Highly impressed by NVidia's reference cooler!

[alcoholbob]

Dual and triple fan coolers haven't had issues matching water coolers on 250W cards for generations now.

When I put my Titan X (Maxwell) on water it didn't overclock any better than on the ACX cooler, it just ran at 50C instead of 65-67C.

Same goes for Titan X (2016)/1080Ti. I'm averaging 1970MHz at 53C on the Titan X (2016) on a 1080 Hybrid cooler, and on my MSI Gaming X 1080 Ti it's rock solid at 2088MHz at 65C. Again, the only difference is about 12-15C in temps between water and a 2.5-3 slot air cooler.

Generally triple slot air coolers are quieter than the typical Asetek CLC water coolers, so the water vs air debate is a question of lower temps, vs quieter but taking up more space (small cube cases often can only accept CLC cooled cards, can't take a triple slotter).

 

[x3sphere]

I had a 2016 Titan XP and the reference cooler was garbage. Incredibly loud. It was quieter than reference R290X's but that isn't saying much. I could deal with it assuming I had my headphones on but playing with surround setup I could hear the fans and it was annoying.

Seems they have made some improvements with the newer one on the Xp and 1080 Ti but it only slightly better from the reviews I've seen.

On the stock cooling, due to throttling, I wouldn't be surprised if a good non-reference 1080 Ti like the Asus Strix or Gigabyte Aorus will come very close to matching a Titan Xp ( within 2-3%).

Really would not buy another Titan without going water cooling. I was going to put my XP on water but ended up selling it after I got a FreeSync monitor so now I'm just waiting for Vega.

 

[Grooveriding]

Nvidia's coolers look nice and are effective at keeping their card's temperatures managed under stock settings, but they're far from quiet. The coolers on the 250W cards are loud under load and become obnoxious if you don't appreciate the sounds of a small whining fan and high speed air blowing out the back of your case.

GPUs are ideal for water cooling. CPU air coolers can be huge towers of metal and dissipate heat well while being quiet. The GPU is stuck with whatever they can pack into two slots worth of PCIE.

Water cooling doesn't have to be a huge investment. Really expensive setups tend to be about aesthetics or if you have enormous cooling to handle. While it can become an expensive hobby, I have more money sunk into cooling my parts than the parts themselves, you can do it for a few hundred bucks. Just throw in a pump, reservoir, radiator and a GPU block for a few hundred.

The only time I can hear anything from my PC is if the PSU fan spins up, which tends not to happen even when gaming.

 

[Despoiler]

So, with all the bashing going on with the reference cooler or the GTX 1080 Ti, I thought I'd make a thread to show how impressed I am with this cooler

It's been over 6 years since I've had a reference cooler on a GPU. The last time was when I had two GTX 580s, and they were loud as hell in an annoying way. They sounded like blow dryers, and weren't particularly effective out of the box. In fact, when I bought two EVGA high flow brackets for my 580s, they shaved off about 4 to 5 degrees if I recall.

And while my Titan Xp's blower is loud as hell, it's not an annoying sound. The most accurate description I can give is that it sounds like a high pitched static sound. But the cooling ability is actually very good. My idle temps are about 30c on the desktop with no other programs open, and about 32c with Edge browser open.

During gaming at stock clocks, the fan will rev up to about 53% and the temp will hit 83 or 84c, but it's dead silent. I cannot hear the fan at all over my system fans. Also, at stock fan curve, the GPU will usually be running in the high 1600s to low 1700s or there abouts in Mass Effect Andromeda, which is a graphically heavy game. In lighter games like Doom, it will be in the 1700s consistently, with the framerates hitting 200 FPS at times.

The point though, is that the GPU is always above stock boost, which is 1584 and does not drop anywhere near the stock clock. Some of you might be thinking "well duh," but given some of the criticisms I have seen leveled at the stock cooler, you'd think that it had issues serious issues with throttling, but this isn't the case.

NVidia has done some significant improvements on the cooler, even since the original Titan X Pascal. HardOCP did a comparison between a GTX 1080 Ti and a Titan X Pascal overclocked to the same settings, and the GTX 1080 Ti's load temp was a whopping 8 degrees cooler than the Titan X Pascal, and that's with a higher boost clock as well.

As far as my personal overclocking experience goes, it depends on the game. Sustaining above 2ghz is not feasible in graphically intensive titles with the fan speed at 75%. From my experience so far, the clock speed will usually drop below 2ghz, and be in the low to mid 1900s in games like the Witcher 3 maxed out. It doesn't drop below 1900 at all from what I've seen though

But how much better would a top notch open air cooler really be? I don't think that an open air cooler could maintain above 2ghz either in graphically heavy games. That was my experience with my Zotac Amp Extreme GTX 1080 when I had it. It would automatically boost to above 2ghz, but would drop down and be in the upper 1900s and stay there in intense situations.

The only way to get 2ghz and above constantly would be to go water, but investing in water just for 100mhz or less extra on the core doesn't seem worth it to me at all.

That said, I don't plan on doing much overclocking anyway. I've always found GPU overclocking annoying, which is why I've always bought the fastest stock clocked models so that I don't have to manually overclock them. But the Titan Xp at stock clocks is plenty fast enough for me

Sorry guy, but 53% and the temp will hit 83 or 84c is not good and it's not dead silent. Your computer is crazy loud if you think the card is silent. Dead silent on load is a Sapphire Fury Tri-X that is more quite than most cards idle at. A top notch cooler should be less than 70c @ 40% fan max.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11180/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-review/16

 

[Carfax83]

Seems they have made some improvements with the newer one on the Xp and 1080 Ti but it only slightly better from the reviews I've seen.

If you look at my OP, HardOCP did a comparison between the Titan X Pascal with the old cooler and the GTX 1080 Ti with the new one while both were overclocked. The 1080 Ti not only hit a higher clock speed, but it did so at 8c less than the Titan X Pascal.

Source

So if you compare stock fan curves, there won't appear to be much improvement other than the 1080 Ti boosting to a higher clock speed. But when overclocked, there definitely is.

 

[Carfax83]

Sorry guy, but 53% and the temp will hit 83 or 84c is not good and it's not dead silent.

Again, nobody is disputing that a good aftermarket open air cooler will give significantly lower temps at less noise. My point of making this thread, was to show that the reference cooler has some positives as well, like reduced system temperature, and greater flexibility with different configurations.

There is a reason why NVidia uses a blower type cooler for their reference design, rather than open air. If they used open air, it would lead to much greater constraints on what types of systems they could be used in.

 

[Carfax83]

Water cooling doesn't have to be a huge investment. Really expensive setups tend to be about aesthetics or if you have enormous cooling to handle. While it can become an expensive hobby, I have more money sunk into cooling my parts than the parts themselves, you can do it for a few hundred bucks. Just throw in a pump, reservoir, radiator and a GPU block for a few hundred.

So can you reuse the parts between the GPU generations, or do you have to get a new block every time NVidia comes out with a new card?

 

[Despoiler]

Again, nobody is disputing that a good aftermarket open air cooler will give significantly lower temps at less noise. My point of making this thread, was to show that the reference cooler has some positives as well, like reduced system temperature, and greater flexibility with different configurations.

There is a reason why NVidia uses a blower type cooler for their reference design, rather than open air. If they used open air, it would lead to much greater constraints on what types of systems they could be used in.

Ahh then why ask and then make statements like you did? You are impressed because apparently you somehow have terrible airflow situation. You compare a card running @ ~1600 stock to one trying to get to ~ 2000 OC. So much not apples.

The reason Nvidia uses a blower is because it's cheap. Same reason AMD uses them.

But how much better would a top notch open air cooler really be? I don't think that an open air cooler could maintain above 2ghz either in graphically heavy games. That was my experience with my Zotac Amp Extreme GTX 1080 when I had it. It would automatically boost to above 2ghz, but would drop down and be in the upper 1900s and stay there in intense situations.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

Somewhat off-topic, but are blower coolers ever worth it? I keep hearing people say they're better for SLI and cramped cases, but I'm not seeing it. Three and four way SLI is dead and most SLI boards intentionally leave space between the cards. As for cramped cases, I jammed a 390 Nitro in a $30 MicroATX case (Rosewill Ranger-M) with barely two millimeters of clearance at the front, and I swear that thing never ran over 75 degrees at 40% fan speed. As far as I can tell, blowers are going to be worse outside of the absolute tightest of small form factor cases.

 

[OatisCampbell]

Ahh then why ask and then make statements like you did? You are impressed because apparently you somehow have terrible airflow situation. You compare a card running @ ~1600 stock to one trying to get to ~ 2000 OC. So much not apples.

The reason Nvidia uses a blower is because it's cheap. Same reason AMD uses them.

Disagree.

Can't put open air in SFF. NV has to make reference cards as flexible as possible for a wide variety of cases because good chunk of their market is stuff like Dell, SFF for LAN parties and the like.

The cooler is in no way "cheap", my guess is it's more expensive than the de-badged Arctic coolers put on AIB cards. Between the aluminum casing, copper vapor chamber, and high RPM fan I bet that thing cost more than the bigger, slower fan, plastic case stuff. Doesn't work better but no way it's cheaper. That fan is built like a tank compared to a lot I've used.

Different focus for NVIDIA- make a card that can run at spec in as many different cases as possible without failing or resulting in support calls to systems assemblers.

That and letting AIBs have differentiation of the good HSFs are the only logical explanations.

The cheapo plastic blowers on some other cards are definitely cheaper, but not the 1080 series reference.

 

[unseenmorbidity]

WoW what a load... That cooler is garbage, just like every other reference card blower style cooler. Is this a troll thread to get non-nvidia fanboys banned for calling you out? If so, props, because that is pretty clever.

Oh I see...

Again, nobody is disputing that a good aftermarket open air cooler will give significantly lower temps at less noise. My point of making this thread, was to show that the reference cooler has some positives as well, like reduced system temperature, and greater flexibility with different configurations.

There is a reason why NVidia uses a blower type cooler for their reference design, rather than open air. If they used open air, it would lead to much greater constraints on what types of systems they could be used in.

So, you made this thread to inform us that nvidias reference blower works like every other blower cooler.




Threadcrapping is not allowed.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[Carfax83]

Ahh then why ask and then make statements like you did? You are impressed because apparently you somehow have terrible airflow situation. You compare a card running @ ~1600 stock to one trying to get to ~ 2000 OC. So much not apples.

Terrible airflow situation? What have I posted that made you think that? The airflow in my case is excellent, and my previous video cards used in this chassis were a Zotac GTX 980 Ti Amp Extreme, and a Zotac GTX 1080 Amp Extreme, both high end open air graphics cards.

The reason Nvidia uses a blower is because it's cheap. Same reason AMD uses them.

This comment is unbelievably ignorant. OatisCampbell had a great reply which perfectly illustrated why you're wrong, so that saves me the time of correcting it myself.

 

[Carfax83]

Somewhat off-topic, but are blower coolers ever worth it? I keep hearing people say they're better for SLI and cramped cases, but I'm not seeing it. Three and four way SLI is dead and most SLI boards intentionally leave space between the cards. As for cramped cases, I jammed a 390 Nitro in a $30 MicroATX case (Rosewill Ranger-M) with barely two millimeters of clearance at the front, and I swear that thing never ran over 75 degrees at 40% fan speed. As far as I can tell, blowers are going to be worse outside of the absolute tightest of small form factor cases.

I'd have to see that to believe it. Outside of SFF, there is also multiGPU, mass market system builders, HPC, servers etcetera where blower type coolers are much better than open air:

 

[Carfax83]

WoW what a load... That cooler is garbage, just like every other reference card blower style cooler. Is this a troll thread to get non-nvidia fanboys banned for calling you out? If so, props, because that is pretty clever.

If you read any of the reviews, then you'd know that the cooler isn't garbage, and is superior to any reference blower that has come before; including the TRULY garbage ones that AMD has made. If this cooler was truly garbage, then I wouldn't be above stock boost clocks all the time with the stock fan curve.

So, you made this thread to inform us that nvidias reference blower works like every other blower cooler.

If you actually read my OP, then you'd know that the reference blower for the 1080 Ti and the Titan Xp has some significant improvements compared to previous blowers; including the reference blowers used on the GTX 1080 and the original Titan X Pascal.

Under normal operation, this amounts to a higher sustained boost clock average, and when overclocked, the difference in temps between this new version and the old version is 8c, which isn't small.

Now please crawl back under your rock, and don't post in this thread unless you have some relevant input.

 

[DisarmedDespot]

I'd have to see that to believe it. Outside of SFF, there is also multiGPU, mass market system builders, HPC, servers etcetera where blower type coolers are much better than open air:

Still not seeing it.
-MultiGPU is pretty much limited to two cards for gaming now, with most boards providing space between the cards for cooling.
-Even crappy el-cheapo OEM cases nowadays can fit fans. Again, my R9 390 was fine inside a $30 MicroATX case. I'll post a picture if I can find one.
-And as for servers and HPC - I'll be honest, I've no experience here, but a quick Google suggests it's not worth it.

The answer to this question is threefold. First, and most importantly, the high-end GTX GPUs like the [Titan] do not use ECC (error checking and correction) memory. ECC memory includes extra memory bits designed to detect and fix memory errors, which is of paramount importance to the successful completion of high performance, double-precision code. ECC memory ensures that the results of computations run on a Tesla are the same every time; the same tasks run on a high-end GTX card like the Titan can vary from job to job. Clearly, for scientific computing, the Tesla offers the best consistency.

Secondly, since Titans are not designed for constant high performance computing in a dense environment, we’ve seen a much shorter longevity with these cards when used for this purpose as compared to the Teslas. One of the reasons for this is that Titans use active cooling (with fans) as opposed to the passively cooled (no fans) Teslas; when installed in a standard rack-mount server case, the small space causes the Titan’s fans to overwork, thus increasing the likelihood of their failure and the subsequent overheating of the Titan card. If several Titans fail, then the overall cost paid is equivalent to simply purchasing a Tesla at the outset. Additionally, NVIDIA provides full support, bug fixes and feature requests for high performance computing with all varieties of Tesla, whereas the Titan cards are supported only by their third-party manufacturers.

Lastly, Tesla cards are optimized for cluster usage, including full support for InfiniBand and RDMA (remote direct memory access) to allow for high-throughput and low-latency inter-node communication. They also include built-in tools for GPU and cluster management. If a developer’s intent is to use CUDA to design a program for use in a cluster, a Tesla will best support this effort.

Source: http://www.advancedclustering.com/hpc-cluster-blog-gtx-vs-tesla/

 

[Carfax83]

-MultiGPU is pretty much limited to two cards for gaming now, with most boards providing space between the cards for cooling.

It has nothing to do with how much space there is between the cards. The problem is that the cards exhaust the hot air directly into the case. In SLI systems, this will usually lead to the top card being about 5 to 10 degrees hotter than the bottom one. Plus not to mention the extra heat load that is put on the other components as well from not just one, but two open air cards.

Even crappy el-cheapo OEM cases nowadays can fit fans. Again, my R9 390 was fine inside a $30 MicroATX case. I'll post a picture if I can find one.

I googled an image of that case, and it's hard for me to believe that the GPU was only running at 75c in a case that small. But after looking at reviews of the R9 390 Nitro, I do think it's possible that it was running at 75c.

Reason being, the reviews that I've read show it to be an exceptionally cool card. So it running at 75c instead of say 62c is not hard for me to believe. But it just goes to show how much the temperature spiked in your case if the GPU was running that much higher than usual.

-And as for servers and HPC - I'll be honest, I've no experience here, but a quick Google suggests it's not worth it.

Well that's kind of a flawed comparison. No one is going to use Titans for servers or HPC

Anyway, I think the point has been made. Both types of coolers have their uses, and the blower cooler is definitely more versatile. And with the improvements NVidia made to the reference cooler or the 1080 Ti and the Titan Xp, it's actually very capable from my estimation whilst still retaining it's versatility.

 

[OatisCampbell]

LOL First world problems.

"Oh noes! My video card's reference HSF is not totally silent and doesn't let my card boost as far above spec as some other fans!"



Its just not that loud. I was playing Doom yesterday and definitely didn't notice case noise with speakers and sub on, would have been impossible with the headphones on. When you're gaming the sound is part of the immersion. When you're not the card is pretty quiet.

I can live with the 5-10% less performance, seems to pretty much crush the 3440 x 1440 resolution I run at.

NOTE: I'm not trying to say I'm highly impressed with this cooler other than build quality and looks. I'd rather have a Gaming X, FTW, etc.. I am saying it's a functional solution and not a big deal if you're not an OCer. (I can't afford to replace a part this expensive, so I won't run out of spec and risk it)
Not going to descend into the "Well if I'm gaming and my speakers and headphones are broke I can hear that fan" kind of logic. It's quiet enough it doesn't spoil the experience with the sound on.

 

[woozle64]

Wow, you must have a really quiet PC if you think it's that loud! What fan speed does yours top out at on the stock fan curve? Mine tops out at 53%, which for me is inaudible.

I couldn't hear my evga ftw 1080 at all, or my 670. Both those cards were cool and quiet. At 53% I'm hitting close to 80 degrees. I have evga precision set to an "aggressive" fan curve and it routinely ramps up to 80% just trying to keep temps reasonable. The card throttles down the clocks pretty quickly, my 1080 was able to keep high clocks going for much longer.

I just built a new ryzen desktop and the case has much better airflow/cooling. I'll see if that helps keep the 1080 ti quiet/cool.

 

[Bacon1]

Fan speed at idle is the same for the Titan Xp as for all the other Founders Edition cards of this generation. We’re running at around 23% idle, with AIB partner cards demonstrating the noise floor with passive operation under idle conditions. The Titan Xp maintains an output of about 31dBA idle, which should be covered up by the case fans in most systems.

Auto speeds land the Titan Xp at 47.9dBA when operating in the 55% fan speed range, compared to AIB partner 1080 Ti cards in the 30s and 40s. This demonstrates the value of those AIB cards, but none will exist for the Titan Xp.

At 50% fan speed, we’re looking at a noise output of around 44.9dBA, with MSI and Gigabyte around the same speeds and EVGA a bit higher.

You’d ideally never run a 100% fan speed on any of these GPUs, but we’ve included the numbers to demonstrate the maximum noise possible.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2892-nvidia-titan-xp-review-vs-1080-ti-benchmark/page-3

They've changed their methodology so can't compare with most prior reviews.

Odd how few reviews there have been for this card. They got theirs from one of their readers, not nvidia / partner.

 

[Carfax83]

Interesting to see how the Titan Xp has a 15% gain over the GTX 1080 Ti in Sniper Elite 4, but in the other games it's lower. Hitman was another title that showed a larger than normal gain as well.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Disagree.

Can't put open air in SFF. NV has to make reference cards as flexible as possible for a wide variety of cases because good chunk of their market is stuff like Dell, SFF for LAN parties and the like.

Different focus for NVIDIA- make a card that can run at spec in as many different cases as possible without failing or resulting in support calls to systems assemblers.

That and letting AIBs have differentiation of the good HSFs are the only logical explanations.

The cheapo plastic blowers on some other cards are definitely cheaper, but not the 1080 series reference.

Basically hit the nail with regards to reference cooling designs. The bolded part is most likely their highest priority along with cost. Its one reason why CPU reference coolers aren't tower coolers in design due to height restrictions.

I use a FT-02 and found alot of open air style coolers don't work due to the heat pipe orientation and sometimes hinder the case air flow. They also tend to heat up nearby parts like your motherboard chipset or your CPU depending on how its positioned. So there will always be trade offs. Mind you, im in the minority.

Out of my own experience, the FE or Titan coolers are the best blower type coolers i've encountered. The fan is definitely audible but it doesn't produce that whining noise profile alot of the blowers seem to make e.g. the GTX480 reference cooler or the R290X reference cooler (this thing is not just loud but annoyingly loud). They've done a great job and obviously have done their homework but as many of us know, open air/water cooled is the way too go for better overclocks/boostclocks and lower temps/noise.

But by no means is the reference "titan" coolers rubbish.

P.S I think I could make it silent (on the top of my head, I think once it starts going over 50% it gets audible? or was it 55%) but that means reduced boost clocks. So there are ways if noise is a concern and perhaps temperature.

 

[OatisCampbell]

Yep Cookie,
People on enthusiast forums don't seem to remember these companies are businesses and the only thing that matters to them is the bottom line.

"Yeeargh! These are enthusiast parts! They should pit an AIO cooler on every one!"

Not once considering that some cases won't have a spot for the radiator, the additional cost of the cooler might push the card past a price point/profit margin, possible liability for leaks, possible increased fail rate from more complex cooling, and possible issues with competing with AIBs.

Same reason for timing of launches, maximize profit.

Business is about making money, not making gamers as happy as possible.

 

[Golgatha]

I don't think I'm leaving any performance off the table necessarily. I can still overclock if I want, I just can't be bothered. My card will run at 2ghz+, but it won't be able to sustain it in heavy graphics situations. Well, maybe with the fan at 100% LOL!



The catch was under graphics intensive scenarios. Let me give you an example of what I consider graphics intensive scenarios. Witcher 3 is a GPU intensive title we can all agree right? There are some places in that game where the GPU is hit especially hard. One of those places is in this screenshot that I took when I had my Zotac Amp Extreme GTX 1080.

The framerate in this screenshot is 50 FPS, which is much lower than average for this card. The reason why it's so low is because of the shadows which is on ultra, and the unicorn which has hairworks enabled. Despite the card running at over 2ghz, it throttled down to below 2ghz or so after a few minutes in this area.

I have no doubt that an aftermarket 1080 Ti would throttle down below 2ghz in this same area as well.



Are you sure about that? Look at this TPU review:

Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Extreme

If you look at all the benches, you'll notice that the gain in performance for the aftermarket model vs the reference model is very small. I surmise this is because most games today are shader bound, so shader efficiency and shader count make a bigger difference than clock speed up to a certain point. For the GTX 1080 Ti, the optimal clock speed is probably around 1.9ghz. Above that, the gain in speed starts to taper off, as you can see by this graph:

I am not really bashing open air coolers even though it may seem like it. I used open air coolers for years, and only now have I gone back to a reference cooler. All I am saying is that there are pros and cons for each, and that the reference cooler isn't nowhere as bad as most people think.

I put an aftermarket cooling setup on my card and got about a 5.7% increase in performance due to the card not thermal throttling, which is in line with what you posted. The stock cooler is ok, but it can't cool the card properly to get the most performance out of it. If you consider you're spending $700 on a graphics card, you're leaving about $40 worth of extra performance on the table by not having adequate cooling.

 

[OatisCampbell]

I put an aftermarket cooling setup on my card and got about a 5.7% increase in performance due to the card not thermal throttling, which is in line with what you posted. The stock cooler is ok, but it can't cool the card properly to get the most performance out of it. If you consider you're spending $700 on a graphics card, you're leaving about $40 worth of extra performance on the table by not having adequate cooling.

5.7% more wouldn't matter much to me at my resolution of 3440 X 1440, 1080Tis handle that pretty well:

http://techgage.com/article/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-review/

Personally I'm thinking I need to pay the GSync tax so I can stop monkeying with the Adaptive, Fast, Vsync settings depending on the game more than a fan. (or for AMD to launch their dam* Vega so I can get that and an ultrawide freesync panel and save big bucks)

The noise and performance of the card aren't bothering me at all, which I guess you would expect coming from a Radeon 290.

 

[peonyu]

I dont have that card, but in the past i had stock reference Nvidia and AMD designed coolers and my god...They would sound like a vacuum cleaner at load, and my computer is in another room to. But maybe they have improved their stock design even though that stock cooler looks like what my old GTX 480 had..

Edit, looks like it is improved over the old design so nevermind.