Weirdly high temps on GPU when running 7 Days to Die

[Daktyl198]

Some basics out of the way:
- The GPU is a 3070 OC
- This doesn't happen on any other game
- This didn't used to happen on 7D2D
- Setting the game's graphics to the lowest they go does not lower temps
- Using the Vulkan or OpenGL renderer does not help

When running the game, after only a couple minutes the average temp of the GPU spikes to 85°C if not a bit higher. I've checked fan curves, among other things. This is the only game with the issue and changing the fan curves helps a bit but not very much.

 

[Jugginator]

Try FSR on Balanced or Quality. You may want to post a log file though, as that is not normal at all if your temps don't decrease while lowering the settings. Although don't forget to limit your framerate while lowering settings, as a very high FPS will increase temps no matter the quality. 

Vulkan and GL are both not supported on Windows.

Also, underpowering is a common thing to do on the 30 series cards, as by factory default they run way higher than they need to. I reduced the power draw limit by 25% on my 3060 and it actually performs better. 

 

[Daktyl198]

Setting a frame limit of 100fps does reduce the temps if:
1. Turning the settings down to medium or
2. Turning on FSR to Quality

Both have the temps hovering around 70°C. Both do nothing unless paired with the frame limit.

Undervolting is something I thought of, but for some reason MSI Afterburner doesn't work for this card and the Gigabyte Control Center has the Voltage setting locked.

It's nice that I can get temps down, but it still is very weird that only 7 Days to Die makes the card act like this, and even then it's a recent development. I used to play on high/ultra settings with no issue.

 

[Jugginator]

Setting a frame limit of 100fps does reduce the temps if:
1. Turning the settings down to medium or
2. Turning on FSR to Quality

Both have the temps hovering around 70°C. Both do nothing unless paired with the frame limit.

Undervolting is something I thought of, but for some reason MSI Afterburner doesn't work for this card and the Gigabyte Control Center has the Voltage setting locked.

It's nice that I can get temps down, but it still is very weird that only 7 Days to Die makes the card act like this, and even then it's a recent development. I used to play on high/ultra settings with no issue.

For what its worth, gpus are designed to run that hot. The worst thing to do is to constantly raise and lower it (e.g. running benchmarking over and over, etc).

And you don't want to touch voltage. You want the power limit. Gigabyte has that. Don't use msi afterburner anymore, as its been abandoned for many years now and will cause issues especially with 7 days.

Although our game isn't as pretty as, say, cyber punk, the completely voxel world from bedrock to skybox and every building exploration and breakable, all of that pulls into calculations which is stressful.

Try lowering shadow quality. I personally run at low or medium quality and far on distance, also all the settings on the bottom right are expensive. So are reflections (I run medium). Object quality and lod distance also affects it, I run object on ultra as well as my other textures, then turn the fancy stuff down (working 80 hours a week I prefer to lower my energy bill and not have my office as a sauna haha), which keeps things cool.

70c is cool for a gpu, and 85 is the high end hot, but not bad.