How to lower the temperature of the graphics card

I know that many of you are looking for a way to prevent your graphics card from working at high temperatures. The best thing we can do to avoid this is to create a performance curve on the fans so they spin faster when the GPU is hot. We can do this with EVGA Precision X1 and MSI Afterburner. Ready?

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Two perfect programs to monitor and control the GPU

If you are looking for a program with which you can control your graphics cards 100%, MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision X1 are what you are looking for. Most people use one of the two, but they can be used together without problems.

They are two tools whose purpose is to control and monitor the temperatures of our graphics card. To control we refer to overclock, create profiles or modify the performance curve of the fans so that the GPU extracts more heat.

That said, we are going to teach you how to lower the temperatures of our graphics card with each one.

What is it and how to create a curve?

If you wonder what is a fan performance curve ? It is very simple. It is a program for our graph to rotate its fans at a% performance when it warms up or the temperature rises. It seems more complicated explained, but we will show you below, take it easy.

The purpose is to prevent our GPU from working at very high temperatures (over 65 degrees), managing to stabilize the temperature. How do we stabilize the temperature ? Increasing the performance of the fans so that the temperature stabilizes or drops.

Does this mean that if I set my fans to 100%, the GPU temperature will drop yes or yes ? No The card may have the same temperature, regardless of whether the fans are running at 60% or 80%. It stands to reason that the temperature rises when we load up on it, so we can't pretend to get IDLE temperatures when we're playing a video game, for example.

Therefore, the idea to be pursued is what is called optimization. We must try to achieve the lowest temperature together with the lowest possible performance . Why? For the following reasons:

GPU lifespan. Logically, the fans will deteriorate if we put them at 60% rest or 100% when we load the component.
- - As a data, it is very rare (and inadvisable) that we have to put the fans at 100% performance because the GPU has high temperatures. Each graph is a world, there are models that operate at 70 degrees and it is totally normal. So, study well the temperatures that your cards handle.
Performance-temperature. It may be silly to set the fans to 80% because we can get the same performance-temperature down to 60%. For example, when I play, my graphics does not usually go beyond 63 degrees and the fans rotate at 60%. I have tried programming them at 65% or even 70% and there are no temperature drops, except for 1 temporary degree that then returns to its origin. Efficiency. If we increase the performance of the fans, our component will consume more energy. Following what I have said in the previous point, we will be consuming more energy without taking advantage of it because we can obtain the same performance-temperature with the fans turning to a lower performance.
- - Not to mention those who have more limited power sources (600-500W): your PC may turn off when you increase the performance of the fans because your source cannot meet the demands of the equipment.

Regarding how to create it, it is recommended to make an upward curve. In this way, the performance of the fans will increase as the temperature rises. Thus we will be able to stabilize the temperatures or decrease them. We will make a curve with each program to make it clearer.

To finish, once you make a curve and apply it, you have to monitor the temperatures of your GPU. In this way, you will know if your programming is working or not.

MSI Afterburner

In my opinion, it is the simplest and most intuitive program to use. As we have already said, to lower the temperature of our graphics card we are going to create a performance curve for the fans. You can download it here.

We open the program and click on the gear in the central part to access the options.

Now, we go to the " fan " tab and activate the " Enable user program for automatic fan control " box. We will see a curve, mine is this.

As you can see in the image above, it is a simple fan curve. In the Y axis (vertical) we have the % performance of the fans; In the X axis (horizontal) we have the temperatures set in degrees Celisus (you can change it to Farenheit in the program settings).

We can move each point freely to determine how much fan performance we want at a certain temperature. I show you graphically:

When we finish, we can only hit " Apply " to save the configuration. As for the "update period of the fan speed", I have it at 1000 because the graph is updating faster, but you can have it at 5000 perfectly. And with this we will have managed to lower the temperature of our graphics card with MSI Afterburner.

Finally, for those of you who have your GPU overclocked, tell you that it is very possible that the component works a few degrees above the usual.

Basic rule of overclocking: no dissipation, no fun. That is, do not overclock if you do not have good ventilation, a good box or good refrigeration.

EVGA Precision X1

In this case, it is the EVGA tool for the same purposes for which the MSI Afterburner application was created. Here we can customize some detail more than in MSI Afterburner, but I do not want to compare them to tell you which is better. It seems to me that either one works properly and achieves the same result: lowering the temperature. You can download it here.

As we see in the image above, the main menu is that. I warn you that its interface may seem somewhat more complex than that of MSI, but everything is getting used to. Let's go in order:

In the panel we find the following:
- - Overclock settings: memory, GPU, voltage and the power and temperature target that we do not want to exceed. Fan Speed: We can adjust the speed of each GPU fan, such as setting it to "AUTO".
Right sidebar: profiles and certain shortcuts, such as the "LED SYNC" for lighting, HWM for the monitor and "OSD" to bring up the minimized icon. Bottom bar: are the buttons to save, apply, reset settings or load settings.

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If you look, it has two navigation arrows: one on the left and one on the right. This is to move among the least related to the tab in which we are " VGA1 ".

Take a look at the menus to see what you think.

Starting from the right, we come across the " Temp Tuner ", an interesting option. It is about limiting the frequency of the core to a specific temperature. This is what happens with the thermal trottling of the CPU: when the chip reaches a temperature, it lowers its performance to lower its temperature. We can modify this curve with EVGA Precision X1.

We go to the next menu and we will see as many graphics as fans have our GPU. In this case, it is the " Fan Curve Control ", the programming menu of the fan curve. You can modify them just like in the MSI program, except that here we only have 4 points to establish the curve.

We turn right again and we find the " VF Curve Tuner ". This menu is used to overclock our graphics card. We can do a scan to see how it behaves, modify what we want and do the test to see if it passes. If it passes, it is a good sign: the OC works. It is a kind of benchmark.

Finally, we have a customization of the temperature colors and the FPS that we want to achieve, being able to limit them or not. If we activate the " TEMP Color ", we will see how the letters " GPU " in the central box light up, where we find the core frequency, voltage and temperature.

Regarding the other tabs " LED " and " HWM " are very simple:

LED: We can adjust the brightness of our GPU lighting, choosing a mode. HWM: This is the temperatures of our GPU, offering various graphics for it. It also shows the FPS. You can give the number "1" to show more graphs.

I can only say that all the changes you make in the program (activate Fan Curve Control and create a curve, for example) will take effect when you click " Apply ". Otherwise, the change will not take place.

conclusion

Both programs are really good, but I would like to highlight in the EVGA Precision X1 the possibility of modifying each fan individually, such as the " temp turner ". Arguably, the MSI Afterburner is the basic version and the EVGA Precision the advanced version.

That said, I prefer MSI Afterburner because it is very easy to use and because we also achieved what we were talking about here: lower the temperatures of the graphics card. On the other hand, I do not like the interface of the EVGA so much because I see certain disconnected elements, such as the lower buttons and the sidebar on the right.

In conclusion, both serve the same purpose, they work perfectly and either one is a great option. I am sure that, if you use them, you will be able to lower the temperature of your graphics card.

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Do you use either one? Which do you like the most and why? Did you manage to lower the temperature of the graphics card?