SPCR

I purchased the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 FTW GAMING ACX 3.0 yesterday. Even though most of the reviews I had seen were for the SC, the price difference was minimal and in theory the slightly bigger heat sink and fans should only make it better. I don't think it is displaying any signs of coil whine but I have never noticed coil whine before so I don't really know what to look for. Ignorance is bliss I guess.

Just in case though I ran a burn in loop of Unigine Valley on extreme HD settings. With an ambient temperature of 23°C it maxed out at 74-75°C with the fans running at around 1250-1300rpm. I also played Just Cause 3 for a couple of hours and that maxed out at 67°C and 500rpm. Idle it was hovering around 44°C. This was with the FTW running off the master bios and the case fans (2 front intake, 1 rear exhaust) running on the motherboards silent profile. I have still been too lazy to do any manual fan tuning yet.

While I couldn't guess what the dB might be, the noise profile seems pleasant enough to me. The card is enclosed in a Corsair 600Q standing on the floor at the side of my desk, about 1m away.

Overall I would call this a win and I can finally say I have finished my build.

wow nice card, congratulations. I think that is the card to get. EVGA is a great company to deal with.

Thanks, think I will take the plunge, as it's quite cheap from NewEgg to me in Sydney, cheaper than buying locally....

Thought about the Gainward Phoenix, which is really quiet, but it's a bit too thick 2.5 slots

In the interests of full disclosure, the ambient temperature listed in my previous post probably dropped a decent amount the further into the night I went. My testing is not very scientific.

Normally I would go with ASUS but I don't really like the decision to move a 3 fan cooler. The Gainward and Palit cards aren't available here so that narrowed it down to MSI and EVGA for me. Fewer retailers sell the MSI here and it is priced a decent amount higher than the EVGA so that pretty much decided my brand. All I had to do was choose a specific model and wait for the first decent price drop.

It's nice to hear people say that EVGA is good to deal with and I am glad that their warranty has increased to 3 years since I last purchased EVGA but hopefully I will never have to find out first hand.

My EVGA 1070 FTW has no audible coil whine. And it overclocks to 2.1GHz. I will check the power settings for overclocking.

NeilBlanchard wrote:My EVGA 1070 FTW has no audible coil whine. And it overclocks to 2.1GHz. I will check the power settings for overclocking.

I have not even installed an overclocking utility yet and I am not sure I need to. When I ran Unigine Valley it boosted up to 2012Mhz and, as far as I can tell, stayed there for the entire 12 hour run. I upgraded from a GTX 670 though so my performance increase is already quite big and I am pretty easy to please.

I'm coming from a GTX 570 which drew over 300w under load, that died a month ago and I picked up a GTX 750TI, which runs at the same performance, but is a bit quieter, and draws hardly any power
So it's going to be a big jump in performance both in games and in GPU 3D and video rendering

Since my power supply is pretty much passive most of the time, KINGWIN Lazer LZ-1000 1000w, until summer heatwave and only while gaming, and the GTX 1070 as well, there should be a huge decrease in noise when I'm in desktop.
Plus the GTX 1070, even the FTW version still draws less power than my GTX 570, I expect my system to be under 500w even at full load, so my power supply should never kick the fan in, due to amazing design of the Silverstone Fortress FT02 - the power supply vents heat upward, and the positive pressure from the bottom case fans force air through it, perfect for passive use.

My system would be fine with a quality 300W PSU, with an overclocked i5 and the 1070.

NeilBlanchard wrote:My system would be fine with a quality 300W PSU, with an overclocked i5 and the 1070.

I'm running an i7 3930k at 4ghz, which I think draws close to 300w at full tilt at that speed. Although I have under volted the CPU a bit.
When I put the system together with the GTX 570 a few years back, the aim was to have the power supply remain passive most of the time, so I wanted as much headroom as possible, even if I didn't need anywhere near 1000w

Price has dropped for the EVGA GTX 1070 FTW on Newegg and Amazon

Anyway I got my card today.

It's been a dream so far.

Monitoring it on MSI Afterbuner beta, and running benchmarks the core clock will hit 2000 on it's own and settle back to 1960+, weird.....
That's well above the factory clock, and I haven't done anything, only installed the latest Nvidia drivers, and MSI Afterburner.
I didn't bother with EVGA's own software

I noticed the price dropped ~$40 on both. That is to be expected.

Mine has been very quiet, even in a hot office without A/C.

With the EVGA GTX 1070 FTW being passive at idle, even with 15-17 degree Celsius temps, it will eventually hit >50 idle temps.

So I set the fan to come in at 40 and ramp up to 40% speed by 60.
Now it idles at 45 degrees at 10% fan speed, about 250 rpm
I can't hear it, can't even hear it working at 40% speed.... 1000rpm

Yesterday I was playing Borderlands 2, with a 60fps cap.
After I finished, it was still sitting at 45 degreee - must have been running at 50% load with the frame rate cap

Hello,

After much consideration I've sold my ASUS STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5.

Didn't really plan on doing that, but buyers showed up fast and I've made a minimal profit on the purchase (like 55 EUR), because the 970 I've bought initially had an insane discount (50%+).

So after a month of enjoying integrated graphics got myself a - EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC.

Reasons for purchase:

• Wanted to sell GTX 970 while it still had +- some value, capitalize on the situation. Performance wise GTX 970 was good;
• Vendor choice - EVGA has outstanding customer support and extended (+2 years for 20 EUR to a total of 5 years) warranty, helps with resell values;
• Two fan design vs three fan design. I'm a strong believer that three smaller fans cannot be as quiet as two larger ones;
• Edition choice - SC vs FTW - not much difference for me. I know the FTW edition has the extra power connector, but from what I've read it's mostly a self-reassurance thing and not needed.

First impressions:

• EVGA GTX 1070 is more quiet than ASUS STRIX 970. I do not have precise measurements, so this opinion is subjective;
• I like that out of the box the fan curve and cooling is tuned much better for this card. With the previous ASUS STRIX 970 there was a certain point in fan spinning curve going from 39% to 40% when the card instantly became uncomfortably audible. With EVGA 1070 there is no such issue;
• A separate point about tuning the fan curve - MSI afterburner or any other "fan control" software requires the user to be logged in as administrator to properly auto-start. This was an annoyance for me, since I work as a limited user on my workstation. From the top of my head - it could be manually scripted as a workaround, but I've been a bit lazy to do that;
• I got more audible coil whine with EVGA GTX 1070. I will be testing this more. My immediate sad conclusion is that "be quiet! Straight Power 10 600W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply" led me down;
• My temperatures were typically 2-3 degrees Celsius higher than in public available tests. Under stress load and Witcher 3 the card heat up to 74-76 degrees Celsius. From what I see mostly I'm concerned about the heat from GPU affecting the temperature of CPU and CPU fan speed;
• The card itself fits into the Node 304 case and clicked in the PCI-express slot, but the display ports on the back of the case are a bit misaligned (with the bottom ones falling more into one side of the case and almost being covered by the case wall). Strange, didn't have time to look into it that much.

Overall the first impression is OK! As some other people I would have hoped to get less coil whine, but from the first impressions my sample is not that dramatic and there is still a chance it will improve over time or after some mild overclocking.

P.S. My miniITX Node 304 build from late 2015.

Inno3D iChill X3 and EVGA FTW Gaming ACX 3.0 @ Hexus added.

Asus Strix OC @ Guru3D added.

MSI Gaming Z @ Guru 3D added.

Haven't been on here in years, but just wanted to chime in on the EVGA 1070 FTW. My first video card upgrade in five years and I am really disappointed in it.

The quality control in these is atrocious. I've tried THREE brand new cards now and all three have been more or less the same. The fans are just plain bad (Power Logic brand btw.), every sample had clearly audible "warbling" and/or hissing (sorry, can't really describe it better) at low to medium fan speeds. There's also resonance or something at certain fan speed (occurs around 25-40% speed) which adds an annoying hum to the sound similar to a hardmounted HDD.

Added to that, the coil whine is all over the place. First card had little, second was really bad and the third somewhere between the two. One card also had a cosmetic defect with uneven led lighting, which, according to EVGA, is "normal".
What is also apparently "normal", is the less-than-ideal 0dB fan mode, where one of the fans twitches constantly as if trying to spin up. This causes an audible sound that can be heard if you have a semi-quiet PC. Oh and one card even had a few loose fins rattling on the heatsink.

As a side note, all three cards had "Made in China" on the serial number sticker, where as most of the cards I've seen in reviews seem to have "Packaged in Taiwan/USA/etc." instead.

Anyway yeah, disappointed in this one. I'm no overclocker so I just wanted a as-quiet-as-possible and good performing card. The bad news for me is that there aren't many, if any, "quiet" 10xx-series cards that fit in my current and planned ITX case when ruling out the EVGA FTW/SC cards (FTW was already too big, would have needed special power cables most likely).
Now I need to see if I can even get my money back from the store after sending these back and forth for three weeks or am I 500eur out of pocket with a poor card in my hands.

It may be that the different origins is the main problem? My 1070 FTW is as close to flawless as I could have imagined - very quiet, and overclocks comfortably.

MSI Gaming Z @ Techpowerup added.

I also had problems with an EVGA 1070 FTW made in China. The fan chattered at 30ish% speeds and the HDMI plug did not connect without wiggling the cord (tried 2 cords that both worked fine previously).

Newegg was helpful as always, quickly cross shipped a replacement which is working just fine, even sent a pre-paid return label.

The sticker does not say where it was made, it only says "Packaged in USA". A refurb maybe?

EVGA FTW Gaming @ hardwareLUXX added.

Computer Base compares Asus Strix OC, EVGA SC, Gainward Phoenix GLH, Gigabyte G1 Gaming, Inno3D iChill x3, MSI Gaming X, Palit Game Rock PE, and Zotac AMP! Extreme.

Added Gigabyte Xtreme Gaming @ Techpowerup.

CA_Steve wrote:Added Gigabyte Xtreme Gaming @ Techpowerup.

If I'm not wrong, your link points to the wrong page (30 instead of the correct 25).

I opted for page 30 as it provides more info at a glance than just a graph of acoustic measurements vs non GTX 1070 cards - like a nice table comparing all of the 1070 aftermarket cards vs temp and dB, the clock profile, etc.

CA_Steve wrote:I opted for page 30 as it provides more info at a glance

I see, albeit there lacks the idle SPL (as not all the cards may be semi passive).

...and my summary above the review links mentions the fan/temp behavior as known.

CA_Steve wrote:...and my summary above the review links mentions the fan/temp behavior as known.

Sorry, tl;dr

Fabool wrote:Haven't been on here in years, but just wanted to chime in on the EVGA 1070 FTW. My first video card upgrade in five years and I am really disappointed in it.

The quality control in these is atrocious. I've tried THREE brand new cards now and all three have been more or less the same. The fans are just plain bad (Power Logic brand btw.), every sample had clearly audible "warbling" and/or hissing (sorry, can't really describe it better) at low to medium fan speeds. There's also resonance or something at certain fan speed (occurs around 25-40% speed) which adds an annoying hum to the sound similar to a hardmounted HDD.

Added to that, the coil whine is all over the place. First card had little, second was really bad and the third somewhere between the two. One card also had a cosmetic defect with uneven led lighting, which, according to EVGA, is "normal".
What is also apparently "normal", is the less-than-ideal 0dB fan mode, where one of the fans twitches constantly as if trying to spin up. This causes an audible sound that can be heard if you have a semi-quiet PC. Oh and one card even had a few loose fins rattling on the heatsink.

As a side note, all three cards had "Made in China" on the serial number sticker, where as most of the cards I've seen in reviews seem to have "Packaged in Taiwan/USA/etc." instead.

Anyway yeah, disappointed in this one. I'm no overclocker so I just wanted a as-quiet-as-possible and good performing card. The bad news for me is that there aren't many, if any, "quiet" 10xx-series cards that fit in my current and planned ITX case when ruling out the EVGA FTW/SC cards (FTW was already too big, would have needed special power cables most likely).
Now I need to see if I can even get my money back from the store after sending these back and forth for three weeks or am I 500eur out of pocket with a poor card in my hands.

I'm also starting to feel disappointed with my EVGA 1070 SC. I bought it in the middle of the summer, when I had a dehumidifier running, so it's only now that the dehumidifier is off that I'm noticing the noises it makes. My main issue isn't the fans under load - although they do make a "ball bearing" hiss at all speeds, I'm fine with a bit of noise when I'm gaming. My issue is with the fans twitching at idle. Now that my room is often silent, I can hear an audible sound every time the fans twitch (which happens every few seconds). I don't know why EVGA's fans have this behaviour when other manufacturers' fans just... idle at idle. Of course, it's much too late to return the card at this point, so I guess it's either put up with the noise or sell the card and buy a different one at a loss.