GTX 460 Temperature

[darkling]

I have the Gainward GTX460 1GB GS Version and it idles at 40 C and full load at 71 no overclock. Is that normal?
Should i be dis-encouraged to overclock it?

 

[sportsfanboy]

Your temps are fine if not a little cool depending on room temperature. You can run that card in the mid 80's Celsius without a problem.

 

[wa1]

Your temps are completely fine, buddy, don't worry about that...

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Temps are fine but not really great. My EVGA external exhaust version idles at 29C and will not break 70C unless it is being stress tested. I overclock to 821-1642-2000.

 

[darkling]

Wow, no one seem to have mentioned the fan speed. Untill i installed MSI Afterburner the card would go instantly at 70C because the fan is set to 40% default. I used the handy tool of the user defined gpu fan setting the speed to 45% on 50C, 50% on 60C and so on and now the card idles at 30C and on load it doesnt pass 60C. So that leaves more than enough headroom to OC, even though i dont currently need it all the games run very smooth.

 

[mactronix]

Now bw fair you never asked what you could do about it you asked if it was OK and normal. Yes its fine yes its normal, should you overclock yea why not when you do use Afterburner where you will find a nice fan profiling option
Feel better now

Mactronix

 

[darkling]

I though that was the idea of forums. You post your concerns/questions and someone comes up with a suggestion. Yes i know it is normal for a card to run at 70C but it is better to run at 60C with a little tweaking

 

[Deleted member 217926]

All cards have a default though. My EVGA card idles at 28/29C with the default 30% fan profile overclocked as I posted above.

If you idle at 40C with no overclock you may want to reapply thermal paste as well as turning the fan up. I replaced my stock with IC Diamond 24 but I got 3 or 4C drops . Not as big as the 10C between our cards. My card supposedly has the least efficient cooler of any of the GTX460s as well. Even some AC5 should help you as long as you apply it right. That Gainward card looks like it should have a great cooler on it. It's not overclocked at all?


Edit: I forgot to mention EVGA covers this in their warranty. You may not want to do it if it voids yours.

 

[darkling]

Have you used the fan-curve of Afterburner? I am guessing that factory overclocked cards come with an aggresive fan profile to keep those temps. Mine is slightly overclocked to 700mhz, but the fan profile isnt that good because it uses 1500 RPM until 70C, while you can achieve more cooler temps by just adding 10% on the fan speed. Can you open Afterburner and see the fan-curve you use? Mine is manually configured and i am searching for a way to perfect it.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

I use EVGA Precision. Fan by default is 30%. A good fan profile is 30% at 30C , 40% at 40C ect ect.

 

[darkling]

That EVGA looks like a good buy. The GAINWARD i guess it can be overclocked up to the GLH edition (they are the same cards by design). The only thing that bugs me is the minimum 40% fan speed. I can't get it lower i guess it is in the Bios of the card. I made a fan profile 40% until 50C, 45% until 55C, 50% until 60C and 55% until 65C.
After 30 minutes of unigine the card maxed at 64C with 54% fan speed = 2000 RPM. I am guessing it remains very cool to leave room to be overclocked.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Nvidia as much as came right out and said all GTX 460s should do 800mhz core.