SPCR

In case you were curious

Asus/Noctua @ Techpowerup.

Very nice GPU with very low noise.

Interesting that TechPowerUp can measure to 21.9db now.

Der8auer nicely reviewed it https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGsaij ... S-g/videos. Secound video shows, the thing with this card is not awesomeness of A12x25, but just 120 mm fans. Thicker card with bigger fans seems great direction. But I like the most how cooler's design and common fans' dimensions give option to swap fans for whatever you like. Breath of fresh air on kinda closed GPU market with seems to be stuck on just making cards bigger.

Yeah, I strapped a couple of 120mm PWM fans onto an old MSI GTX 760 Gaming (I think) card. Did wonders...but was limited by the cards min 1k fan speed.

Asus stuck with the ~1000rpm min fan speed for this card, even though the fans can go much slower and it would allow for a much lower speed vs temp profile for non-max use cases. Kinda stupid.

CA_Steve wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 23, 2021 6:24 am

Asus stuck with the ~1000rpm min fan speed for this card, even though the fans can go much slower and it would allow for a much lower speed vs temp profile for non-max use cases. Kinda stupid.

I bet you could simply change the fans for the Noctua NF-A12x25 LS-PWM, and very likely end up with much lower rpms, probably around 600rpms.

I always wondered how advanced in cooling solutions are GPU manufacturers compared to cooling industry best like Scythe or Noctua. Asus' card doesn't answer this question due to using unusually big fans and thick heatsink, but makes me wonder why GPU manufacturers doesn't go such direction. Length seems to be the most problematic dimension in terms of compatibility and nowadays tendency of people preffering their computers rather smaller than bigger. There's a lot of wasted space in width, so no problem with larger diameter fans - Asus card is 125mm wide and most cases have 160mm space to accomodate most popular ~155cm CPU coolers. Also going with thickness shouldn't be a problem due to using other PCIe slots than one occupied by GPU isn't common, but maybe here GPU companies have different opinion - changing the case for one being able to store longer card is less problematic and rather cheaper. Maybe there's something else like they not wanting their cooling solutions being customizable, so comparable and repairable.

CA_Steve wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 23, 2021 6:24 am

Yeah, I strapped a couple of 120mm PWM fans onto an old MSI GTX 760 Gaming (I think) card. Did wonders...but was limited by the cards min 1k fan speed.

Asus stuck with the ~1000rpm min fan speed for this card, even though the fans can go much slower and it would allow for a much lower speed vs temp profile for non-max use cases. Kinda stupid.

The question is how "loud" is this ~1000 rpm on this heatsink. NF-A12x25 are one of the fans with smallest noise increase with the speed and need of them running is only during load when anything other make some noise, so maybe it just doesn't make sense to make this card even quieter. On the other hand it's always better to have an option, so here Asus failed if it was only possible. (or - as it seems purely silence-focused product - they just didn't want some SPCR member cooking this card too hard during warranty period )

Abula wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 24, 2021 12:00 am

I bet you could simply change the fans for the Noctua NF-A12x25 LS-PWM, and very likely end up with much lower rpms, probably around 600rpms.

Don't think it'd work. The sensor reports the fan speed and the pwm controller would just adjust the pulse width for the min 1k speed. This is what I saw on my gfx card mod.

Japanese Capacitor wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 24, 2021 3:40 am

The question is how "loud" is this ~1000 rpm on this heatsink. NF-A12x25 are one of the fans with smallest noise increase with the speed and need of them running is only during load when anything other make some noise, so maybe it just doesn't make sense to make this card even quieter. On the other hand it's always better to have an option, so here Asus failed if it was only possible. (or - as it seems purely silence-focused product - they just didn't want some SPCR member cooking this card too hard during warranty period )

The gfx card is always the loudest component. 1k rpm keeps it that way
That said, I don't know what this particular setup's noise floor is...maybe 21.9dB is it and the 1k fans are well below it. <shrug>

One would hope a customer that's savvy enough to fiddle with fan curves would also notice his card performance tanked/went into thermal limiting and would adjust accordingly.

Most of the cards start their fans with 700-800 rpm and I don't know why it's like that compared to coolers and case fans usually starting with ~300 rpm. Maybe lower speeds are not effective on quite closed, built-up GPU coolers and would sentence cards to thermal throttling. 60-something on chip seems so much temps to sacrifice, but hard to say how it would work with memory or anything needing to be cooled. Maybe Abula or somebody reading this have tried A12x25 fans on CPU cooler, so will be kinda able to tell us, if running them even slower would be even worth bothering :]

Japanese Capacitor wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 24, 2021 4:33 am

Most of the cards start their fans with 700-800 rpm and I don't know why it's like that compared to coolers and case fans usually starting with ~300 rpm. Maybe lower speeds are not effective on quite closed, built-up GPU coolers and would sentence cards to thermal throttling. 60-something on chip seems so much temps to sacrifice, but hard to say how it would work with memory or anything needing to be cooled. Maybe Abula or somebody reading this have tried A12x25 fans on CPU cooler, so will be kinda able to tell us, if running them even slower would be even worth bothering :]

Most? I disagree. I think we'll occasionally see one that dips it's toes in at 900+rpm. But, I don't recall seeing any below that. Please point to some and prove me wrong - I'll think better of the card mfgrs

From my own experience e.g. ASUS TUF 3080 OC can run even below 700 rpm, MSI cards are not much worse and even my own card is able to stay under 800 rpm, but it was cut with actualization of Aorus Engine due to problems with some units rattling then. I won't argue about the word "most", because I haven't tried most cards on the market and to be honest I don't care about cheking their minimum speed even if I have an opportunity Mentioned speeds seem to me quite usual, but maybe I'm wrong. E.g. yesterday I had in hands 3080 Eagle, but didn't even download software to control it's fan curve and generally I was most interested in checking Dark Base 900 rev. 2 it landed in. But if client won't pick it until Tuesday, I'll check it and come back here :]

Thanks for that!

No problem I think that cards have their min speed so high due to high rpm fans - looking at fan speed ratings of various retail fans I see the tendency of higher maxiumum speed pulling minimum one, especially if we talk about DC fans. Probably GPU manufacturers also raise minimum speed due to typical variety of fan units. Problems people have had with my card is an example of setting such speed too low. Mine is non-problematic, but some cards were rattling or turning fans on and off - don't remember. Actualization of Aourus Engine raised minimum percentage to 33% (~1000 rpm), but with Afterburner I'm able to go lower as uploaded picture shows.

I knew this card from photos and videos, but this haven't prepared me even a little for seeing this thing live - it's size is just ridiculous I have these cards, didn't have an opportunity or time to play with one, but today I decided to take few photos nicely showing it in case of you guys getting the same impression:


Btw this tiny card next to it is 3070 Gaming Z Trio - don't get fooled by it's support bracket, but it's still tiny anyway. For further comparison case is Cooler Master TD500.

yep, it's big.

It's big to the point of being absurdally funny On the other hand fitting such cooler with only 3070 feels to me opportunity wasted. I would like to see how these thing would handle 350W load of higher-end cards. This Gaming Z in photographed computer speeds up it's fans to 1400 rpm under quite harsh 240W load from Furmark and after 40 minutes of doing it (30+ minutes is enough to see what you could ever see with the card). TD500 closed with window ofc, case and AiOs fans were running then their minimum ~650 rpm speeds, so their help was the smallest as it can be. And this card's peak chip temp was then 64C, so if you wouldn't mind 80C on the chip, I think that you could easily make it not exceeding 1000 rpm. And here we come back to ASUSxNoctua, which is even better, but I wouldn't care and wish it was making more meaningful difference on higher wattage cards.

Yeah. We'd also get back to the discussion on it'd be nice if gfx card bios permitted fan speeds down in the 500rpm range.

Btw I checked dimensions of - if I'm not wrong - the secound biggest card on the market: 3090 Suprim. It's like 1,5 cm longer and 0,5 cm thicker than Gaming Z Trio from the photos. Still rather tiny compared to Noctua's monster

CA_Steve wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 29, 2021 3:13 pm

Yeah. We'd also get back to the discussion on it'd be nice if gfx card bios permitted fan speeds down in the 500rpm range.

I don't think that we will see cards being able to run that low. 500 rpm of relatively small GPU fans is way below border of audibility ( I mean in normal conditions when we have our head few dozens of centimeters from computer). It's just more inaudible than inaudible 800 rpm, but cools worse.

To a point, I disagree. The 120x25mm fans I strapped onto a gfx card were whisper level audible at 500rpm when used as case fans. With the added resistance of the gfx card heat sink, they'd be louder at the same rpm. So, for over engineered solutions like the NF-A12's on a gfx card, 500rpm wouldn't be a stretch.

As for existing 92x12mm and such fans on existing cards, why not let the user have more control over noise? They are willing to let the user overvolt/OC the frigging cards into thermal limiting. What's the difference with letting the user find out where thermal limiting occurs with the fan profile?

CA_Steve wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 31, 2021 8:25 am

To a point, I disagree. The 120x25mm fans I strapped onto a gfx card were whisper level audible at 500rpm when used as case fans. With the added resistance of the gfx card heat sink, they'd be louder at the same rpm. So, for over engineered solutions like the NF-A12's on a gfx card, 500rpm wouldn't be a stretch.

This border of audibility depends on the fans (for Kaze Flex 120mm on my Ninja 5 I would say 650 rpm), but generally the bigger diameter, the lower they get audible. Maybe I'm wrong, but from somwhere I "know" that Noctua's fans on discussed card can't get lower than 800 or 700 rpm when these fans sold separately can run like ~350 rpm. Reason why Asus didn't allow for it is mysterious to me.

CA_Steve wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 31, 2021 8:25 am

As for existing 92x12mm and such fans on existing cards, why not let the user have more control over noise? They are willing to let the user overvolt/OC the frigging cards into thermal limiting. What's the difference with letting the user find out where thermal limiting occurs with the fan profile?

These tiny fans are often damn fast (3000-4000 rpm). I noticed the tendency like maximum speed pulls minimum one. Even let's take computer from the photos which seems to confirm that: case fans are able to run dumb 1800rpm, but can't get lower than 650, similar story with AiO. Pure Wings 2 from Pure Base 500 series cases I build most of PCs in usually finish on ~1000 rpm, but can easily go down to 350 and these are even 3-pin fans. The thing is, there exist fast fans which have surprisingly low minimum speed (not old Noctuas, Silent Wings 3 or Kaze Flex), but they are rare. Maybe it's somehow harder or cost more to manufacture fans with such a wide range.