How To Enable Fanless Mode in GTX 900 Series Video Cards - Community-sourced Guide
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,681 words · ~8 min read
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welcome to a completely new format here on lineus Tech tips it's our video
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version of a guide we found somewhere on the internet oh wait so hold on a second
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so you're saying that's not different from what we normally do oh come on I
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mean there is at least a unique spin on it this time and on the subject of spin
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if you haven't checked out empty Warehouse chair racing and subscribed to
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our other channel Channel Super Fun maybe now is the time
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switches for the ultimate typing experience and is now available for a
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reduced price click my face to learn
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more all right so what's different about
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this online guide conversion is that we
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are basing the video on content that was posted on our own website by the user
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lays where he or at least I assume he
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based on the pitch of his voice but you never can know demonstrates that you
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don't have to buy an ASUS strick or EVGA
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card with a fanless mode to get your GTX 900 series Maxwell based graphics card
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to run completely silent at idol or even in lightweight games so let's start by
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addressing the big question that a lot of people have first why on Earth would
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you want your fans to turn off they're not that loud in the first place and
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they're just going to turn back on again when can you fire up any kind of
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demanding game or other application anyway get a good pair of noise
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isolating headphones and call it a day well that's where you're partially wrong
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for one thing perceived loudness is dependent on the environment in which
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the PC is being used and personal tolerances to you the ambient noise in
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the room or the other fans in your system might overpower the quiet idle
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noise of the NVIDIA reference or MSI twin frozer or whatever other cool you
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have on your graphics card but for people up late writing for example in a
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quiet room a nice quiet PC can be pretty
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important and as they start replacing fans in their system they quickly get to
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the point where the graphics card fan one that they have is pretty tough to
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replace is the loudest part and to address the whole get headphones
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suggestion I mean not Everyone likes headphones and why should I have to put
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something on my face or just deal with
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it when there is literally no reason my
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computer should be making any noise when I'm playing music for example something
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that's been possible to do on fanless low power portable devices for decades
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at this point which leads us to the guide now normally unless your GPU
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supports fanless operation out of the box your MSI afterburner custom fan
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profile which you can access like this will have these dotted lines on it to
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denote the maximum and minimum values that your fan will operate at you can
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drag the button down to Zer RPM but it won't do anything without the
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modification posted by lays which will summarize but I'm sure he'd also
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appreciate if you check out the link in the video description and post some
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positive comments in the Forum thread if you liked his guide all right so first
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you need to gather the tools you'll need Maxwell BIOS tweaker GPU Z and envy
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flash save your BIOS using GPU Z to a
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folder of your choice in the root of your drive we're going to call it Envy
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flash by pressing this button copy all
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the zipped files from Maxwell BIOS tweaker and envy Flash and blah blah all
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that stuff into the same folder as your backed up BIOS open the BIOS tweaker app
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open BIOS by clicking here and navigating to it it should be pretty
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close by then there's a bunch of stuff that you can tweak in here but most of
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it goes beyond the scope of this guide we're just going to change RPM 11 per 01
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and RPM 01 to zero to change the minimum
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value in RPM and percentage of our fan to zero when that's done save your BIOS
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as some other file name so you retain a
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copy of your original BIOS that you can Flash the card back to so that it's in
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its stock configuration in the event that you ever need to send it in for
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warranty service then go into device manager and disable your graphics card
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don't worry if the screen goes black or does anything funny this is only
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temporary next press Windows and type
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command then right click and open as administrator type in CD space see colon
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back Envy Flash and press enter Then type Envy flash space- 6 space and the
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name of your BIOS. ROM then press enter
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press y wait for the flash process to complete I'd actually highly recommend
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being connected to a battery backup during this time restart reenable your
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graphics card and Device Manager reboot again for good measure then fire up MSI
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afterburner and it's Off to the Races now you can configure your custom fan
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profile however you want so depending on if you just want silence at idle and
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otherwise a pretty normal fan curve or if you want to be able to you know limit
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your gpus load through the use of vsync gsync or some other frame rate limiter
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in-game for example to try and get silent gaming going you'll want to tune
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this differently but this follow-up Post in the Forum from L has a solid looking
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suggested curve that ramps up the fan to keep your GPU safe as it heats up while
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keeping it quiet when nothing's shaken once you've got it dialed in and you
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like the GPU's overall behavior and
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noise level under various loads simply put a value between 10 and 15° into the
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hysteresis box this keeps the fan from
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constantly ramping up and down when the
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temperature is right on the threshold of a of a major RPM shift which can be
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annoying and then you're done so the last things to address in this video are
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these lonus I did this and my GPU is running at like 60 to 65° at idle at the
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desktop is that okay the answer is
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pretty much yeah while lower temperatures are better for electronics
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60° is nowhere near the fast and painful
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death danger zone and if NVIDIA thought that this was bad for it none of these
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cards would feature a fanless mode what about this one then lonus how does
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this affect the warranty of my card well
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if your GPU manufacturer does not allow BIOS flashing under the warranty terms
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my recommendation would be to like I said before flash that backup that you
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saved back onto the card before attempting to get any kind of warranty
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service they can't tell you did it but
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with that said if you were to Brick your card as part of this process the honest
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thing to do would be to suck it up since it's not covered and take better
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precautions like using a battery backup next
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roll.com Linus to check them out so
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thank you guys for watching this video like it if you liked it dislike it if
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whenever you buy you know your graphics card to do this you know tweak on or
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whatever else the case may be so I think that's pretty much it guys don't forget
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