Nvidia minimum fan speed - why does this keep happening?

[appletree]

Welcome to my ranting thread about unacceptable minimum (30%) fan speed on Nvidia cards.
You are especially welcomed if you are similarly noise-conscious about selecting PC components as am I.

So: I just got Inno3D RTX 5080 and was quite annoyed / almost shocked when I noticed that it has minimum fan speed of 1400rpm. Just to clarify - it of course supports fanstop,
where during idle the fans have 0 rpm. However the problem is, that when you are running 4K @ 120Hz (not to say 240Hz) and doing light GPU work (playing video etc.),
or just simply running the desktop apps (when working), it's enough to have the fans occasionally spin up even during this so called "idle" to cool the GPU back down.
(And this is already happening during winter - just wait for the summer!)

And of course it can not be done with some reasonable rpm like around 600, which would be more than adequate for the mild GPU load.
No, it has to be either 0% rpm or sudden 1400 rpm spikes. Which is miles above noise floor of any semi-decently noise tuned PC in idle and it grabs unwanted attention to its self.
Thus the real "idle" rpm for this particular card is not 0 but the superposition of 0 and 1400 rpm.

More generally: as far as I know all Nvidia GPUs for some time now have their minimum rpm set to 30% of the max rpm.
Therefore all modern Nvidia GPUs have this problem - it has actually reminded me why I replaced stock cooling solution on my previous RTX 3080 SUPRIM
with two Noctua NF-A12 fans attached to the heatsink. And AFAIK there is no good software workaround for this. At least I didn't find it in case of my RTX 3080.
(i.e. seems to me, that when certain conditions are met, firmware on the card will spin the fans and overrule any fan profile you might have set in Afterburner or FanControl etc.)

Now you might think that the higher end models don't suffer with this, however if you look at the techpowerup reviews of RTX 5080 / 5090 (section "Temperature & Fan noise")
you will see that with the exception of Astral models all the others have minimum fan rpm at ~1100 or higher. Which is completely suboptimal tradeoff of noise vs. cooling in idle.
Also with "higher-end" models you will typically run in more problems with coil whine, therefore if you want card with acoustically acceptable profile it's very difficult to find one.

To illustrate how absurd this is: if you look here https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-geforce-rtx-5090-suprim/39.html
the first (quiet) tested BIOS shows that the card is so efficient at cooling that it only requires maximum rpm of 1093 under load.
However the same card has its 30% rpm equal to around 1000 rpm. Which means during idle it will behave as a superposition of silent and also almost equally as loud as during full load.
On which planet is this considered a good design choice?

Now I would be interested if there are more people who are similarly annoyed with this, especially since it's going on for so long and nothing seems to be changing.
Does it mean everyone is "OK" with it? I definitely found some other forums where people were complaining about it, but maybe it's not part of public awareness
enough for a change to be implemented. Which sux.

Then maybe what are the software workarounds for it? I.e. I remember flashing BIOS to my old GTX 580 which lowered this stupid minimum rpm limit which together with Arctic freezer triple fan aftermarket cooler provided very good noise profile. Is there some lower than 30% bios that can be flashed to the Inno3D card? I assume I will lose warranty doing so?

Now I will definitely try attaching Noctua fan to the exposed heatsink part of the card and see if it helps.
However it's very stupid that generation after generation you just can not grab an Nvidia card knowing it will not produce annoying noise spikes during idle. (not to mention coil whine during load)
And have to come up with DIY solutions for this completely unnecessary problem, while most of the DYI solutions will void the warranty.
Maybe someone can explain to me why was 30% selected for minimum fan speed (which on most cards mean >= 1100rpm) Why not for example 20% or 15%
Why is it 30% on cards where it means 1400rpm as well as on cards where 30% means 600rpm (Astral)

Why does Jensen insists on screwing up our "10K gaming centers" with this low quality stupid nonsensical design?

 

[Mysterae_]

My 4090FE would ignore the 0% fan speed feature if another video port such as the HDMI was used as well as the primary DP. I watercooled it as planned so wasn't an issue really.

Have you tried FanControl to force the fan speed?

 

[no_1_dave]

Happens on my 5090FE too
I think it happened on my 4090FE, but it rarely had to switch the fans on with normal browsing etc so I didn't notice. The 5090 warms up faster though so I notice it quite often, even when just browsing forums

There are lots of posts on Nvidia's forums complaining about it as well

 

[appletree]

Have you tried FanControl to force the fan speed?

Yes I have tried FanControl for the 3080 and 5080 and in both cases it seemed to be unable to override the firmware enforced behavior. With 5080 I didn't spend much time on software workarounds yet, so it's possible that something might work, just based on previous experience I doubt it will. And even if it did: in more broader sense I am interested why this default / out of the box experience - which I personally find unacceptable - persisted for so long in the industry. How can this be acceptable? Why should be user expected to tune anything when there is simply no good reason (AFAIK) for things to be this way?

 

[wunkley]

Welcome to my ranting thread about unacceptable minimum (30%) fan speed on Nvidia cards.
You are especially welcomed if you are similarly noise-conscious about selecting PC components as am I.

So: I just got Inno3D RTX 5080 and was quite annoyed / almost shocked when I noticed that it has minimum fan speed of 1400rpm. Just to clarify - it of course supports fanstop,
where during idle the fans have 0 rpm. However the problem is, that when you are running 4K @ 120Hz (not to say 240Hz) and doing light GPU work (playing video etc.),
or just simply running the desktop apps (when working), it's enough to have the fans occasionally spin up even during this so called "idle" to cool the GPU back down.
(And this is already happening during winter - just wait for the summer!)

And of course it can not be done with some reasonable rpm like around 600, which would be more than adequate for the mild GPU load.
No, it has to be either 0% rpm or sudden 1400 rpm spikes. Which is miles above noise floor of any semi-decently noise tuned PC in idle and it grabs unwanted attention to its self.
Thus the real "idle" rpm for this particular card is not 0 but the superposition of 0 and 1400 rpm.

More generally: as far as I know all Nvidia GPUs for some time now have their minimum rpm set to 30% of the max rpm.
Therefore all modern Nvidia GPUs have this problem - it has actually reminded me why I replaced stock cooling solution on my previous RTX 3080 SUPRIM
with two Noctua NF-A12 fans attached to the heatsink. And AFAIK there is no good software workaround for this. At least I didn't find it in case of my RTX 3080.
(i.e. seems to me, that when certain conditions are met, firmware on the card will spin the fans and overrule any fan profile you might have set in Afterburner or FanControl etc.)

Now you might think that the higher end models don't suffer with this, however if you look at the techpowerup reviews of RTX 5080 / 5090 (section "Temperature & Fan noise")
you will see that with the exception of Astral models all the others have minimum fan rpm at ~1100 or higher. Which is completely suboptimal tradeoff of noise vs. cooling in idle.
Also with "higher-end" models you will typically run in more problems with coil whine, therefore if you want card with acoustically acceptable profile it's very difficult to find one.

To illustrate how absurd this is: if you look here https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-geforce-rtx-5090-suprim/39.html
the first (quiet) tested BIOS shows that the card is so efficient at cooling that it only requires maximum rpm of 1093 under load.
However the same card has its 30% rpm equal to around 1000 rpm. Which means during idle it will behave as a superposition of silent and also almost equally as loud as during full load.
On which planet is this considered a good design choice?

Now I would be interested if there are more people who are similarly annoyed with this, especially since it's going on for so long and nothing seems to be changing.
Does it mean everyone is "OK" with it? I definitely found some other forums where people were complaining about it, but maybe it's not part of public awareness
enough for a change to be implemented. Which sux.

Then maybe what are the software workarounds for it? I.e. I remember flashing BIOS to my old GTX 580 which lowered this stupid minimum rpm limit which together with Arctic freezer triple fan aftermarket cooler provided very good noise profile. Is there some lower than 30% bios that can be flashed to the Inno3D card? I assume I will lose warranty doing so?

Now I will definitely try attaching Noctua fan to the exposed heatsink part of the card and see if it helps.
However it's very stupid that generation after generation you just can not grab an Nvidia card knowing it will not produce annoying noise spikes during idle. (not to mention coil whine during load)
And have to come up with DIY solutions for this completely unnecessary problem, while most of the DYI solutions will void the warranty.
Maybe someone can explain to me why was 30% selected for minimum fan speed (which on most cards mean >= 1100rpm) Why not for example 20% or 15%
Why is it 30% on cards where it means 1400rpm as well as on cards where 30% means 600rpm (Astral)

Why does Jensen insists on screwing up our "10K gaming centers" with this low quality stupid nonsensical design?

Hmm, that is really annoying. My 3060 in my old other rig is the same but has no fan stop and it's 1400rpm min. I find it very annoying, but hardly ever use that PC.

My main gaming rig I'm obsessed about keeping as quiet and cool as possible, on air. Just tested my MSI 5080 Gaming Trio. It has fan stop, and the min fan speed is 30% too, but the rpm is only 1100 at 30%. And it's pretty much inaudible at that speed to the point where I'd be ok with having the fans on at idle all the time if it didn't have fan stop. This is on the quiet bios setting by the way.

There is absolutely no need and no technical reason for minimum fan speeds to be so high though. It's retarded I completely agree. My case fans I control in the bios and they can spin down to 400rpm fine.

 

[Hotwired]

Isn't this just normal fan limitations.

DC fans can't go too low because they stall.
PWM fans can't go too low because the power switching starts being audible.

If the % that a mode can drop to is still too fast/noisy then the maximum speed of the fan has to be lower which may create a different problem of not being able to cool enough in hot conditions.

 

[Flanke]

I had msi rtx 3070 suprim X. I never noticed when fans start and stop. Last year I bought a Zotec 4070ti super Trinity, which has screming coil whine; returned and bought another Palit Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070Ti Gaming Pro OC WHITE, it's pretty obvious at even minimus fan speed when I play some light games. Had to pay postage and retured again.
I'm not sure if MSI one have 30% as minumum. But I got a lesson, only buy nvidia cards from top make, like msi gigabyte asus...
Today I just got my 9070xt pulse and it seems okay so far.

 

[Kirby Wurm]

This is interesting. My Sapphire 6800 XT has zero RPM but is pretty much completely inaudible over my system fans under load (which are low RPM for quiet running) unless I'm doing a silly OC run with max power, but now you mention it I don't think I've seen the fans below around 1350rpm.

With my Zotac 5080 the fans are definitely far more audible, though I've yet to hear them spin up while browsing, watching videos etc. Will have to listen out for it, though what will be helping now is the Antec Flux case with a reverse fan on the bottom feeding air directly to the GPU.

Still, it's annoying that the fans are audible as there's definitely thermal headroom, with my configuration I don't see it breach 65°c on either the memory or core. I'd tweak in Afterburner, but I can't remember whether you can have zero RPM with a custom curve? And if it will override the default behaviour at all anyway.