I have a GTX 680 (from eVGA), and I'm trying to cool it with the Twin Turbo II. I can get 35 degrees Celsius idle, but when I stress it either through eVGA's precision X or even just Windows rating thing, the temperatures climb to 98 degress and crashes.

I'm using IC Diamond as the thermal paste and have replaced the fans with 2 800 RPM 120mm fans. I used 3M 1850 thermal tape for the GPU RAM/VRM heatsinks.

Thoughts?

How quickly does the temperature rise? If it's really quickly then that might point to a contact issue. If it's really slowly then it's about overall cooling.

When using the Arctic Cooling's fans, what RPM were they running up to? They should have been going full speed if the cards fan control was working properly. What about ramping up the airflow and just seeing what difference it makes? 2x800rpm 120mm's should move close to 200W without much problem but it might be worth speeding them up? Also how is your system built? Much cooling around the graphics card area?

The temperature rises immediately. So in that case I should try the lower spacers? The Twin Turbo comes with two highs for spacers. The GTX 680 wasn't listed, so I guessed I would need to use the taller one since a lot of other nVidia GTX cards used the taller spacers.



The fans do not go through the fan controller, they are plugged directly into the PSU, and running full speed at 800 RPM. They are fixed speed fans, not PWM.

I have the Fractal-Design R3 with a side panel fan, that isn't currently plugged in.

Edit: Also which direction should the fans be pointing? Pulling the air from the VGA or pushing? I seem to be getting better temps from a pull configuration...

Thanks! Use the smaller spacers actually did the trick. I replaced the IC Diamond with AS5 for the time being, and it was idling at about 25C. Can't wait to apply a better TIM!

Good to see there was some easy solution! I'm always wary of spacers.


You're unlikely to make much of a differrence I'm afraid. Here's an article that someone reposted recently that you might want to have a read of:
http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm