Fans running full speed during games

[patseguin Global Moderator]

My PC is a self-build. 13th gen i7, liquid cooled, 64GB, various m2 drives, and a 5080. Any time I run any game, all the fans spin up to full speed and the room gets warm. Is that just a side effect of modern RTX cards? Same thing happened with my 4080. Or could it be that it does that when you use an all in one cooler?

[SuperHands]

Have you set a fan curve in your bios? 

[patseguin Global Moderator]

On 30/11/2025 at 13:05, SuperHands said:

Have you set a fan curve in your bios? 

No. Maybe I should? I’m actually not sure if it’s this system fans or only the graphics card. The whole thing heats up the room when gaming and I thought liquid cooling would mitigate that. The graphics card has a physical switch for a quiet mode, but the system won’t post when I try that setting.

[Michael Scrip]

On 30/11/2025 at 14:01, patseguin said:

The whole thing heats up the room when gaming and I thought liquid cooling would mitigate that.

The liquid is simply moving the heat to the radiator.  But heat is still being produced.  

And that heat still has to go somewhere.

Liquid cooling doesn't actually reduce the amount of heat your system is generating.  It's just moving the heat in a different manner.

In other words... your room will get hot whether you're using a heatsink/fan or liquid/radiator/fan.

Hot components get hot... something something laws of thermodynamics.

😎

[Circaflex]

On 30/11/2025 at 11:01, patseguin said:

No. Maybe I should? I’m actually not sure if it’s this system fans or only the graphics card. The whole thing heats up the room when gaming and I thought liquid cooling would mitigate that. The graphics card has a physical switch for a quiet mode, but the system won’t post when I try that setting.

thats a common misconception of liquid cooling; the heat still needs to be dumped somewhere. the idea is that you can run lower fan speeds and have a quieter system by using liquid cooling, but no, your room wont run any cooler.

 

edit just realized Michael already answered that part.

 

 

RE: Fans, is your GPU also liquid cooled or is your CPU liquid cooled but your GPU is stock heatsink? How are your fans for your liquid cooling connected? Just via power or are they plugged into any headers on your motherboard/fan controller? Can you share more details on your entire cooling setup?