GPU heating up to ~85-90c in 7dtd ONLY

[sloggoth]

Hey crew -- My computer's graphics card heats up to 85-90c in minutes just standing around in vanilla, resulting in the fan blowing every minute or so.  This is the only game it does it in.  I tested against FO76 and Wolfenstein Youngblood, and neither had the issue with the card overheating and turning the fan on full blast.

Little help, dev team?  Here's my speccy summary (its an 8GB card, it reports incorrectly):

Summary
        Operating System
            Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
        CPU
            Intel Core i7 9700KF @ 3.60GHz    46 °C
            Coffee Lake 14nm Technology
        RAM
            32.0GB Dual-Channel Unknown @ 1065MHz (15-15-15-36)
        Motherboard
            ASRock Z390 Pro4 (CPUSocket)    34 °C
        Graphics
            GNV34DBE (3440x1440@144Hz)
            WD43UB4530 (3840x2160@30Hz)
            4095MB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (ASUStek Computer Inc)    45 °C
        Storage
            476GB INTEL SSDPEKNW512G8 (Unknown (SSD))
            931GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB (Unknown (SSD))
            931GB TOSHIBA DT01ACA100 USB Device (USB (SATA) )    33 °C
        Optical Drives
            ELBY CLONEDRIVE SCSI CdRom Device
        Audio
            BEHRINGER USB WDM AUDIO 2.8.40

 

[Boidster]

7D2D isn't like 99% of other games, being 100% voxel-based. Other games are like a 1-hour crossfit class with occasional 5-minute breaks. 7D2D is like simultaneously fighting Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Lee Majors*, and R. Lee Ermey* while riding a fixie bike up Pike's Peak Highway. With a COVID mask on. Both my PC and my laptop go into tornado mode when playing.

That said, 90c is kinda at the upper end of 'safe' I think, at the edge of 'not recommended'. How's your case cooling set up? Lots of airflow through the case?

* Yes I am old. The youts might not know who those two guys were.

 

[sloggoth]

Yeah, I understand its voxel based and unique gabba gabba hey    I'm not comparing, I'm using other games as a yardstick with which to measure heat.  So those two games which are pretty punishing on the card, they play fine; the GPU temp is fine and the fan doesn't crank up.  Summary, 7dtd is to blame in some way because no other game/app does this.

The airflow is fine, I've not installed anything in the case, and I blew it out recently.  I've completely uninstalled the driver using a dedicated driver cleaner from nvidia.  The most INTERESTING thing is that it only happens when their is LOD to draw.  If I am inside or digging for treasure and am surrounded by walls or dirt, the card doesn't overheat.  THAT says something, although I'm not sure what... 

-slog

PS: cool avatar

 

[sloggoth]

And now that I thought about this more, this subject is primarily to draw attention to it in case TFP knows internally about some HW issue with my card.  If someone knows and has a fix, awesome.  Until then I'll just play it at medium or low, which is fine just not ideal.

 

[Beelzybub]

If someone knows and has a fix, awesome.

I use the frame limiter in Nvidia control panel to keep my gpu from running at 100%, which keeps the temp down. I keep it at 66, which, at 1080p looks fine.

 

[meganoth]

How is the CPU doing, is it heating up the case by chance? Normally 7D2D is cpu-bound.

Since you compare 7d2d with Wolfenstein how about posting Wolfensteins TechPowerUp data as well. If that shows less GPU chip power draw, we know the additional heat really comes from the GPU, if not the heat must come from other parts.

 

[Jugginator]

I suspect you have cooling issues overall, since your cpu is at 46c with speccy, unless you already were running 7 days before you grabbed it. That temp is hot but not critical, although you can verify that by checking the max temp for that card. Sometimes a bunch of air blowing into the case doesnt mean it has good airflow Also your ambient temps matter a lot.

Note you can also try undervolting your GPU and see if it's stable, that will reduce temps.

 

[sloggoth]

Since you compare 7d2d with Wolfenstein how about posting Wolfensteins TechPowerUp data as well. If that shows less GPU chip power draw, we know the additional heat really comes from the GPU, if not the heat must come from other parts.

Ask and ye shall receive!
 

 

[SylenThunder]

Ok, your GPU fan speed should absolutely not be at only 44% when you have that much load/heat on your card.

Your issue is most certainly a cooling issue. Whoever set the values for that card wanted it to fail. I'd blame the manufacturer. Thankfully you can override the fan settings with Afterburner or Precision, and set the values to something more reasonable. Might also want to ensure that you have good airflow in the case as well. Just changing airflow took my pair of 1060's from 80C to 65C.

 

[Fox]

Ok, your GPU fan speed should absolutely not be at only 44% when you have that much load/heat on your card.

Your issue is most certainly a cooling issue. Whoever set the values for that card wanted it to fail. I'd blame the manufacturer. Thankfully you can override the fan settings with Afterburner or Precision, and set the values to something more reasonable. Might also want to ensure that you have good airflow in the case as well. Just changing airflow took my pair of 1060's from 80C to 65C.

I was hoping someone like you would post that. I have my fan curve ramp up from 30% at 25C to 100% at 80C (straight curve)... but mine never reaches beyond 65C (even with the heavy OC), so it never gets loud.

I'd also like to ask about computer case model... does it have proper venting or is it one of those useless glass cases with barely any venting that have been trending lately?

 

[SylenThunder]

Yeah, my 1060 is set to default at 0 fan speed until it starts to heat up, then the fans kick in.  Sadly, even then the default MSI options were extremely lacking. I mean, I understand that they used the massive fans for their 1080 OC series on the 1060, and that is a little overkill. Still the fans weren't designed to really start spinning up until after it was hitting 80C. 

This is the custom control layout I'm using currently. Truly it never gets to 70C though even when I'm pushing it hard. Once these fans kick in, the temp drops immediately.

In my most recent test, temps climbed up to 61C, and then dropped back down.

I'll have to run Wolfenstein later and run a similar comparison.

 

[SylenThunder]

Ok, ran 7 Days, and while screenshotting I noticed something.  OP talks about "Ultra" settings.   Here's the deal though. This game is still in development, and putting every setting on Ultra, is kind of a dumb thing to do. In particular, reflections and Shadows have not had a ton of optimization. (In the case of reflections, I would argue that it most likely hasn't had any notable optimization ever at all.)

So with that in mind, I'm including my in-game settings. I know I'm a bit limited by the 1060 in terms of graphics power, but this configuration allows me to get above 100FPS regularly so I can lock it into 60, and ensure that the FPS numbers don't float around much at all.

In this test I started out in our underground base in the wilderness. Came up top and roamed around the forest/mountain by our base. Then ran a couple clicks to the nearest road, planted a gyro, and flew a good kilometer over the forest to the nearest town. Did some flying about, then dropped into the center and picked up the gyro. Then I walked around town on foot for a bit, encountered some zombies, and then stopped to take the two above screenshots.

I was in-game for a total of about 20 minutes, which is more than plenty enough to get the card nice and warmed up. As I am writing this just about two minutes later, the card is already down to 38C. (Ambient room temp is 75.0F, or 23.89C)

EDIT: The most recent Wolfenstein title I have is The New Order, so that wouldn't really be a valid comparison. Will have to see if I can borrow it from someone.

 

[Beelzybub]

I had to see... I think my lower GPU Voltage accounts for the wattage difference. Mine's a little hotter but, otherwise pretty close. I matched Sylen's graphic settings for this test.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Besids your cooling seems not to work very well, the main difference between 7d2d and other games seems to be that the other games probably do limit fps with a frame limiter or v-sync enabled.

From your GPU-Z screenshots of Wolfenstein and 7d2d you can clearly see that with Wolfenstein your GPU is not running at 100% (gpu clock is only 1140Mhz VS 1710Mhz, Board powerdraw is only 50W instead of 200W).

So if 7d2d runs unlimited, the comparison to wolfenstein is invalid anyway.

So as beelzybub already said: Use a framelimiter on 7d2d or enable V-Sync.

That doesn't mean you should ignore your bad cooling performance.

 

[sloggoth]

Thanks crew - that's a big bite to chew on.  I agree, this is a large case that could use better airflow, although I might go watercooling on the 2080.  I adjusted the Max Framerate in the nvidia control panel[l and, while it hasn't dropped significantly, it is low enough that the fan isn't blasting every 2 minutes.

Thanks again!

 

[uncle.heavy]

Just a word before you go all hydro on your card:

Asus shipped quite some 2080 models with dual BIOS ( performance & quiet).

If you have one of those and if you are running in quiet mode:

you could switch to performance mode, making the card more noticable in general but it would surely rid you of the sudden rushes of fan activity when there is some serious work to do for your card.

The same - read: better - could be achieved by setting a manual curve in GPU Tweak, of course, as in @SylenThunder's example.