Graphic Cards Zotac GTX 1060 6GB mini high temps

[atiamd]

So, I have built a new Ryzen 5 based gaming/productivity system a month and a half ago. Here are my components:

AMD Ryzen 5 1600,
ASUS Strix B350-f gaming,
2x8GB GskillTrident Z RGB RAM 3000 MHz @2666 MHz
Zotac Geforce GTX 1060 6GB,
Seasonic M12ii520,
Samsung evo 750 250GB SSD,
WD Blue 500GB SSD,
1TB Hitachi HDD
Coolermaster masterbox lite 5 RGB
LG 24 inch freesync monitor @75 Hz

The issue is when I play some games on highest settings at 1080p (e.g. advanced warfare single player campaign), my GPU temps reach 83 degrees celsius which makes it throttle down which results in micro stutters. I have monitored this with MSI afterburner in which I can see in real time this phenomenon.
This doesnt happen in stress testing. Prime95 ran fine for 6 hours with the peak CPU temps of 76. Unigine benchmark ran at highest settings with 76 degrees at max for the GPU. Also, it doesnt happen in games such as paladins or wolfenstein but it does happen with e.g. elder scrolls online. Fully cranked up GTA V results in a maximum of 78 degrees on GPU and 66 on CPU. I get above 75 FPS in all these games at all times for reference (except in GTA V). But after playing COD AW and ESO for 15 20 minutes, micro stutters would start every 3 minutes or so during which the GPU temps go down to about 78 due to throttling and then start increasing till they reach 83 and it continues. I live in Bangalore, and I dont use any air conditioning right now. Room temps are well below 25 as I have a well ventilated house and the window is pretty close to the PC case.

Things I have already tried:
1) Set my fan profile on my GPU to spin the fan at 100% as soon as the GPU reaches 50 degrees
2) Reducing the settings in affected games. Helps in Advanced warfare but not in ESO. ESO keeps running at 100 FPS and I dont want to use vsync. In game I havent found any setting to limit it to 75 FPS which my monitor supports
3) I have limited all my games now to not output more than 75 FPS without using vSync

Thing that resolves this situation:
If I leave the side panel of my case open, my CPU and GPU temps only reach 78 which gives me a smooth gameplay at any settings in any game including the affected games. My case is a bad choice for this graphics card it seems. It has 3 120 mm fans pushing air inside and one 120 mm exhaust fan. My GPU is in the nearest PCI-E slot to the CPU. What I have noticed is that the stock CPU cooler throws the hot air at the side panel and the GPU throws the hot air below itself (towards the PSU). Exhaust fan is exactly between the CPU exhaust and GPU backplate. This area gets a very hot build up of air and if I touch the side panel during gaming, this area is very hot to touch. Rest of the side panel is cool to touch. So, I suspect that the exhaust fan is not able to push the hot air generated by CPU timely due to which the backplate of the GPU gets hot and its temps rise. Also, when I remove this side panel, all the issues are alleviated. Temps dont go above 78 for the GPU and 70 for the CPU. I cannot keep this side panel open of course. Another thing that seems to help is if I remove the front panel of the case, the temps reduce by a degree or two only sometimes resulting into my problem.

So, my conclusion is that this case has a lot of positive air pressure which is not getting exhausted out properly. Please correct me if I am wrong.

If this is indeed the situation, can you guys please suggest something to get rid of it? I am now stuck with this case and would not like to invest in a new one unless absolutely necessary.

Things I wonder about:
1) Will buying a new CPU cooler help? CPU cooler will have one fan pushing the hot CPU air to the exhaust fan and may remove the hot air build up. Do you also think so?
2) Can I install my GPU in the third PCI-E slot which is farthest from the CPU without losing any performance?

 

[Crapmypants]

Things I wonder about:
1) Will buying a new CPU cooler help? CPU cooler will have one fan pushing the hot CPU air to the exhaust fan and may remove the hot air build up. Do you also think so?
2) Can I install my GPU in the third PCI-E slot which is farthest from the CPU without losing any performance?

Exhaust fan is exactly between the CPU exhaust and GPU backplate. This area gets a very hot build up of air and if I touch the side panel during gaming, this area is very hot to touch. Rest of the side panel is cool to touch.

No guarantee that it will help because compared to a cpu, a gpu puts out more heat. Your observation indicates the hot air from the gpu is most likely the culprit.
From what I can tell (after googling your cabinet) is that it has space for 3 fans in the front and one at the back, right?
If anything, a case with more exhaust (especially with fan slots at the top of the case) would be a better option than buying a new cpu cooler.
Another option you can try is changing all your fans to exhaust regardless of location and then check temps.

As for placing the gpu in the 3rd slot might not be possible as the website lists it as a pcie2 x1 slot which might not be enough bandwidth to support the card.
the second slot is listed as pcie2 x16 so that should work. I don't expect any loss in performance when using this one.

 

[atiamd]

Thanks for the input. Top fans are not possible in this case.
I will install the GPU in the second slot.
And, I will reverse my front fans to make them exhaust inside air outside, if the above doesnt work. Will report by tonight as I am at work right now.

 

[atiamd]

Time for an update.

I did both things last night. Reversing my front fans did not change anything. Lot of work, no results.. hehe
However, I put my graphics card in the second slot. CPU temps went down and there was no performance impact due to putting the card in that slot. But, during AW, temps still climbed to 83 and MSI AB OSD kept displaying "thermal limit" every few seconds. Strangely though there were no micro stutters this time. Frame time did increase by a lot, but there were no dips in FPS. Strange behavior indeed. Also, now the side panel was hot to touch in the new area where the graphics card is. So, this eliminates CPU air as a possible cause as the original area was now cool to touch. That hot built up air is now getting out via the back exhaust fan in a timely fashion which explains the CPU temps going down than previously.

At this point, I would say that this case should not be bought alongwith this particular graphics card. Should have bought the amp edition instead and it was only 1.5k over this one at the time. *sigh*

I am now thinking of buying this deepcool fan . It occupies one expansion slot and should blow air right into the gfx card, thus helping the temps from rising too much. Anybody here have any experience with this?
Also, I am thinking of decreasing the maximum voltage being fed to the graphics card keeping the same clock speeds. This should ideally reduce the temps. Anybody here have any experience in doing this?

 

[Crapmypants]

I am now thinking of buying this deepcool fan . It occupies one expansion slot and should blow air right into the gfx card, thus helping the temps from rising too much. Anybody here have any experience with this?
Also, I am thinking of decreasing the maximum voltage being fed to the graphics card keeping the same clock speeds. This should ideally reduce the temps. Anybody here have any experience in doing this?

I considered the deepcool fan you've linked but it didn't look like it could move much air so i didn't get it. Plus, i think it only exhausts air out and not direct it towards the gpu.
Would you be willing to mod your case and have an exhaust out the side or top panel? Basically you just need to figure out a way to get rid of the hot air faster than it's created.
Otherwise replacing the cabinet seems to be the only guaranteed solution sadly.
I haven't done undervolting but i've seen multiple articles showing that it does work (especially on amd cards). the 960 however is already quite an efficient chip so not sure if it'll solve the heat problem. worth a try though.

 

[atiamd]

Well, thats a bummer.

I have 120/80 mm fans in another PC from which I can borrow one. Let me see if I can find a place in my case to put this fan in in such a fashion that it blows air right onto the GFX card.

 

[Chaos]

If there are no warranty stickers covering the cooler, try removing the cooler and clean up the thermal goop fitted at factory. Replace it with something high quality like as5. This helps in many cases.

Zotac really cheaped out with the 1060 mini card. They put the 1050 ti cooler on it and expected the poor cooler to work with the much hotter 1060. Simply a case of bad engineering.

 

[atiamd]

Tell me about it man, of all the research that I did with the card, I am just disappointed that nobody else uses this card/case combo.

On your point, its a new card and is only giving me issues on 2 games so far, I dont want to open it up. But I havent still started the main games such as witcher 3 etc. If this happens with the other games, I will definitely look into it. For now, I have given up COD AW till I resolve my issue.

 

[saumilsingh]

Zotac really cheaped out with the 1060 mini card. They put the 1050 ti cooler on it and expected the poor cooler to work with the much hotter 1060. Simply a case of bad engineering.

Not just Zotac, high temperatures plague most all GTX 1060s with that teeny mini cooler setup including the EVGA non-SC ones.

Those coolers bothered me from Day One and I am now glad I shelled out the extra 4k for an MSI one with dual fans. Never goes over 60-65c while gaming.
And afaik the Zotac AMPs with dual fans don't go beyond ~70c either.

Tell me about it man, of all the research that I did with the card, I am just disappointed that nobody else uses this card/case combo.

On your point, its a new card and is only giving me issues on 2 games so far, I dont want to open it up. But I havent still started the main games such as witcher 3 etc. If this happens with the other games, I will definitely look into it. For now, I have given up COD AW till I resolve my issue.

One thing you can do is use v-sync or manually cap framerates at 60fps.
I think that would definitely bring your temperatures down and resolve the micro-stuttering as well.

 

[atiamd]

Hey, thanks for replying. Actually, I forgot to update this thread. I undervolted my graphics card to make it run 2000 MHz core clock at around 900 mv via MSI AB. The temps have now stabilised around 70-75ish.

And, you are right about the pathetic cooler that is supplied with these mini cards. They are made of aluminium instead of copper and dont have heat pipes. They are more like stock CPU coolers, due to which they dont absorb and thus dissipate heat. I mean, when I touch the PCB of my card, it is always hotter than the heatsink..lol... What;s the point of having a heatsink if its going to be cooler than the actual card.

Anyhoo, thanks for the inputs and sorry I did not update this thread.

 

[thekyto]

Things I wonder about:
1) Will buying a new CPU cooler help? CPU cooler will have one fan pushing the hot CPU air to the exhaust fan and may remove the hot air build up. Do you also think so?
2) Can I install my GPU in the third PCI-E slot which is farthest from the CPU without losing any performance?

I faced some of the same issues that you are currently facing. Same card, same overheating problems with 2 different processors (G4560 and i7 7700). I bought a Hyper 212 and angled it so that it blows towards my rear i/o where I also happen to have an exhaust fan, and now my temps don't go above 77' C on full load (GPU) with a raging i7 (~62' C) right alongside the card. I have a pretty shit case too, a Circle Epic something. My recommendation is that if you can't get a new case, make sure your air pressure and flow is neutral. Get some decent fans for sure. I installed one as an intake above my gpu and it seems to have made a huge difference, especially when I'm doing my editing work and don't need the gpu as much.

I'm thinking of removing the heatsink on my card and reapplying fresh Arctic Mx-4 and seeing if it helps. Maybe skimping out on the extra 3-4k wasn't worth it in the long run :/ but it did buy me an extra 8gb of ram back then haha

 

[nRiTeCh]

Dude my GTX690 runs 35c idle and shoots to 81-83c on gaming and thats perfectly NORMAL!
Cards now a days are made to operate safely till 90-95c and they seldom cross 90c mark.

 

[thekyto]

Dude my GTX690 runs 35c idle and shoots to 81-83c on gaming and thats perfectly NORMAL!
Cards now a days are made to operate safely till 90-95c and they seldom cross 90c mark.

While that's true, my 1060 thermal throttles once it hits 82-83'C and since it has been hitting that often enough, it's kind of a pain :/ I had a 7970 before this that was an absolute barbeque machine so I know what you mean by hot cards haha (Roughly the same gen as your 690, right?)

 

[Chaos]

Dude my GTX690 runs 35c idle and shoots to 81-83c on gaming and thats perfectly NORMAL!
Cards now a days are made to operate safely till 90-95c and they seldom cross 90c mark.

NVIDIA cards from the kepler and beyond generation throttle at 84 degrees by default. When they throttle, their clocks go down - in many cases right down to the base clock level and performance tanks as a result.

Had that issue on my reference 980 ti. After a few minutes the clocks would go down from 1200 to 1000. Replaced the cooler with an EVGA Hybrid liquid cooler and the same card doesn't go beyond 55-60 degrees at load when running at 1500 MHz . The stock cooler was pretty noisy and this one with a decent fan running at 1000 rpm is whisper quiet.

 

[nRiTeCh]

During gaming i always make it a habit to keep gpuz open on another monitor just to keep a good eye on temps, clocks and performance and other aspects.
Nothing weird gonna happen unless overclocked wrongly or without insufficient cooling.

 

[Chaos]

During gaming i always make it a habit to keep gpuz open on another monitor just to keep a good eye on temps, clocks and performance and other aspects.
Nothing weird gonna happen unless overclocked wrongly or without insufficient cooling.

GPU-z doesn't update too well with a game running. Try using MSI afterburner and look at the GPU clocks with the game running. If with 99% GPU usage, the clocks don't come down after 15-20 mins, your card isn't throttling. Else it is.

 

[atiamd]

To conclude this thread:

A) These mini cards with Aluminum coolers should not be bought. Period. The reason of thermal throttling is not because of single fan but more because of the pathetic Aluminum cooler. A good GPU heatsink is made of Copper and it has heat pipes to absorb and dissipate heat

B) If you already have this card, then undervolt it to around 900mv-980mv keeping the same core clocks. And, increase the memory clock to 4500 Mhz step by step of 50 MHz. There will be a drop in max temps and increase in performance

Overall, I would love to not have these issues with my graphics card, but it is what it is. And, since I have tried everything possible under the sun including changing the case, and even running it bread boarded, there is nothing that will work to reduce temps except underclock or buying a better aftermarket cooler (which is next to impossible to get at decent price in India). This card thankfully doesn't thermal throttle down below 1800 MHz and I am happy with what I have. I have also learned that 82 degrees celsius is nothing to worry about. These cards can handle temps even beyond that without affecting their life. Its just that as a buyer, when you spend money, you are bound to get disappointed if this happens to you. In reality there is nothing to worry about.

Thanks for all the input guys. Much Appreciated.

 

[adventureguy]

asus strix series cards and zotac (extreme cooling?) cards have good thermal performance while being silent. you should look into it.

i have strix 960 and its so quiet, I was pretty irritated by my friends' zotac 1060 fan spinning continously