

Replacing the TIM with some decent stuff would be a good place to start.

stoke1863 · 16 Jan 2017 at 23:17

benjii said:
Replacing the TIM with some decent stuff would be a good place to start.

Any recommendations?

Jumper118 · 16 Jan 2017 at 23:19

Replace thermal paste, clean out heatsink. Would have thought a 980 should run 80c with a decent oc at 70% even on a blower cooler. Those coolers are on 780 and 780ti and 980ti which use way more power, they seem to run low mid 80's at 65-100% fan speed.

stoke1863 said:
Any recommendations?

Any paste will be better than stock. I suspect it's all dried out

. Try some pk3 or thermal grizzly. I have used pk3 recently with good results and the pk1 and 2 are good as well. Thermal grizzly Hydronaut is probably good for it as well but that can be expensive.

stoke1863 · 16 Jan 2017 at 23:29

Jumper118 said:
Replace thermal paste, clean out heatsink. Would have thought a 980 should run 80c with a decent oc at 70% even on a blower cooler. Those coolers are on 780 and 780ti and 980ti which use way more power, they seem to run low mid 80's at 65-100% fan speed.

Any paste will be better than stock. I suspect it's all dried out . Try some pk3 or thermal grizzly. I have used pk3 recently with good results and the pk1 and 2 are good as well. Thermal grizzly Hydronaut is probably good for it as well but that can be expensive.

Thanks mate,

It's not even the fancy reference its the really Crappy MSI one.

Even if it knocks its off 3c thats enough to keep it under thermal throttle

Jumper118 · 16 Jan 2017 at 23:35

stoke1863 said:
Thanks mate,

It's not even the fancy reference its the really Crappy MSI one.

Even if it knocks its off 3c thats enough to keep it under thermal throttle

O right that is bad! I would think it will easy be 5-10c better with new paste. If you really wanted you could get an aftermarket air cooler, but try the paste first.

stoke1863 · 17 Jan 2017 at 00:06

Jumper118 said:
O right that is bad! I would think it will easy be 5-10c better with new paste. If you really wanted you could get an aftermarket air cooler, but try the paste first.

Yeah ill give it a try, do not want to spend any money on extra cooling its not worth it . I didn't pick the card it was a bonus from work

Neural · 18 Jan 2017 at 14:53

stoke1863 said:
Yeah ill give it a try, do not want to spend any money on extra cooling its not worth it . I didn't pick the card it was a bonus from work

Yea new TIM and cleaning will drop at least a few degrees, whats your general case temp/CPU?
Thats a nice bonus, how did you get that? I wish my place did that lol

archerz · 18 Jan 2017 at 14:58

see if you can improve the airflow through your case to get cool air into it, that should help too.

Mrjobby · 18 Jan 2017 at 15:16

Be aware MSi use void warranty stickers on the screws (did on my last msi card anyways)

Use pliers to turn the screws instead