980 Ti temperature problem..

[ForthRight]

I have a slight issue and I'm not sure if I should just live with it.

I bought two Palit 980 Ti's (Reference coolers) for SLI. When I installed them I noticed GPU 1 was getting about 9'C hotter than GPU 2 when under load. I know this is often normal with SLI but I use a Silverstone FT02 case where the cards are mounted vertically and with past SLI setups the temps have normally been the same on both cards (within a couple of degrees). I also use a Rampage V Extreme motherboard so the gap between the cards is as big as possible - meaning GPU 1 shouldn't be sucking in too much of the hot air created by GPU 2.

Anyway, I decided to swap them around just to make sure one card wasn't genuinely cooling 'better' than the other, but it turns out the card that was originally in the GPU 1 slot genuinely is running hotter - after swapping them around it is still hotter than the other card, although this time by only 3 - 4'C (probably because it is no longer next to the CPU cooler or sucking in any hot air at all from the other card).

The way they are installed now (with the 'hotter running' card in slot 2) is better for overall performance and temps etc, but I now have a bit of a mental problem knowing one of them isn't cooling as well as the other.

Could the card with lower temps just be a particularly 'good' one, or is the hotter card running worse than it's supposed to? Obviously it's pretty hard to answer that question, and as a result I don't know if I should consider sending the hot card back for a replacement.

 

[Squid]

Prob just one has better thermal contact, maybe hotter one has too much paste.

Nothing to worry about, i have cores that vary 9c on my cpu been over clocked max for 5 years never had a issue. 3c is nothing

 

[ForthRight]

I should say that my testing was done with a constant 60% fan profile on both cards to make sure neither was reaching 83'C and throttling.

I think the actual cooling difference between the two cards is about 6'C when you take into account the difference between being in slot 1 and slot 2 on the motherboard (slot 1 is near the CPU cooler and probably sucks in some warm air created by the card in slot 2, whereas slot 2 has near perfect conditions).

Unfortunately I can't ask any other 980 Ti owners to test their cards for me (to compare the exact temps with a specific fan speed) because there are too many variables such as room temp, computer case etc which will never be the same.

 

[wunkley]

I don't think it's anything to worry about, but it would niggle a bit for me. I run 780Ti reference design SLI and the top card runs about 5 or 6 degrees hotter under load.

 

[ForthRight]

Prob just one has better thermal contact, maybe hotter one has too much paste.

Nothing to worry about, i have cores that vary 9c on my cpu been over clocked max for 5 years never had a issue. 3c is nothing

Thank you for the reply.

I think the hotter card is still within decent thermal limits - what I mean is it is still keeping the card cool enough without requiring some kind of crazy fan speed, so I guess it's not worth the hassle of sending it back when I might end up with another exactly the same.

I was just worried it was faulty and could stop working in the near future.

 

[Winnter]

Don't worry about it. As long it's still in its warranty period. Use it until it dies