Graphics Card fan regulator

[Elckerlyc]

The Graphics Card in my PC is driving me crazy. Not the card itself, but the speed of the fans that are continually spinning up and down again. whooose, whoooose. Repeat. I don't mind the fans make a certain amount of noise, as long as it is at a steady level. But it seems to react to any tiny change in temperature. It destroys the joy I might have had in playing games.
Anyone knows a solution to this problem/behaviour?

 

[Foxbat]

I wonder if it would help to increase the air throughput of your PC case? Of course that might mean adding an additional fan, which would probably make your noise problem worse.

 

[Venusian Broon]

How long have you had the fans on your PC?

Over time dust builds up in my fan - in the baffles that are above the CPU chip - and this increases its output as it needs to suck in more air to make up for the blockage. It can get very loud and variable! Therefore every year or so I switch off, open up the case, and with a pair of tweezers and other small implements dig out the dust. I believe you can get a filter to place on top, but I've never bothered.

But you say it's your GPU. If it's not the above, how powerful is it - i.e. how old? Perhaps the games you are playing are stretching it to the limit. How does your GPU performance relate to the basic requirements of the games?

 

[Elckerlyc]

The PC is about 2 years old. I bought the GPU at the same time and have issues with its behaviour from the start.
It's a W10 machine with a AMD Ryzen 7 processor and a AMD Radeon RX5700 graphics card, 8G. It should be quite adequate for the kind of games I play, but it already starts building in noise as soon as I start the most basic program. Not very loudly, but it's the constant scaling up and down of the sound level that's the issue.
Well, yeah, I said it is the GPU, but that is in fact an assumption.
Dust can be an issue, but as I haven't run this PC overly much, due to its irritating noise, I don't suspect it to be the culprit

 

[Foxbat]

Perhaps there’s a software control for the fan in the suite of software I assume came with the card? A search there might reveal a tickbox for automatic or no automatic fan speed.

 

[Elckerlyc]

Perhaps there’s a software control for the fan in the suite of software I assume came with the card? A search there might reveal a tickbox for automatic or no automatic fan speed.

Been there, done that. Couldn't detect anything about fan control.

 

[Foxbat]

Found this review that shows the difference in fan noise dependent on load.
27dBA at idle, 43dBA at load.
It would indicate that it is a characteristic of this particular card.

AMD Radeon RX 5700 Review

The Radeon RX 5700 is the second Navi card AMD launches today. Priced at $349, it is more affordable than anything NVIDIA has to offer in this segment, yet brings more performance to the table than the RX Vega 64. What really impressed us is the greatly improved power efficiency that's just as...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Venusian Broon]

Well, yeah, I said it is the GPU, but that is in fact an assumption.
Dust can be an issue, but as I haven't run this PC overly much, due to its irritating noise, I don't suspect it to be the culprit

Check the CPU baffles for dust then. Dust can build up very quickly - I'd say every year it needs to be cleaned. When mine get clogged I get the thing you are talking about with the CPU fan going up and down in speed and being quite loud. Also it would react to the atmospheric temperature - so much worse in summer than winter.

I've got a NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1070 as my graphics card, which seems to be the same sort of level as yours, but the fans for that point down, so dust doesn't really settle in them, so they have been virtually silent.

As another idea - what about the drivers for the graphic card? I get regular software updates from NVIDIA, so perhaps yours needs a driver update?

 

[Elckerlyc]

I do get updates on a regular basis for my Radeon software. But that might not immediately effect functionality of the card itself. I need to check that. And I will also give it a good dusting. But as I have been issues with the noise from day 1, I think the problem lies more with the card itself, as the review @Foxbat posted seem to imply.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Well, I can certainly recommend the one I have - although I should point out I had to upgrade the power supply to fit it (the rest of the PC came from 2015 so was a tad underpowered)

From a quick Google of noisy fans, dust is number 1 reason given, but the rest relate to the fans bearings. Apparently it's relatively easy to replace the fan if that's the case and the bearings are faulty/going. Bound to be some YouTube video of someone doing it. Should be much cheaper than buying a new card. Bur I am guessing.

 

[mosaix]

Dust would be my first guess.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Obviously the fan is there to cool the card down when it is overheating; the hotter the card, the faster (and noisier) the fan. Is it speeding up/slowing down even when idle? If it is, it could be a problem with the fan itself or the software operating it.

As has been mentioned above, fans are replaceable, although wouldn't want to do this myself for fear of cooking my card (and graphics card are very expensive to replace at the moment). I remember some years ago when a fan broke down having a large heat sink instead to replace it (obviously no noise there), although I'm not sure how well this would work with modern machines.

 

[Elckerlyc]

The fans respond to what I am doing, for the most part anyway. It can also respond to some background process when that gets more active. The result is an almost constant spinning up or spinning down of the fans. That's what makes it so annoying. If the sound was at a steady level you get used to it and you can shut the sound out of your awareness.
I haven't found the time yet to remove any dust. But, because the GPU shows this behaviour from day one, I doubt dust is the cause.

 

[Wayne Mack]

Just a wild guess, but is there a power optimization setting on the computer? Maybe that is what keeps turning down the fan speed. Turning that off won't stop the fan from running, but maybe it will let it run at a constant setting. Like I said, this is a pure guess.

 

[Elckerlyc]

Just a wild guess, but is there a power optimization setting on the computer? Maybe that is what keeps turning down the fan speed. Turning that off won't stop the fan from running, but maybe it will let it run at a constant setting. Like I said, this is a pure guess.

Would that be located in the BIOS?

 

[Wayne Mack]

Would that be located in the BIOS?

Try looking at the options listed under Settings -> System -> Battery. This will at least help identify potential programs that might be causing the problem and will give a very minimal way to control them.

 

[hitmouse]

Is the fan on the GPU or the PSU?

Some basic systems have the fans default set "on." Others spin up and down as required to regulate temperature. This is normally a PSU feature, where the more expensive, powersaving PSUs have variable fans. As I think others have alluded to, , wherever the fans are you can probably control them to be on all the time via the drivers.

Another point is to make sure the case is well-ventilated to help the cooling.

A third point is that the amount of fan noise is closely related to the case itself, which can act as a sound board. The same computer can sound completely different moved between a cheap tin case and a well-designed composite case.

(I have always been a plug-and-play Mac type of person but I've spent the last couple of months building PCs with my 15 year old, choosing a GPU (prices are criminal) and compatible components. I have learned rather more about this than I ever planned. Cooling is a deeply nerdy, almost fetishistic subject in the self-build community.)

 

[Elckerlyc]

Is the fan on the GPU or the PSU?

Excellent question!
I always assumed it was the GPU, because of the 3 fans it houses. Turns out it is the PSU, which has 2 big fans on top of it. I should have realized, really, as the noise basically seemed to correlate with processor workload, not to any graphics activity on screen. The power of assumptions.
Anyway, I adjusted the systems energy management and the fan-mode in the BIOS. It has moderated the fans activity somewhat.

 

[hitmouse]

Have a close look at the PSU itself. Some PSUs have fan control switches built into the casing.

 

[hitmouse]

Another thought: it is quite possible that the PSU fan regulator works purely on current thru the PSU or PSU-specific temperature sensors. Not all PSUs have a feedback connection from the motherboard, BIOS etc.