My GPU fans spin to 100% whenever a game is loading

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

What is the cause of this?

Gigabyte Z370P D3.

Bios is F5, not the latest but still not too bad. Got all the latest chipset drivers installed.

Why is this happening? It isn't the card I know that, because it happened with my GTX 970 and is now happening with my new Vega 64.

This happens multiple times when I am gaming, usually always when I am loading but sometimes when I access the menu or other 'loading' events. It's incredibly annoying and I'm actually worrying it's damaging the fans due to the speed at which it hits 100% for a few seconds, then back to 0% or whatever it was at before.

Anyone experience this or know of a fix?

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

It's common with a lot of graphics cards. When they are rendering fixed screens (ie loading, menu, etc) then can be rendering hundreds of frames per second, and the load makes the fans spin up. Limit frames in the driver, turn on vsync/enhanced sync, or Chill in the AMD drivers, and that should sort it.

The thing is, the issue never happened with my GTX 970 using my old mobo, it was only when I installed the new mobo with my new CPU (i5 3570 > i5 8600k) that issues began. Before that my GTX 970 was certainly capable of creating hunderds of frames in the load screen, unless my CPU was heavily bottling it? I wouldn't have thought so, though, for simple load screens.

Regardless, Rivatuner has frames capped at 60fps and the issue still happens.

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

I suggest you try from within the drivers, as third party tools can introduce issues. Lots of people have experienced what you have, and the fix is to limit frame rendering. It's easy to enable vsync/enhanced sync to test.

Do you mean from within AMD Settings? The same issue occurs.

I really think this is a mobo problem, since it has happened with two GPUs, the first of which had no such issue with my previous mobo.

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

It's also only happened since your new CPU and upgrading to DDR4. Likelihood is your gpu was producing a high amount of frames in loading screens but was probably being stopped short of 100% usage by your cpu. Give the above suggestions a try - for a quick and dirty test to see if it is frames you could load up a game you know it happens in and enable vsync. If it stops then you can go look for a better solution than vsync to set an fps ceiling.

This does not appear to be the issue. I'm using v-sync on games and still get the fans starting up between loading screens and entering certain menus on games. It's incredibly frustrating because it can't be good for my GPU fans hitting max so quickly like this and so regularly.

I know it's not a frames issue because it happens even when frames are only sub 100, FRAPS and Rivatuner show my fps never going high during loading screens.

I am certain this is a mobo issue but sadly there is no fix nor is it easy to google a solution.

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

Why not try the latest motherboard bios then?

Read too many horror stories about bricking PCs when updating BIOS to want to do it unless I really need to.

I have F10 Bios version and my z370p Gigabyte mobo says that supports 9th gen processors, and mine is only i5 8600k... so I don't see how it will fix anything.

I'm at a loss but I feel like it's a fault with my actual mobo and I'll need to replace it...

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

I thought that was back in the 90s when it was a manual process.
These days it's almost fully automated, can even be done from within Windows and that is without the added protection offered by dual bios boards etc.

Gigabyte only offer the awful 'Appcentre' to update BIOS from within Windows and I have had nothing but bugs with this software, so I do not use it.

I tried enabling v-sync, disabled that then enabled enhanced v-sync and the problem persists. I really do not think it is an fps issue. I'm out of ideas honestly and feel sure it's a faulty mobo.

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

Still not found a solution to this, I am starting to think I have a faulty mobo.

I am playing Yakuza and every single time it transitions between locations or I hit pause the fan just hits 100% for a couple seconds then immediately stops when the game resumes.

I have tried Chill, I use Rivatuner but it makes no difference. It says 144fps capped, but it is behaving otherwise. Ugh.

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

GPU Tweak II is showing that my fans at 0% until it hits 55 degrees whereupon it goes up to 45% fan usage. I suspect between loading screens/pause menus my GPU is suddenly going above this threshhold and starting the fans up, then they go back below 55 degrees and it stops. Question is why is it so loud?

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

Have you set up some kind of custom fan curve in the AMD drivers? I'd suggest uninstalling any third party graphics apps (like Afterburner or GPU Tweak) and resetting the Radeon Setting back to default to see what happens.

I'm not sure that'll help, given I had this issue on my old GTX 970 after switching to a new mobo, which indicates to me the problem is the mobo rather than a bottleneck with my old CPU (which I also switched out when I got a new mobo, i5 3570 to i5 8600k).

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

Both the AMD Radeon setting and GPU Tweak have settings for this, so I would not be surprised if they are interfering with each other.

I've never heard of a motherboard causing the GPU fans to spin up on a discrete GPU. The fans on the GPU are controlled by the GPU, nothing to do with the motherboard. The fans will only spin due to load/temp on the GPU, and any changes you've made in the utilities that control the GPU.

I'd suggest trying the board in another motherboard, but I think that would work and be misleading, as you'd also be running on a system that isn't misconfigured like yours is somewhere. You'd probably have to do a clean install on a spare hard drive to truly prove it's your setup and not the motherboard.

Have you updated the motherboard BIOS yet?

The problem is that my previous card GTX 970 started displaying this same behaviour once I switched mobos. If it was my card, then it would not have been an issue when I switched mobos... only becoming an issue upon switching GPUs.

I will try uninstalling Tweak II but I don't think it'll make a difference.

I haven't got round to upgrading the BIOS since it doesn't appear it will make a difference.

I refuse to believe that my card did not exceed 55 degrees with my i5 3570, since I remember seeing it at 99% usage often with Rivatuner in games... thus it would have kicked in the GPU fans. I have no recollection of hearing the fans however... and considering how noisy even 40% is with both cards tested on this mobo, it makes me think something is wrong with the reported RPMs and actual RPMs, since both this card and my gtx 970 on this board are exhibiting this problem.

 

[FreeSyncBaneOfMyLife]

Now I'm not so sure it is my GPU fan. I've been monitoring and it could be a system fan or even my CPU fan. All I know is the fan curves show a reasonable curve to 80 degrees for my GPU in AMD Settings WattMan, CPU and system fans in BIOS... but it doesn't matter, because whatever the temperature is during the game doesn't start this problem. It happens whenever I pause, or a game loads... a fan in my system is becoming very loud for only a second or two.

I don't think there is a solution here besides my mobo being faulty and needing replacing.