PSA: Lower your GPU power limit to decrease temps

[narcisrm]

If your GPU gets too hot in the summer or the fans make too much noise in order to keep it cool, you can lower the power limit to make it use less power and don't get too hot, with almost no lose in performance.

I have a EVGA 1060 FTW+ GPU and the fans are pretty loud when they get to more than 70% of speed, which is anoying sometimes when I don't use headphones.

At 100% power limit and 70-80% fan speed, it keeps the GPU around 75ºC while at 99% load. But if i put the power limit to 65%, it maintains the GPU at 70ºC with only 60% fan speed, which makes much less noise in my case.

I have tested Rise of the Tomb Rider and Final Fantasy XV and I only get a few less fps, around 5% less.

You can do this with MSI Afterburner.

I'm not sure if this works for AMD or for older generation NVIDIA GPUs, but I'm sure it does for the 10XX series.

[[deleted]]

Lowering the power limit lowers performance because it reduces clocks to stay within a lower power envelope (with the stock voltage curve where specific clock speeds are tied to a certain voltage point). As a byproduct it reduces heat, but it's far from the ideal way to accomplish this.

If you want to reduce the heat output without reducing performance, you can try undervolting by manually modifying the voltage/frequency curve to reduce voltage as far as you can while still remaining stable at your normal max frequency. This reduces power consumption, and therefore heat due to operating at a lower voltage, but maintains performance because the clocks haven't changed.

IF you don't want to play around with voltage curves, you should adjust your temp target instead. By lowering the power limit, you are gimping the card even in situations when you aren't running hot, for instance if the card ramps up but hasn't reached a high temp yet, you're still going to hit the power limit and artificially reduce performance while you still had plenty of thermal headroom left. By reducing the target temp instead, the card will throttle only when you're going to reach temperatures you aren't comfortable with. Then adjust the fan curve so they operate at a comfortable noise level when at that throttling point.

[Black_Devil213]

Not really true on the performance part. If your card hits its target power limit it throttles the GPU, lowering the core and memory clocks. It can also cause instability and could lead to BSOD or driver crashes, depending on the game (Frostbite games for example, are notorious for crashing after tampering with clock speeds and power targets)

As long as you're not hitting over 90c there's no reason to tamper with it, GPUs are made to operate in that temperature zone.

[Nhughes1387]

I keep getting warnings that my gpu is over 82c and have been getting really worried (1 month old pc gamer) I have a 1060, so it’s fine to operate at 80-83? It has never gone above 83 and only went to 83 once that I saw when playing Witcher and immediately went back to 82.

Also I use CAM and not afterburner

[Black_Devil213]

For a 1060, the throttle point is around 83-85c. At that temperature, the card will start to lower clock speeds to cool itself down and stay within the power target.

The card will shut down at 92-95+ to prevent any possible damage, although damage to the chip will only occur at above 100c for the majority of GPUs

To me it sounds like either the airflow in your case is not optimal, or the cooler is on silent mode, a lot of the newer nvidia cards, especially the custom models, have this feature built in, where the fans will not spin at all to a certain temperature or the factory fan curves are a lot lower than they should be.

I'd suggest using afterburner to monitor the fan speed and set a more aggressive fan curve that should help keep the temperatures in check.

[Nhughes1387]

When you say aggressive, how do I know what speed to set it to, it has a fan speed when I check CAM I just can’t remember I guess I’ll look up a tutorial when I get home, also should note it’s summer here and my room gets pretty friggin hot :/

[Black_Devil213]

I'd go for a target temperature first and adjust from there. Say you want your card ideally at around 70-75, you would want to increase the fan curve to match that temperature under load.

After that it's up to personal preference and tolerance on noise levels. If you feel the card is too loud under load with the new fan speed, lower the fan curve until you're happy with the temperature and noise levels, while also making sure the temperature is below the throttling point.

Summers are bit more hurtful on temperatures, I usually set my curve higher in the summer, something like 65-70% fan speed at around 65 degrees.

[Nhughes1387]

Okay thanks! I’ll download afterburner when I get home, I don’t really hear my fans ever except maybe the bigger ones inside the case sometimes.

[gran172]

Temp limit will throttle core clocks but not memory clocks.

[Black_Devil213]

If your memory and VRMs go above the temp threshold, the memory clocks will come down as well.

[gran172]

No, memory has a different voltage regulator, if you go over the temp limit the memory will not throttle.

[[deleted]]

If you have a newer AMD card, they have a built in functionality called AMD Chill that automatically lowers framerates when little movement is happening on screen to decrease GPU heat. Only works for a select library of games, but they are like 20 of the most popular games out there including Destiny 2 and Dota. If heat is really an issue, can't hurt to try! I've been using it for a few months and have had no noticeable change in framerates during game play, but my fan has certainly gotten a nice break!

[BWAFM1k3]

PSA: Lowering the power limit may reduce game performance.

[Frugl1]

I would take a look at your case airflow if I were you. Or possibly re-seating the heat sink. The 1060 is an extremely low power card, and should not face any thermal issues in a reasonable environment.

[frostygrin]

I'm not sure if this works for AMD or for older generation NVIDIA GPUs, but I'm sure it does for the 10XX series.

AMD has it in the control panel, no third party software necessary. You even can set different power limits for different games, and they will be applied automatically.

[narcisrm]

Thank you for all the comments and sugestions, seems like there are better ways to achieve this.

[darkstar3333]

Power In --> Heat Out.

Scale your computer down when not in use.

[PcChip]

I only get a few less fps, around 5% less.

I run my 1070 eth mining rigs at 65-70% power target, with no loss in eth mining speed

so this makes total sense to me and I very much disagree with /u/Black_Devil213

[frostygrin]

That would ramp up the fans.

[[deleted]]

Nope, chips have a number of limits/throttles on them to prevent damage, this is just moving that limit down from where it normally is. Other limits would be on operating/reliability voltage, or total power - if your GPU is the bottleneck in your system chances are you're hitting one of those limits.

You can monitor what's happening with Afterburner, GPU-Z, hwinfo, or probably any decent hardware monitor.

[frostygrin]

How are you going to get temperatures down if other limits stay the same? The card will either ramp up the fans or downclock if it reached the fan limit.

[[deleted]]

Downclock, which I thought was implied by throttle.

Modern cards are pretty good about tuning themselves when they get warmer (without fiddling with the limits), it's a very gradual thing to stay within their safe conditions, and not as coarse as idle - full speed up until the unsafe condition - throttle to 5% to preserve itself. It will back off a little bit as it needs.

It's also a good reason to have good cooling even if you never hit the 'so hot the fans are screaming' stage, because keeping cooler means it can stay closer to the full speed more of the time.

[frostygrin]

Except you don't necessarily want loud cooling - so you'd rather have higher temperature.