New system, weird video card fan issue, and question

[AddictedGamer]

Just picked up a new Dell XPS 8500 yesterday. Having a weird video card issue (GTX 660 1.5GB). If it matters, the system specs are:

i7-3770
16GB RAM
256GB SSD
2TB HD
GTX 660 1.5GB

My last system had an ATI 6750, and I got used to controlling my own fan speeds through profiles. If I let the system control the fan speed, it's about 25C with no gpu load. Tried running Skyrim (Ultra settings everything maxed at 1920x1080), and after about 20 minutes of play the high temp was 51C, but the system had only run the fan speed at 35 percent.

So I downloaded and installed MSI Afterburner solely to get fan speed control. Took it off auto. The minimum fan speed is still 28 percent...but even if I slide the fan speed toggle all the way to the right Afterburner will only let me increase it to 69 percent MAXIMUM.

My questions are:

(1) What temperatures should I be concerned about with this card. Should I let the system govern fan speed even though it only upped it to 35 percent and let the temp reach 51C while playing Skyrim?

(2) Why won't Afterburner let me increase the fan speed past 69 percent?

 

[AddictedGamer]

Anyone...?

 

[BrightCandle]

GPUs normally start to throttle at like 85C, there is no issue at 51C, that is just 10C above what I see with a 680 under water cooling. No problem there at all.

Presumably they limited the fan speed because the card under no circumstances could possibly need more. If it was overspecced so impressively as to only need 35% by default and with an overclock only allowing about +10% power usage you simply don't need anything more than 69. Perhaps there isn't the power available to run the fan that fast, maybe its limited for another reason, but regardless YAGNI.

 

[AddictedGamer]

I just figured...since the temp went all the way to 51C from 25C while playing Skyrim, that the automatic fan speed control might have kicked it even higher than 35 percent in order to bring the temperature down more.

By the way, what is YAGNI?