so, bit of a noob question. I have a Galax 980ti that has never cooled well. It hits 85C in Unigen even at full fan speed and that’s only at 60fps. I’ve had to hard cap my games at 60fps just so I can play without worrying about damaging the part. For the last few years I’ve done everything sort of taking the cooler off and repasting it, I’ve installed all Noctua fans in my Haf X, and even though my cable management is a bit awful, it wasn’t clear enough what was causing the high heat.
I hadn’t really noticed it before, because it seemed like a cosmetic thing at best, but the card has vents on the backplate as seen below.
it even directly states HOT SURFACE which I had completely forgotten about because it’s been in the case so long. I also have a sound card, pictured below, which is sitting in the slot DIRECTLY ABOVE my GPU, covering half the backplate.
my question is could that be obstructing airflow? Is that even how the gpu draws new air in? I have no idea about the mechanics of this, but it hadn’t even occurred to me until I saw the vents today. What do you guys think?