Upgraded my GTX 460 to a 1070 - now underclocking it

[kcducttaper]

My rig:
AMD Phenom II x6 1100t (stock speed) with a Hyper 212 cooler
Ripjawz 16G (4x 4G) DDR3 1600
Asus GTX 1070 OC dual fan
Quality 850w Gold modular PSU. I think it's Corsair, but I can't recall at the moment.
Full size (but not oversized) case with decent ventilation and multiple fans, but not a gaming tower either.

I'm obviously not a huge gamer, but do like the occasional racing game. Track Mania, The Crew, Project Cars, etc. I had my GTX 460 for about 6 years and it would still play The Crew at low settings nearly locked at 30 fps at 1050p (weird, I know, but that's the native resolution of my screen, so whatever...). I'm not interested in building a new rig, but I did want some better graphics, so I started trying to figure out what would be the best graphics card my CPU could actually use and hopefully even do some 4k eventually. I pretty much figured a GTX 1060 6G would pretty much max out my CPU, so I was watching the market to see about picking one up whenever GPU prices fell. A feller at work posted up a NIB Asus 1070 OC on the company classifieds for the same price as a 1060, so I went ahead and picked it up. I installed it last night including the newest drivers from Nvidia and took it for a spin.

The good:
There's a HUGE boost in performance from my 460 (duh). I can now almost get a full lock at 60 fps in The Crew with everything on ultra. I figure if I OC my CPU, I could probably get a full lock on 60. The game was definitely playable with my 460 at ~30 fps, but at 60 fps, I was surprised how much smoother even just a 'racing' game looked.

The bad:
It's noisy!!! Even at full chap, I could hear my 460, but it wasn't intrusive. The 1070 sounds like it's going for takeoff at anything over 50% fan speed!

I've dropped my settings from ultra to high and decreased some more graphics settings. Just using MSI Afterburner, I've underclocked the core speed and memory as much as the sliders will let me. Now, I'm getting a full 60 lock and am using about 50% gpu and 60% cpu. Fan speeds are about 50%, which is about as high as I want them to go without them being intrusive. GPU temps are pretty much 70c on the button. I may need to tweak the fan curve yet and probably study up on proper underclocking procedures to keep the noise in check. I'm thinking, even with the gpu underclocked, my cpu will be the bottleneck, so I'm considering things like dropping the voltage a little and stuff like that.

[Arya]

That's something you'll have to get used to with modern hardware. GPUs are pretty loud at the moment.

[Sapph]

No, they are not loud at all normally. It's just that Asus Dual OC version that is quite loud.

OP, if you can, return that 1070 and get some other model. For example Asus Cerberus or Palit Dual.

[Arya]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Sapph:

No, they are not loud at all normally. It's just that Asus Dual OC version that is quite loud.

I would say Asus Pascal in general. I've got a Strix 08G and it's again a really noisey card. At least it's also a really powerful card.

[Viper]

I can't ever hear my Asus Strix 1080ti and it has 3 fans on it. Your case has a lot to do with how much you can hear your fans. I have a Corsair Crystal 570X case which has smoked tempered glass panels on all sides. They are not sealed against each other however. There is about an inch gap between each panel insuring very good airflow. My PC has 6 fans 9 if you count the 3 on my GPU and unless it gets up to around 65C temp it is completelly silent. I can barely hear it at that point. Its about 3 feet from where I sit. My airconditioning in my house infact makes much more background noise than my PC ever does. Usually I can't hear it even if I put my ear to the side of the case. Normal fan speed on most of my case fans is about 1000 rpm.

[Arya]

Meanwhile I'm using a slightly butchered EVGA DG-87. It had metal panels, but I stripped them off when building and didn't put them back on. I kinda like the skeletal look, and it does improve both airflow and temps. But does nothing to block sounds.

[kcducttaper]

I dug through my order history and finally found where I ordered the case in 2011. It's an XION Vantage something or another.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4540656

The triangle 'cheeks' are vents with a fain inside the case pulling air in. On the side, that little whirly design thing is also a vent. You can mount a fan to it, but I haven't because my temps are fine. The side panel is just cheap lexan, so not much noise isolation there.

[Sapph]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από kcducttaper:

I dug through my order history and finally found where I ordered the case in 2011. It's an XION Vantage something or another.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4540656

The triangle 'cheeks' are vents with a fain inside the case pulling air in. On the side, that little whirly design thing is also a vent. You can mount a fan to it, but I haven't because my temps are fine. The side panel is just cheap lexan, so not much noise isolation there.

Not to mention how outdated design that is by now. With psu on top and non-modular hdd bays.

[kcducttaper]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Sapph:

Not to mention how outdated design that is by now. With psu on top and non-modular hdd bays.

Yup. Fortunately, that doesn't make a hill of beans difference in my application.

[Null_User]

Is your video card single, double or triple fan? My old gtx 680 had a single fan, and it could get loudish on heavy loads. Though I didn't mind the noise. My current GTX 1060 has two fans and it's noise is much lower. More modern cards come with more and better quality fans that are quieter. Also different people have different tolerance levels to noise. So maybe what's loud for you isn't loud for me.

Now, 70c isn't a bad temp, considering these things tap out at around 90c. But for a desktop PC which should have ample room and cooling, I feel it may be a little bit high. I try to keep my 1060 around 50c, and in some games (even an unoptimized mess as Blade and Soul) it drops to as low as 41c.

My noisiest fans are on my CPU cooler, a Corsair H80 liquid cooler. The radiator fans (two of em) sound like a drill when on heavy load. >.<

[Monk]

To be honest how loud something is, is very subjective, most seem to think the evga 1080ti ftw3 is quiet, I found it loud.
Then again, I don't mind that, I have my case fans at full speed all the time to keep temps as low as possible and can't hear them with headphones on.
Under clocking the card is a waste. Just set the fans to a level you are happy with, the card will drop boost clock to keep it in safety ranges and even at 50% fans is very VERY unlikely to get hot enough to actually throttle, but will perform better than under locking it.

Your CPU is crippling the performance of the card, but atleast you got it at a good price, even if it isn't what would be classed as a good cooler.

[kcducttaper]

It's a dual-fan setup. I thought the dual fan style would allow them to spin slower and be quieter. My 460 (evga) was a single fan and it's easily much quieter than my dual fan 1070. I do like this machine to run fairly quiet since it's my daily driver and not just a gaming rig.

I may have to play with the fan settings and underclock it some more. I figure, even underclocked, my CPU is easily my bottleneck. After that, I think my monitor is my next bottleneck; so why not dial my card down and save some power?

[Peabrain]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από kcducttaper:

It's a dual-fan setup. I thought the dual fan style would allow them to spin slower and be quieter. My 460 (evga) was a single fan and it's easily much quieter than my dual fan 1070. I do like this machine to run fairly quiet since it's my daily driver and not just a gaming rig.

I may have to play with the fan settings and underclock it some more. I figure, even underclocked, my CPU is easily my bottleneck. After that, I think my monitor is my next bottleneck; so why not dial my card down and save some power?

My msi 1070 is fairly quiet and the 2 fans rarely go above 65% rpm. I say quiet as its no louder than my case fans are. Sure the fans on your card are not faulty? Are they running 100% all the time?

[kcducttaper]

They don't sound defective like bad bearings or anything. Just noisy. I've set the fan curve so they rarely get past 50%.

I'm now running into a new issue. I wanted to OC my cpu a little bit as some of my peaks were hitting over 90% and I was getting an occasional stutter. My MoBo has a 'performance' mode which is just a slight OC. I've done it plenty of times and it OC's the CPU from 3.3 to 3.7 just with that one click. I tried it today and now it won't boot. The case lights will come on and it will look like it's booting for a little bit, then shut off. After it shuts off, it'll power back on again, look like it's loading for a couple seconds, then just sit there. There is no screen output for any of this process. The only way to get it back is to reset it back to stock speeds and it boots up like nothing ever happened, so that's got me avfully confused at the moment. OCing an 1100t to 3.8 or 4 should be easy peasy and I've booted in the OC setting before, so not sure what the deal is.

[Peabrain]

Sounds ike the one click OC makes it unstable so it wont boot. During this time the bios knows it isnt stable and reverts then reboots.....all with the screen off.

Just OC it manually. Hell even if you dont OC it adjust the Vcore. Lower voltages should work fine and it will also get you lower temps. All boards have higher than needed voltage to ensure a stable system for all cpus. There can be a wide range of what voltage each cpus needs.


I'd suggest a new thread for changing cpu voltage and manually OC'ing, listing your specs.

Example: I changed the Vcore on my 7700k by -0.145mv at stock speed and boost 4.0ghz and 45ghz. I can get 4.9ghz stable using the same vcore the board used as defualt for 4.5 boost. If I try the boards 1 click OC it fails to boot and changes vcore +0.600.

[kcducttaper]

Yeah, I'll start a new thread for it. I just found it odd that the one click OC worked fine several times before with my 460 installed, but now won't boot with my 1070. I can't think of a reason that the GPU swap would make any difference, but I figured I'd post it to see if anyone had a similar experience.