Your GPU Will Thank You
Heat is an inevitable byproduct of work.
When your GPU takes on a heavy workload, such as gaming, it generates a load of heat.
All modern GPUs have this feature in place to protect the electronic components from damage.
Unmanaged, thermal throttling can have a big impact on performance.
There are a variety of scenarios that determine the impact thermal throttling has on your system.
Case selection, cooling solution, and airflow are the three main factors to take into consideration.
Choosing a larger, well laid out case can provide more fan mounts and options to optimize airflow.
Reference designs—which are blower-pop in fans—typically use a single fan to keep the card cool.
This design is efficient but the single fan holds back performance.
When choosing a graphics card, it’s often ideal to pick one with a multi-fan cooling solution.
With utilities likeMSI’s AfterburnerorEVGA’s PrecisionX, a custom fan curve can be configured.
From the factory, the fan speeds are optimized to strike a balance between noise and performance.
With reference cards, this balance often leans more towards noise suppression and can lead to thermal throttling.
Running at a higher voltage generates more heat even if the clock and memory speed remain the same.
However, this isn’t a guaranteed solution and can cause stability issues.
For most users, we recommend a combination of better cooling in conjunction with fan-curve adjustments.
Most monitoring tools are capable of more than just controlling GPU fans and altering voltage.
They also monitor temperatures, core and memory frequencies, along with GPU usage.
Most of them also offer at least basic overclocking capability.
This is important because your can’t prevent something that it’s possible for you to’t see.
you could then confirm this with the tool of your choice.
Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Ti, for example, has a throttling point of 84 degrees.
It’s important to remember that every graphics card has a different throttling point.
If you are going to focus on your graphics card, then I recommendMSI’s AfterburnerorAsus Tweak.
Either of these tools will provide all the monitoring and configuration options you could possibly need, including overclocking.
It doesn’t hurt to install more than one utility to get a wider range of monitoring features.
