The SOLUTION to Video Card OVERHEATING & DEATH
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,249 words · ~6 min read
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recently we made a video investigating the usefulness of video card back plates
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in a shocking surprise to No One the
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thermal benefit was marginal if anything
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at all so then when EVGA called us up
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inviting us to check out their top secret IX technology that was going to
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solve video card thermal issues we had to wonder I mean is this just another
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case of gluing on more bloody fans and back plates or is it a worthwhile
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Innovation the Phoenix oour is a full-sized minimalistically designed
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keyboard complete with Cherry MX switches and a new white backlit variant
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check it out at the link below what the crap is icx technology I
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how do I even pronounce that I I6
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I6 well whatever evga's marketing team
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helpfully describes it as a new and more efficient way to cool with optimized
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airf flow fin design which is a good start because an old and less efficient
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way to cool with an unoptimized airflow fin design would raise a lot of
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questions essentially what it boils down to is this rather than try to sell us a
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revolutionary fan blade design or whatever it's more about data IX relies
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on nine discrete thermal sensors to
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dramatically expand the card's monitoring capabilities so in addition
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to the GPU we now get readings for each
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Bank of vram and the power delivery
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modules the cooler can then take advantage of this sensor data to
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intelligently cool the entire card as
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needed to the point of independently controlling its two fans if let's say
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the GPU temps would allow a normal card to spin down but the the rear portion of
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the card was still hot pretty cool
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concept and they've tacked on every other feature that they can think of as
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well like the perforated heat SN fins low power fans for additional GPU power
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budget really you guys and a back plate that EVGA says helps with cooling a
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claim that seems to be in Vogue these days all of this of course culminating
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in the Bold statement play longer overclock better so how do we test these
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claims in our possession is a brand new EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Super Clock 2 with
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an all metal design with a diecast back plate a clean industrial aesthetic the
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aforementioned perforated heat sink fins and of course icx as a superclocked card
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this sits in the middle of evga's lineup with a 100 MHz bump over the reference
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design and we'll be running it on our RGB test bench so it's a core
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i77700k at both outof the box and
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overclocked speeds time for the fuzzy donut of death yes fur marks back and so
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are the settings from the back plate benches stock settings save for the
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maxed out power and temperature targets the results well that's unsurprisingly
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the first interesting aspect of the icx design there are a lot of them for the
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GPU it was stable at 68° Centigrade
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while the memory came in at 80 and the power delivery hit 81 all of this with
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no thermal throttling traditional tools
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like ferm Mark's integrated GPU temperature readout would have only
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shown us the 68° figure which means that
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already icx is doing its job so then we gave it a tidy 100 MHz overclock to both
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core and memory keeping in mind of course that the superclock 2 is already
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over clocked out of the box and went back to Tim Horton's for another fuzzy
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donut and 68° Centigrade on the GPU 80
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for the memory and 81 for the power delivery again zero throttling I'm
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noticing a pattern here the Super Clock 2 IX is a good card and measures up well
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to the aorist that we checked out recently but this sensor Tech just
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doesn't really seem to do anything for performance directly and under normal
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conditions both fans Go full blast when the cards working hard and sit idle when
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you leave it for a while so why did they
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bother developing this where could it make a difference well there are a
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couple of situations one of which we caught on our thermal camera naturally
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because the independently controlled fans spin Up and Down based on the
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temperatures in their corresponding zones the total time each fan needs to
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stay spun up can be optimized for a quicker return to quiet operation
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so with Precision we can see the temperatures winding down and the
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respective fans slowing down after we
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close a 3D application Situation Number
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Two is less to do with Acoustics and more to do with longevity not every
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video card enjoys the luxury of an open test bench or a full ATX Tower and hot
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recycled air or airf flow restrictions
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in smaller cases could lead to higher
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temperatures for the DRM reducing its efficiency hurting performance and
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shortening its lifespan so with our
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obstruction in the way of this fan we can see some car temperatures Rising
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even when the GPU is not being stressed this is a likely scenario in a compact
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case and IX ramps the fan accordingly
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cool literally in our perfect world
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there is still some work to be done here independent control of the fan curves is
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neat but a robust implementation of a feature EVGA is teasing right now that
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would allow other system coolers to be controlled as well would allow us to for
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example point a side panel fan at the card's back plate which reached a toasty
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74° Celsius in our tests back plates
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don't normally contribute to video card cooling much if at all but in this
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manner it's possible that it could so
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what do you guys think then would you pay extra for more temperature answers
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do you appreciate the extra control let us know in the comments
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below Synergy is really freaking cool it
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basically works like magic okay it's not magic it's complicated software
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engineering but the end result seems like magic you can share one Mouse and
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one keyboard between two computers so
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you no longer have to think about like oh do I need to do something on that one
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or that one no you just drag the mouse from one to the other and boom you're
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switched it's amazing and it gets even better you can actually do it between
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computers with completely different operating systems Windows Linux Mac you
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can drag a single Mouse across them it's amazing they've got a basic and a pro
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option with onetime payment for Lifetime access and the features include even
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advanced stuff like clipboard sharing between the computers so check it out
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you can use our Link in the video description to get 25% off Synergy today
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so thanks thanks for watching guys dislike or like accordingly get subscribed and if you really like the
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video check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is a link to
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join now that you're done doing that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click on in the little
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