Bitcoin Forum

I have been mining BTC for a while now but only on AMD cards (small timer). I recently saw a friend start mining with pretty much the same electric/hashrate efficiency on average (comparable cards) but his cards are all Nvidia and run like 5-6 degrees cooler for the same hash power. Is this normal? Or am I doing something wrong?

Yes well generally AMD video cards are hotter. Not just when mining, but while gaming as well as while idle. More recent cards have better cooling though and the temperature also depends on your room, ambient temperature, how clean the fan is, etc. Check the best OC settings for your card to ensure you are not wasting electricity. It's known that  while mining cards can hit 80°C (https://spearblade.com/gaming-components/gamers-guide-to-mining-crypto/), high end Nvidia cards operate safely at 100 as well, though for gaming (not persistently).

Where do I start?

Not worth it, just increase the fan speed on AMD, problem solved.

Yes AMD cards runs hotter until the rx6600 came, I think till this day this AMD cards are the coolest among others, look into them if you really really need AMD mining rig setup.

It depends on the card and what subvendor and so on, but no AMD not running hotter.

Tell us what video cards you have and we will give you advice. Each graphics card manufacturer has different models with different cooling systems. If you buy the cheapest video card, then you probably have a worse cooling system. But this is not important, because closed cases can be used.

All depends on generation of chip and how much you overclock then.

As said before it depends on board brand and so on.

My XFX RX 580 8GB 57C and my ASRock RX 6600 XT 54C, mem 68C.

I will challenge you to find a card than runs cooler than Rx 6800 XT from Amd,it runs at 32-37 degrees Celsius with fan at 70% and find me now an Nvidia which does that with the same power settings,Nvidia run cooler only when you have put down to a great extent the power settings.

Both cards and both brands are good for mining,find the one suitable most to you and keep on mining.

My 6600XT run at 40C with 15% fan  or sometimes fan off ;D

Ma favorite cool card was Nvidia Termi

Your question brought back old memories. I don't know if you do it, but back then there was a guy that made custom firmware for GPU cards. You would give him your card model etc and he would give back a custom firmware. You then switch the card to B setting and flash the custom firmware in the B slot. If my memory serves me well the card then ran cooler as well. The custom firmware definitely provided more hashes with everything else constant meaning it improved efficiency a lot. It didn't work that well with reference cards though. If you are having temperature problems with an AMD card, or want to increase your efficiency, perhaps see if you can get a custom firmware for your GPU that may be able to help.

5600 xt running at 38-40 degrees Celsius and fan 40-50%. But I don't think it's very important, because my old video cards have a core temperature of 55-65 degrees Celsius, and have been working for 5 years. I would turn your fan down to 50% to increase lifespan.

My 6000 series card runs cool and never crash.  Best mining cards I've used.