EVGA GTX 970 SC Reference Cooling Options?

[the.ronin]

I''ve got a EVGA GTX 970 SC with the reference blower and it gets up to 90C under Furmark. I've always ran it stock but since recently upgrading to a Ryzen 1500x at OC'ed to 3.9, I was thinking of OC'ing the 970 to see if I can eek out a little more performance. But I'm not comfortable doing so with the stock blower on the GPU. As an aside, I don't really have the appetite to get a new GPU right now.

I was thinking air cooling with the ARCTIC Accelero Twin Turbo III. I had considered the larger, 3-fan Twin Turbo IV but the 2-fan cooler seemed to get equal praise without the added bulk.

Or for an AIO water cooleld option, using the Corsair bracket with one of their coolers like the H60. I currently have an H60 cooling the Ryzen and was even thinking of using that H60 to cool the 970 and getting an H100 to cooll the Ryzen.

So I guess 3 questions ...

1) Worth cooling the GTX 970 for overclock with air or water?

2) In either case, are the options I highlighted decent enough?

3) More of an aside question, would it be worth upgrading the Ryzen 1500X cooler from the single rad H60 to the double rad H100? I am stable at 3.9 with reasonable temps but really think I can get this to 4+ with a wee bit more voltage.

Thanks for any feedback.

 

[Armenius]

Don't base your cooling decisions on what happens with Furmark. Play a game you like to play for an hour or so and log the temperatures during that time. Record what the average delta is and go from there.

I mean, unless all you do is benchmark with your PC...

 

[ob1]

I agree with Armenius that you should gauge it on actual use unless you are planning on heating your home with the GPU. Also, I am going to assume you have cleaned the card well. With the components in your sig, it seems like you should be getting decent airflow to the card if everything is clean and not being blocked off. It could possibly be the TIM between the card and its cooler I guess. Mine runs at like 85 in Furmark....

 

[Armenius]

I agree with Armenius that you should gauge it on actual use unless you are planning on heating your home with the GPU. Also, I am going to assume you have cleaned the card well. With the components in your sig, it seems like you should be getting decent airflow to the card if everything is clean and not being blocked off. It could possibly be the TIM between the card and its cooler I guess. Mine runs at like 85 in Furmark....

Well if your sig is accurate, your 970 has the ACX cooler. With default fan settings my GTX Titan X ran about 15-20% cooler with the ACX cooler compared to the blower.

 

[the.ronin]

I mean, unless all you do is benchmark with your PC...

Actually this is the first time I used Furmark based on an older thread I posted asking if my GPU was on the fritz and someone asked me to bench the temps while burn testing. I don't recall off hand what temps were while I was gaming (lot of time on Ark which can be a GPU hog) but they def were elevated as well. (See, I like to game, not take temps ... lol @ passive aggressive touche).

So since we want to talk practicals instead of benchmarks now, evidently, I've getting steady upper 30s FPS on a 2560x1080 LG widescreen monitor. And actually, I just turned on FPS overlay in Steam since, you know, I'm more into gaming than watching benchmarks (lol). I can get up to 60s on low action scenes but once I start flying towards a heavily fortified base, it crawls back down to the 30s. This is all on a custom setting which is predominantly on "high." I'm expecting to get high FPS on all epic settings but I think I should be able to eek out more FPS on current settings making it really rock solid.

Well if your sig is accurate, your 970 has the ACX cooler. With default fan settings my GTX Titan X ran about 15-20% cooler with the ACX cooler compared to the blower.

Uh did you click the link to the GPU? This card has the blower fan not the double ACX cooler. When the font is bold yellow like that, you can click through it for more information just FYI.

 

[Vengance_01]

IMO Don't waste money on cooling. 2 Things I would do is re-paste the GPU and run a custom fan profile. Crank up the fan during gaming and keep it low during Idle. Save that 100$ for the new GPU... Also the jump from 3.9 to 4GHZ on the cpu will do nothing but cost more $$$ and get you bragging rights IMO...

 

[the.ronin]

IMO Don't waste money on cooling. 2 Things I would do is re-paste the GPU and run a custom fan profile. Crank up the fan during gaming and keep it low during Idle. Save that 100$ for the new GPU... Also the jump from 3.9 to 4GHZ on the cpu will do nothing but cost more $$$ and get you bragging rights IMO...

Thank you for that - this is where I was headed as well. And so far it really is not peaking past 81C.

 

[Krenum]

You should do this!

 

[mnewxcv]

take off the shroud and blow out the heatsink with compressed air, and turn up the fan curve. Should be plenty to cool that card down.

 

[AlphaQup]

I'd recommend the above as well: removal of shroud, blow everything out and reapply that paste, and get a more aggressive fan profile set in your OC software (EVGA/MSI, etc.). I wouldn't spend money on something like this 970 this late in it's life.

Side question, how is cooling for the rest of your components/what's your case setup? I'd opt to spend money here on a few more fans/re-do your config if applicable.