Is your Geforce GTX 280 overheating?
 

I came across this in a forum while doing a search for aftermarket cooling for GTX 280 which there is none made as of yet.

My GTX280 Much Cooler Now

So those of you that are having issues with GTX 280 overheating, there is a solution and it apparently works. Even if your GTX 280 doesn't have the overheating issues like 40% of the that people do, its a good way to get your card even cooler.

Note: I read that if your GTX 280 is reaching temps of 110c after an hour of gameplay, to RMA. According to BFG and EVGA if your card is reaching temps of 100c or over, its defective. Some people have RMA'd their GTX 280 3 times until they got one that wasn't defective and was reaching normal temps of 70c to 80c after an hour of gameplay.

Apparently GTX 260 don't have this overheating issue.

Are there really that many 280s that are overheating? Those cards are pretty big, could it just be a case of poor airflow for most?

That's what happens when you have a massive die with such low yields. Defects are bound to arise and thermal envelopes will be pushed.

Though from that post, the guy just had poor case air flow. So I'm going to say overheating is mainly due to the fact people shove these massive cards into tiny cases with poor front intake fans or horrible cable management and thus all the card has is hot air to suck in.

From what I've read, those that were getting 110c temps with their GTX 280, RMA'd at least 3 times before they got one that ran 80c. So it could be a poor design of the cards.

It doesn't help with it being summertime either-heat and humidity can wreak havoc in cases with suboptimal circulation or layout. These are huge cores and so need a bit more attention. But if this is also a yield problem nvidia really is having a nightmare. Ramp the fan to 35% on a 4870 and the cards got great temps.

I wonder if this has to do with the problems NVIDIA are facing right now and the over $200 millions left aside to deal with a massive circulation of defective GPUs - Apparently it affects mostly notebook GPÛs but also desktop too, and NVIDIA hasn'T revealed exactly which ones are affected however the problem was related to those chips was thermal and that they overheated ! From what I heard, NVIDIA will release a driver to have those chips running lower or fans higher at default, I'll have to check on that. Meanwhile if you have these chips, try running your fan speeds to 100%, noise is not an issue because during gameplay the noise overpowers any fans in your system - running at 100% should bring temps down. 100C while hotter than it should, still is a safe temp, although I wouldn't recommend running this for long periods, <115C you are fine - and some people have run it hotter too. Personally I'd keep them <100C so unless you are gamign 24/7, I wouldn't worry about running your GPU at those temps for short periods of time - problem is that the fan speed is optimized for noise rather than temperature. It's frustrating that NVIDIA is not making public the exact revisions and models of those GPUs affected.

That is really odd. The last two GTX 280 cards I have had in my posession had VERY aggressive fan speed profiles where the RPMs would increase very quickly to keep the core cool.

Yes that's possible - some of those fan issues affected earlier GPUs like the 8800GT for example, and in fact BFG have made available a new BIOS to update the fan profiles.

I honestly think it's a mistake to buy a GTX 280 now - especially if you already had a DX10 card - NVIDIA is working on new generation cards and DX10.1 hardware support, mind you it's not a big deal, but I would save my money and wait for nex gen cards. There is a lack of DX10 games as it is and already Microsoft is planning DX11!

Also it's mistake to buy anything NEW - I always wait until buying something because chances are problems get discovered (defects, bugs, etc) and the company makes some changes and new chip revisions - so it's not a good idea to jump on something new right away!

First one I had reached 84 max but for whatever reason fried itself, was artifacting at the bios. Second one the fan didn't work, just giggled like it was trying to get going. Third one is a charm, hasn't passed 77 yet that I have noticed. One thing though is when the fan is ramping up when it's running f@h is sometimes it will cool it to 64 and not ramp down it seems. Still very happy though, seems like finding one that is working properly is the problem though.

You had one of those defective chips - 84C is well within the thermal specs - Normally those GPUs are rated to run much higher than this and if I'm not mistaken the cards start to throttle at 115-120C, think the GTX280 is rated even higher.

Perhaps its not ramping down because it takes into consideration the load on your GPU - If you quit your application or game it will eventually ramp down.

It sucks that you had to RMA it 3 times - did you pay the shipping all 3 times ? I don't think that one should pay the shipping to cover for a companY's lack of QC.