MSI GTX 560Ti Hawk running too hot!
 

Hey all,

I recently bought an MSI gtx 560 Ti Hawk to run in SLI with my older Gigabyte gtx 560 Ti soc. I installed the MSI card as the primary since it's factory overclocked slightly lower than the gigabyte card. So both gpus are forced to run at 950mhz. I haven't had any system stability issues (games and benchmarks run great) but the MSI Hawk seems to be running really hot. Under load in SLI it can easily get up to 95-100 degrees while the Gigabyte card hovers around 70 degrees! Even when I remove the gigabyte card and leave the Hawk to run on it's own in the case, MSI Afterburner still shows it going up to 90 degrees celcius under load. The fans on the card sound like hairdryers they're working so hard.

I have okay case fan cooling (nothing extreme). Two intake 120mm fans at the front. One 120mm at the top and back for exhaust.

Wondering why the MSI card runs so much hotter and louder than my Gigabyte card. Is this normal for the Hawk? If so, it doesn't say much about the effectiveness of MSI's Twin Frozr cooling system. I do notice an awful lot of thermal paste that had been squished out along one edge of the gpu. At first glance it seems like a sloppy job.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Sid.

Sounds like a bad cooler mount, redoing it yourself shouldn't void your warranty.

Yeah considered doing that. I've replaced plenty of CPU coolers but never a GPU. What thermal paste is recommended for that type of job?

I'll give that a shot prior to RMAing the card.

Your other problem is due to the fact you're probably using the default fan profile, which is designed (poorly in my mind still) for single card use. This means if you run sli/xfire your primary card will run hotter. The best way to reduce this, is to follow the guide in my signature. It'll allow you to create your own fan profile to allow you to balance fan noise vs load temperatures down to something a lot more reasonable.

Have you tried running the card by itself? If not they'll ask you if you try to RMA and more then likely tell you to try the card by itself, as the reason your card is running hot is due to what I just said above and not a defective card.

Thanks for the tip on the fan profiles. I'll check that out. I have tried running the Hawk on it's own and the temps still get up to 85-90C under load. I don't find that acceptable. Especially considering my Gigabyte card runs around 65-70C under load on its own. Certainly the Twin Frozr cooler isn't 20C worse than the Windflow cooler on the GB card?

This:
And to the OP, any paste will work fine. I'd just suggest you stay away from high performance diamond and silver based pastes due to abrasion and conductivity/capacitance.

Must have missed the solo card mention.

Believe me, you'll be surprised and disgusted what the fan speeds will be when you install MSI Afterburner and see what the default fan speeds are for the temperatures. I wouldn't be surprised if its about 20-30% for idling and maybe 40-50% for full load. Just remember as you increase the fan speed, the fan tends to get a bit louder.

whatever paste you choose, stay away from Arctic Silver Ceramique. I burned out a 470 using that gunk.

I don't think it's a fan setting issue. The fans get spinning pretty fast. Clearly audible. I have been using the OSD of MSI Afterburner to monitor temps and fan speeds during games. I think I recall the fan speed% getting up near 80-85% under load. Sounded like an electric hair dryer running in my case. At least 3 times the noise of my GB card. Not pleased with the noise or the temps.

I think I will try replacing the thermal compound with something decent and reseating the heatsink. If that doesn't help then I'll attempt to RMA it back to MSI.

Hmm if thats the case, yeah almost sounds like time to RMA it then