Question on Nvidia 1080Ti
HorusRa
Posts: 1,665
in The Commons
I'm looking to purchase a 1080ti in a few days or so, but I'm torn between the Founders edition (the original slim or normal card), and a gigabyte style with the 3 fan cooling system.
I hear these cards run quite hot under an IRay load, so I'm not so sure if the normal style case is going to be cool enough, so my question is mainly for anyone who has the normal Founders edition style card with the one fan, what their temps are under load, roughly.
Also recommendations between the 2 styles.
I've heard good things about the Aorus Geforce GTX 1080 TI, which has the 3 fans, which Newegg has in stock.

Comments
The "Founders Edition" is simply the nVidia reference design. It isn't really 'slim' or anything.
The "Custom" designs by the various companies (ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Zotac, etc.) allow them to 'improve' on that design. Additional cooling, more power regulation, special heatpipe arrangements, etc. They also allow them to change exactly what kinds of ports are on the back. For example the ASUS 1080 GTX Strix, has TWO HDMI ports, instead of just one (which is what most of the 1080's have.)
If you are looking to save money, the Founders Editions have a benefit.....they are the 'baseline' model, and must meet those specs. And they are pretty much price-fixed by nVidia. If you are more interested in performance, cooling, and such, a Custom card is a much better option.
Realize also, that the 1080Ti has only been out for a few months. Reviews on failure rates haven't hit yet.......they should be about the same as the 1080's, but there were some initial issues with 1080's. Make sure you get a card from a company (or retailer) that has a VERY good return/replacement policy.
I understand about the founders edition, by slim I just meant the smaller original design, I mean its smaller than say the 1080 ti by gigabyte with the 3 fans. My issue is just with cooling. Someone on the forums here recently stated the card, I'm assuming they meant the original nvidia (not custom) got pretty hot under an iray load, I just don't want to damage a card. I'm always concerned about the 1 fan style cards, but if it is more than suffiecient then I don't want to bother with the 3 fan custom cards. I'm just not sure if the one fan is good enough to keep the card within comfortable range with a typical iray scene. If any of that makes sense.
I do not know if it's true, but it has been posted here and elsewhere that the single fan cards run cooler because the air is forced across and out of the card and thus out of the case, where the cards with multiple fans blow the heat around the case and make it hotter in the case.
That's only true if the case is not PROPERLY ventilated. It can also be an issue where you have mulitple cards in close proximity, to where you don't get proper air-flow between them. If you do your fans right in the case, that 'hot air' doesn't blow around in the case, it gets blown right out before it can go anywhere else.
Multiple fans usually don't move more or less air (except at extreme speeds)....they're there to reduce the noise. Put simply, three fans move the same amount of air at one third the speed of a single fan. My three-fan ASUS 1080 Strix cards, even at 70% fan speed, never get above 60°C. So my machine remains relatively quiet. The single-fan cards have to run the fan faster to move the same amount of air, and tend to be much noisier.
Good to know.
Yeah, I have a 3 fan MSI 1070 myself, had it running all night before, hottest it hit was 62, it is quieter than my power supply and case fans, and I run an over aggressive fan curve on my card just to be safe.
This is very useful info.
I have recently built a new PC build after discovering Daz3D as my iMac didn't like it!
Not had a PC for a long time so after a bit of research on here and the net, the new 1080 Ti seemed to be a good choice for Iray, so decided to go for the MSI Founders Edition.
Had it since launch and have been since playing around/learning Daz3D, mainly Iray renders and seen temps up to around 68C and fan speed around 40%.
I had to go to my grandaughters birthday party so I wasn't able to get back to this thread for a while.
Well I decided to go with a Gigabyte Aorus gtx 1080TI, the custom with the 3 fans. Hopefully that will work well for me.
I want to sincerely thank all of you for the help.
The white one? I put that in some days ago, no complaints so far and it was even slightly cheaper than Founders Edition. There's really little reason to get the latter once after market cards are available.
This Aorus is 2 slots thick just like Founders. I didn't want 2.5 slots in case I wanted to put in a second one at some point, which would be a bit too cramped at least on my mainboard.
It's true that 3 fans are quiter, but it's also true that if you make them run faster with a custom fan profile they move more air and the GPU runs cooler as a result, resulting in better boost clocks and more overclocking headroom. By default mine ran at around 71c when rendering in Iray with the fans barely active. With custom profile it runs 10c lower with a fan speed sitting around 69%, which is audible but no bother to me.
No not the white one, this:
/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125954
I'm not sure if these types of links are permissable so I cut it in half, you'll have to add in Newegg dot com etc.
oh btw, I haven't made the order yet, I had just made a decision. I'll probably order sometime within the next 8 hrs or so. Is the white one better? I know they are pretty close or something.
No the black one is better, higher default overclock and better cooler but it's 2.5 slots thick and a bit more expensive. Black one seems to have one more HDMI port as well if you need it. Can't go wrong with either, it's only 20 bucks more so if space isn't an issue go for it.
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I have found that the PC case has significant effect on cooling. I had a mid-sized case with everything squeezed in so tight had to sculpt some of the fans to fit everything in. It ran warm but not hot, even when running day long renders. During long render sessions you could easily holding your hand to the video cards or CPU radiators for any length of time. I would say they were more than warm but not really what I would call hot.
I changed to a larger case and found that the same hardware ran far hotter (with same number of case fans). You would not get 3rd degree burns touching the video cards but you knew that they were hot and difficult to touch for more than a few seconds.
Have since reduced CPU temperatures by putting push and pull fans on cpu radiators plus 140 fan directing air through motherboard heatsinks and ram.
Have added multiple internal case fans forcing air onto video cards but they still get very hot when rendering for longer than 20mins. My video cards are all double width founders editions so not a lot of space between them all.
You are probably aware that some of the 3 fan cards require more than 2 slots. That is something that needs to be considered if planning to have multiple video cards.
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Well no matter how many fans you have, the air has to get in somewhere and if that area is smaller or has a more dense dust filter that might reduce the airflow.
I upgraded from 2x 970 GTX's to the GeForce 1080Ti founder's edition. And I must say, what a night and day difference. Its stupid fast and completely changes the experience in the editor. Renders are signifigantly faster, and the Iray preview mode is incredibly responsive. I can move the camera very smoothly with Iray preview wheres before it was a slide show. Can't speak for other versions, but the Founder's Edition will make you very happy.
If you have cooling problems just get this for your Nvidia 1080ti >>>>https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1K64893710