this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Two observations:
Fan layout in a PC is very straightforward - cold air in, hot air out. You want the airflow to be constantly moving and not choking. So first off, good on you for trying to balance the count of intake fans vs count of exhaust fans. I noticed in your observations that you're wondering if your exhaust fan is detrimental - you are correct. The problem is that you are exhausting cold air before it even reaches your PC components. A common problem I see with inexperienced builders is that they try to fill as many slots as they can with fans. More fans doesn't equal more cooling. Remove the top exhaust fan that is closest to the front intake (i.e., the top right exhaust fan as it is exhausting cold air). For your last top exhaust fan, move it as far left as you can (so it sits in the top left corner of your case, basically behind your CPU cooler). With this adjustment, cold air goes in and actually gets to reach your CPU cooler, and then all the hot waste air is optimally pulled out of the top left corner of your case (via both the rear case fan and the top exhaust fan).
For your GPU, based on reviewing your comments in this post, I assume you're probably an inexperienced/new PC gamer. And that's totally fine of course. Thermal Junction temperature of a GPU is generally certified by the manufacturer to reach 100-110 C. This of course is entirely dependent on the manufacturer, so check your GPU make/model, go to their web site, and look at the certified operating temperatures. Ideally, keep the hottest point of the card much colder than that. If your GPU is idling at 58, start by increasing your fan curves for your GPU. In general, you want more fan speed for higher load. Do your best to try to target ~70-75 F when doing heavy gaming (gpu temp 70-75 F, Tjunction and mem < 90 F) depending on the games you play.
My recommendations:
When you become more advanced:
Ah! I was just about to update everyone. I repasted my 2080ti, and used 3 thermalite 92mm low profile fans. That brought the temps down to 66 under max graphics benchmark on Rainbow 6 siege!
Mission accomplished boys!
Nice work! Glad you’ve sorted it out!
Yep! Now to uninstall rainbow 6 and get back to playing FTL at 60fps locked, windowed 720p. Lol
I also did the fan config like you suggested. I may even take the top exhaust fans off all together.
Thank you for the thorough response.
While I've been building computers since the original i3/5/7 series, I have always had full sized cases, or obscure goofy cooler master cube cases. This is my first tiny case that isnt something like a split ITX SFF case, and I have to actually thing about airflow. I had strong thoughts that the front top two corner fans were causing dead air pockets, my CPU cooler was ripping at higher RPM once the machine started going, and it almost seemed like the 2080 was exhausting right into the CPU cooler to eject out instead of being whisked out.
The GPU, I may have misrepresented myself once again. But this is my first time with an 80 series card, or any kind in its class. First thing I did when I got this card was thermal paste, I haven't undervolted yet, and really until I figure out this airflow situation I believe overclocking is going to be met with thermal throttles before I get anywhere close to gains. Im hitting thermal throttle at 85c (for some reason NVIDIA experience arbitrarily set that?) Riva Turner shows relatively okay speeds, and load, but I cant get rid of that heat!
Your recommendations:
(Already replaced thermal paste with arctic 5, that's my go to. Also, a lot of fans now adays have resistors to prevent current from going back to the mobo if you get your fan going to fast.)
Previous builds, all with goofy, non standard cases: (Bunch of laptops, and USFF Dells) 8500/RX580 4770/1060 4690/R9 380 3770k/R9 290 970/GTX970
Thanks for the response! It was hard to gauge your level of technical ability as I was going off on the other comments and made a dumb assumption. :) My mistake and apologies if any offense as they were purely innocuous comments.
Since only the GPU is used in that build, thermalpaste was the way to go for sure. I assume you also cleaned it and inspected the thermal pads so rule out all that stuff. I never owned an rtx20 series (only gtx 10, rtx 30, and now i'm on AMD) so I don't have firsthand experience with how they handle or if they run really hot all the time. Nothing else should be a factor here apart from getting rid of that top exhaust fan I talked about and moving your top exhaust fan further to the left.
GPU fan swap is always great - if you have no qualms with doing it, go for it and swap out to more performant fans that are less noisy. Undervolting is a free option. I only know how to undervolt on Windows since it's stupid easy using MSI Afterburner, but I'm on Linux Mint now for a few months and I haven't even explored that yet as a possibility for my RX 7900XTX.
For binding case fans to the GPU, some motherboards don't come with that capability. I haven't seen it in the one gigabyte board I've had, and I'm currently on an MSI X670e (I think that's the model) and I don't have that option to do it there. On Windows, you could download Fan Control and configure it in the app so the case fans will ramp up with the GPU load. On Linux, no idea - when I game, I just ramp up my case fans manually.
Something also popped in my head I didn't think about. You may also want to benchmark your GPU and compare it to others in its class, this way you can get a rough idea of how the hardware is still performing.
Edit: fixed some typos as I'm on mobile
Oh it's okay. I don't mind asking dumb questions so it never helps. And I came on strong with my insecurities in the reply with needing to show I knew what I was doing lol.
Anyways, I'm on windows for now but planning on switching back to Mint once I get a good tune. So I'm gonna be in the same boat. I'm looking into low profile 92mm high static pressure fans.
Benchmarking is a good idea! I've been using rainbow 6 siege for testing constants. I took two pci brackets off the back of the motherboard and gave it some more flow but alas, I think I'm just hitting heat saturation. I have some spare fans I can test with tonight.