I strongly recommend high fan settings for anyone that can afford the extra noise that this will cause. Modern day GPUs can certainly run very hot without any trouble, heck, the 980 specifications allow for 98C temperatures, however, with cards at full load for prolonged periods of time (aka, mining), higher temperatures will simply cause higher failure rates.
Another reason for high fan settings is that some cards start throttling before the default fan profile ramps up the rpms.
This is especially obvious on my 980 with default clocks. Nvidia has obviously chosen to prioritize noise over peak
performance. It was not configured to run hot for extended periods of time.
Nividia also messed up on Linux by only allowing custom fan profiles on monitor-attached cards. It would be in everyone's
interest to remove that restriction so we miners can get top performance while also benefitting from a longer MTBF on
cards used for mining.
i cant confirm that on our farm ( 5 or 6 card ) miners - as ( visually ) they all seems to be running the same fan speeds ...
but visual estimations are highly inaccurate - so i could be completely way off base here ...
i really hope you are wrong about this - as this could lead to catastrophic failure if left too long on the majority of the cards ...
#crysx
Throttling will reduce the potential for damage at the cost of performance. My 980 runs at 80C on default fan profile.
The clock fluctuates just above the base rate to maintain that temp. With the fan at 80% the temp fluctuates 4 to 8C lower
and the clock is steady near the boost rate. I don't have actual hash rate comparisons but you get the picture.
The 750ti, which I believe your farm is mostly made of, seems to run cooler by default so it's the second card
in my Linux rig.
it is jo ...
the 750ti oc lp card runs quite cool - but like you said - probably at the cost of performance ... which really isnt a bad tradeoff ...
i am looking at a cooling system ( evaporative ) to test with the cards ...
it seems the cards are immune to any moisture being at the temperature they always run at - so im keen to test ...
the unit is huge - and runs at a max of 10A ( normal power here @ 240V ) - so it will be a massive power saving ( im talking Amperes as opposed to AUD ) which means the farm can grow by at least another few machines ...
the air conditioning unit cant cope - and draws SO much power ...
so if this evaporative unit works - and works well - we will have an answer to the excess power spillage that the air conditioning system uses ...
so the cooler the cards - the better the performance - the longer they last ...
at least - thats the theory
...#crysx
