I’m shopping for my first ever performance “gaming” card. I’ve always bought passively cooled cards so the slightly older Palit appeals to me. I want something more up to date since I can afford it at the moment. Can these current 2015 and newer card designs stop their fans 100% when not being stressed or in light tasks like watching video?
Depends on the manufacturer, most do it but look into any specific card you may be interested in.
1 Like
I have an Aorus card and you can control fan curve in the utility program. I imagine that’s possible for a lot of 3rd party models, but not sure about founders cards.
I had Sapphire’s RX 580, and now Vega 64 (both non-reference). Both of them are unable to stay in passive mode, even when completely idle. The card still slowly heats up, especially in a silence-focused case, and the fan turns on every now and then.
The only component I have where the fan can stay turned off is PSU. For everything else it seemed to be just marketing (that can actually harm acoustic performance).
I have an evga and Asus strix 1070, they both don’t spin up unless gaming.
Probably it depends on the case (airflow) too. I have Dark Base 900, which has very restricted airflow. And also slow case fans (especially at idle). But I think that people who care about silence (and thus semi-passive cooling) usually have something like this.
I don’t like 0 fans in general. I prefer to have some light airflow over the GPU no matter what.
Having 10 fans in my case and tuning at lower than 20dba noise in a non silence case.
My point is, just because there is a fan and it’s spinning doesn’t mean it will be noisy. It means there will be some airflow over the PCB and the small componentry.
MSI for example say their fans don’t spin until the GPU reaches 60C. I would like my GPU to not reach 60…
Look into the Asus STRIX cards. Thats basically what you’re looking for.
Otherwise… You really aren’t going to notice it unless you’re a bat.