I setup my fan curve initially to be extremely aggressive. The GTX670 was a pretty speedy card, and coming from watercooling, I knew that low temperatures meant a happy, and more importantly, non-throttled video card. I think I set the thing initially to start ramping up at 40 degrees, to hit around 100% fan speed at 65 degrees. Kepler needed to be kept under 70 degrees, or it started stepping down it's boost clock to maintain thermals. Of course, this aggressive fan curve lead to an absolutely roaring fan, even under fairly light loads (2 EVE clients displayed on screen). In my quest for quiet computing, along with installing low noise adapters on the fans in the file sever, and some ghetto sound dampening in the ESXI box (Duct tape and corrugated cardboard for the win!) I decided to try a much less aggressive fan curve on the GTX670.
Reading further into ACX unit reviews, especially with newer cards, it's not uncommon for cards to run with their fans off, even under light to medium load. Why not try to replicate that with what I have now? With the above fan curve, the thing pretty much constantly runs at 30% fans while on the desktop and doing regular stuff like watching videos, or browsing the web. Light gaming like Minecraft, AOEII HD, and EVE don't really even cause the fans to spin up further. Loading Planetside 2 and playing for about an hour saw loads under 70 degrees, and a much quieter case. I think this, coupled with the Define R5's noise dampening panels, should be perfect for a low noise solution while still maintaining awesome gaming performance. And who knows, maybe one of those fancy GTX970s with the "0 decibel" feature will make its way into my hands. GTX980 even? Asus Strix, I'm looking at you.
Reading further into ACX unit reviews, especially with newer cards, it's not uncommon for cards to run with their fans off, even under light to medium load. Why not try to replicate that with what I have now? With the above fan curve, the thing pretty much constantly runs at 30% fans while on the desktop and doing regular stuff like watching videos, or browsing the web. Light gaming like Minecraft, AOEII HD, and EVE don't really even cause the fans to spin up further. Loading Planetside 2 and playing for about an hour saw loads under 70 degrees, and a much quieter case. I think this, coupled with the Define R5's noise dampening panels, should be perfect for a low noise solution while still maintaining awesome gaming performance. And who knows, maybe one of those fancy GTX970s with the "0 decibel" feature will make its way into my hands. GTX980 even? Asus Strix, I'm looking at you.