ASUS 970 STRIX idle temp issue

Hi. I apologize if this isn't the right place to seek help, but I've scoured the Googles to no avail. I recently built a new rig (specs below) with the intent of being a quiet, powerful machine for a wide margin of uses such as video editing, gaming, audio engineering, Photoshop work and such. I bought the ASUS STRIX version of the 970 for its 0dB fan mode (I'm a voice over artist, so silence is an extremely important aspect of the build), however I've been having some odd temp issues when idling.

The temperature will continue climbing over the course of a few minutes until the GPU is 65 degrees centigrade and the fans kick in. The temperature will go down, the fans turn off and the process repeats itself. Even when a custom fan curve is set so that the fans always spin, the GPU idles at 41 degrees, significantly higher than what I've come to expect from reading reviews that often measure idle temps in the low thirties without the fans spinning. I've tried a couple of different drivers with no change. The temps under load are excellent though, usually maxing out around 67-68 degrees during intense gaming and various benchmarks. I have experienced no stability issues, and am of course running at factory speeds. I live in Denmark and my ambient temperatures typically hover around 19-20 degrees, even here in the summer.

Here are my specs:

AMD FX 8320E currently at stock speeds
be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 cooler
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 mobo
ASUS GTX 970 STRIX
Corsair HX850w PSU (transferred from my old PC)
Samsung 850 Evo 250gb SSD
3 hard drives of various types for storage
HyperX Fury 2x8gb 1866 memory
LG blu-ray drive
Fractal Design Define R5 case

The fan configuration in the case goes as follows: Two GP14 140mm intake fans in the front, one older Fractal Design 140mm exhaust in the rear and another one in the bottom as an intake (I've tried disabling this fan to combat potential turbulence that could arise when the air from all the intakes meet, but no improvement can be measured.)

All other temps in the system look good, and I've put a lot of effort into proper cable management. What the hell is going on? Thanks, Matti

Jeg bor i Køffenhaunstrup og lige nu kan jeg se temperaturerne vi oplever på både min CPU og min GPU'er. Forstår jeg dig ret. Temperaturerne stiger selvom du ikke bruger det til noget 3d relateret? I såfald skal du nok have renset din køler, nyt kølepasta eller gå ned i butikken og få en bytter.

Præcis. Havde på fornemmelsen at kølepastaen er tørret ud. Tror jeg sender kortet tilbage og be'r om et nyt. Hvis jeg tager køleren af mister jeg vidst nok min garanti.

Det gør du. Hvis du piller ved noget der har skruer mister du din garanti.

This is totally normal nothing is wrong with your card. The only way its gonna idle cooler is with cooler ambient or water cooling.

I'm not sure what you mean. The card is by design supposed to run cooler than 65 degrees when idling, and by some accounts even for light use (people report the fans not even spinning when playing League of Legends for instance).

My EVGA 970 SC maintains exactly 62 at all times when idle, for instance.

As long as your temperatures don't go over 90 under load, you have absolutely nothing to be worried about. Idle temperature is defined entriely by the fan profile, and it's in no way worse for the GPU to be at 60 degrees when idle as opposed to 35.

It's not so much the temps themselves that worry me, it's the fact that the 0dB fan mode feature doesn't work in practice with my specific card and it's basically the reason why I bought it. I expected the card to be idling with the fans turned off at all times, but that's not the reality and I've gotten the impression that it should be able to do so from reviews and advertising, leading me to believe I have a defect.

I have the same card and with fans off it idles at around 41-45 degrees celcius. The ambient temperatures where I live are about the same as you stated so it's either a problem with your graphics card or there's a constant (relatively) high load on your card.

Just watched a video where the ambient temperature was indeed stated to be between 42 and 45 degrees at idle under normal thermal conditions (19 minutes in or so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmgV3E1Lt8E)

I've been closely monitoring with MSI Afterburner. The power % remains around 30-35% at idle and the GPU usage is anywhere between 0-3%, so it must be a faulty card. Sending it back and getting a replacement. Thanks for the help guys!

not all cards are the same, lower asic cards run hotter its a fact of life. I repeat nothing is wrong with your card.

Some cards indeed run hotter than others, but ~20 degree difference seems a little bit to much of a difference.

My old 970 Strix would ussually sit around 40 at idle. How are your case fans set up? Good air flow?

Maybe try adding one or two exhaust fans up top as well?

I've tried various fan configs using four 140mm Fractal Design case fans. Tried disabling a couple, rearranging the config in numerous ways, tried different PCIE lanes, nothing makes a difference. However, I sent it back for RMA and they report no issues in their system. What explanation remains? I sure can't figure it out.

Sounds like a faulty card to me. Very strange. I'm sorry you had that experience. I hope it doesn't put you off the asus Strix cards forever because they are very good cards.

That would defeat the purpose of my rig, as removing the moduvents and installing extra exhaust fans would dramatically increase noise levels. I really doubt that airflow is the issue at hand.