I’m not going to lie. This is hands down the most beautiful graphics card I've ever owned. Everything about it, from the packaging, to the way it felt in my hands, to the way it looks: perfect. But for a graphics card that costs $850, this card is way too noisy. I’m not talking about when you’re in the middle of a game. I’m talking about when your computer is sitting there idle doing nothing.
The problem is that this graphics card has a minimum fan speed of 1500 rpm. When it’s first powered up, it’s virtually silent, but as soon as the NVIDIA driver loads, a low rattling hum kicks in and never goes away (see video demonstration). Even when I’m browsing the web or checking mail, this thing is noisy and it drives me crazy. If I’m being honest, the card sounds like one that is 5 years old which has had the lubricant on its fans wear out.
This noise problem has apparently been reported to NVIDIA several times, but as far as I can tell, the behavior is by-design and there is no plan to fix it:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/discover/287088/rtx-founders-edition-pcb-minimum-fan-speed/
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/discover/283007/rtx-2080-fe-no-manual-fan-control-/
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/geforce-graphics-cards/5/331222/new-rtx-span-classhighlight2080span-span-classhigh/
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/9vkm9u/flashing_a_rtx_2080_fe_for_lower_idle_fan_speed/
What’s worse, is that none of the standard GPU utilities are able to override this behavior. The card’s fan speed is locked to a minimum of 41% (1500rpm). This component has single-highhandedly ruined my new PC build.
Like I said, this graphics card is perfect in almost every way. But the noise level when idle is unacceptable. I’m very disappointed in this card and will either sell or return it. I expected better from NVIDIA, especially from something labelled “Founders Edition”. Because of this lack of attention to detail, I don’t think I’ll ever consider a 1st party product from NVIDIA again in the future.
| Memory Speed | 15.5 GHz |
|---|---|
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 |
| Chipset Brand | nvidia |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 8 GB |
