- Noticed some frame rate stutters and screen tearing.
- Fire up HWMonitor. Observe 100% GPU usage, clock speed at 683MHz (boost clock can get up to like 1354 MHz, so it’s way low), and GPU fan at 0 RPM.
- Pull out graphics card and blow out with compressed air. Fan bearings seem fine. Heard no fan noises leading up to this point.
- Plug graphics card back in to see what happens. Fan spins briefly on startup, turns off, and never turns back on again. Didn’t run graphics card stress test, but was maxing out GPU usage again with a client running.
- Use DDU and do a fresh install of the graphics card drivers. No change.
- Follow the instructions here, in order to manually turn on GPU fan.
- Set fan speed to 33% and it works!!! GPU clock speed bounces up to 1215MHz, and GPU utilization drops to normal.
Manually setting fan speed gets the job done, but was wondering why my graphics card stopped automatically controlling fan speed, and if it can be fixed. Looked through a few google search results, but I’m getting tired and brane knot werk sew gud. Thus, I thought I would ask to see if anyone had any insight. Plus, this thread might help others with fan/overheating issues.
P.S. For anyone who might read this who still can’t get their fan to spin and are desperate, my next step was going to be to remove the plastic shroud around the heatsink, and direct a small box fan on the card. Might need to turn down the client’s graphics settings, but hopefully it will be enough to allow you to keep playing until you get a new fan or graphics card.
Also, if your fan spins, and you blew out the card with compressed air, but the card is still hot and throttling, you probably need to replace the thermal paste.