How loud are the fans on stock 670 cards?

[Termie]

You may not appreciate it, but there are many of us who appreciate a quiet gaming card. What's frustrating is that nvidia cheaped out on the reference cooling when gigabyte offers at the same price a card that is much quieter for the same price as reference. The problem is the dang card is rarer than hens teeth.

This.

And the problem is idle noise, not load noise. Seems like cheap engineering to me. Sounds like a bucket of bolts at idle, and yes it can be heard loud and clear over my scythe kama flow 2 case and CPU fans.

If my replacement arriving Tuesday is just as bad, I'll bite the bullet for a 680 stepup.

 

[guskline]

Which GTX 680 Termie?

 

[Termie]

Which GTX 680 Termie?

EVGA reference. I'll know tomorrow if the replacement sounds the same.

Just a note - the performance is excellent, and evga's service is excellent. Even the load noise is fine. It's just that at idle, it sounds like a very, very cheap case fan that got dropped one too many times.

Edit: I'm sitting here actually trying to do actual work on my computer, and the buzzing is driving me crazy. It's such a shame that nVidia cheaped out on the build quality.

 

[guskline]

I have the reference PNY GTX 680 and it is quiet at idle.

 

[Termie]

So I have some updates for you:

(1) First the somewhat expected but not particularly great news: the fan on the replacement EVGA GTX670 sounds just like the original at idle. Basically, like a little motorized car running in the case. It is unlike any fan noise I've ever heard, and I really don't like it.

(2) And now the somewhat unexpected good news: this card overclocks way, way better than my original. It boosts to 1110 at stock (vs. 1058), and easily completed the Heaven benchmark at a boost of 1253, whereas the original would crash at anything over 1200.

The other good news is that I haven't had any sign of the graphical corruption upon cold boot that I was getting 50-75% of the time with my old card. Basically, it was screen shimmer, and it was not good. Multiple driver reinstalls didn't fix it, and yet I haven't had it yet (crosses fingers) with the replacement.

So, all in all, it's a mixed bag, and for anyone remotely interested in a quiet card at idle, I'd skip the reference 670, assuming all of them sound like the two EVGAs I've had. The other lesson here is that the 600 series, even the stock cards, perform completely differently right out of the box. That's crazy, and really makes it difficult to know exactly what you're getting.

 

[DeeJayeS]

So I have some updates for you:

(1) First the somewhat expected but not particularly great news: the fan on the replacement EVGA GTX670 sounds just like the original at idle. Basically, like a little motorized car running in the case. It is unlike any fan noise I've ever heard, and I really don't like it.

(2) And now the somewhat unexpected good news: this card overclocks way, way better than my original. It boosts to 1110 at stock (vs. 1058), and easily completed the Heaven benchmark at a boost of 1253, whereas the original would crash at anything over 1200.

Yep, fan noise is like a hum/grind, and it is noticeable. I gotta set aside some time to put on my AC cooler...

+1 on the performance increase though. Mine boosts to 1097 at stock iirc (at work atm).