The noise is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sVX_UVKNSI
Ive found on other forums one proposed solution is to install the gigabyte aorus software, and toggle fans from semi-passive (where they switch off, which generates the start up noise) to active, where they supposedly run full time.
This does solve the noise in the video above, but when the card feels like it it will still pulse the fan speed up and down every couple of seconds which makes a different really distracting noise in an otherwise quite PC with nvme storage.
There are bios updates from gigabyte, but I installed those and found no difference. Ive also seen the aorus software crash and require termination from the task manager, and its also really ugly software with very limited capability compared to its competitors. For a simple looking app, it seems to be 220mb in size, and looking at the filesystem it includes every version of the microsoft runtimes in the app dir. It looks like the developers didnt know what they are doing and just unzipped a collection of DLLs in to the app and said "that seems to work". No faith in the dev team....
So after all this, and also seeing reports of bios cross flashing that increases the power limit and frequency limits to increase performance (this mod does that as well), I decided to risk my card and try the cross flash for my own sanity. I chose the galax 2080ti bios as it seemed to line up, has a high power rating, which the tripple fan windforce should be able to keep cool. The subsystem ID is different, but that can be overridden.
Im happy to report success! The fans no longer stop, and no longer behave in the same annoying way. The card is also faster. It now shows up as an unbranded nvidia 2080ti, and the Aorus software can no longer talk to it. Fine. Uninstall.
The tools I used are all over the internet but i'll put exactly what I used here. To install first backup your existing bios (or download it from https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/207 ... 264-181225 ).
Note that this could brick your card. Taking this risk is up to you. First confirmed that you have exactly a Gigabyte 2080ti Windforce OC card (there is a non-OC version, this is not compatible. There is also a Gaming OC version, and we are not talking about that card either). Then update, from an admin shell with:
Code: Select all
nvflash64 -6 Galax.2080TIGX126.rom
Then reboot your PC, and uninstall any Aorus software you have for your card too. Instead you can use MSI Afterburner, if you want.
The only issue I have seen so far is that MSI Afterburner show 0mv for the power level. I dont know why this is, and to me it does not matter.