Your GPU’s thermal paste dries out after years of use, and it stops being effective. Now, most people are scared to replace the thermal paste, fearing they’ll either break the GPU or void its warranty.

Fortunately, there’s a better and much easier hack to cool down your GPU, and it doesn’t even require any hardware modifications. By adjusting your GPU’s fan curve, you can make a noticeable difference in temperatures, and I dropped 7°C/13°F for my 6-year-old RX 5600 XT.

Your GPU’s temperature affects more than just performance

Consistent high thermals can shorten its lifespan

Higher temperatures for your GPU will shorten its lifespan, but that isn’t the entire picture. Once it exceeds a certain threshold, your GPU will slow its clock speed to prevent further damage. This slowdown can result in a performance drop, causing stutters and frame drops.

Typically, your GPU thermal throttles when it reaches anywhere past 90°C/194°F. Modern cards like those from the RTX 50-Series can easily reach that mark, considering they’re so power-hungry and the RTX 5090 alone has a TDP of 575W. So, unless you have a really great cooling setup, you’re bound to thermal throttle these cards regardless of whether they’re new or old.

Your GPU’s fans aren’t working as hard as they should be

Adjusting your GPU’s fan curves will help with the thermals

By default, your GPU’s fans aren’t running at their full speed. Manufacturers limit fan speeds to ensure the GPU doesn’t become too loud, and because constant fan spinning at high speeds can cause the bearings to loosen. You can create a custom fan curve for your GPU and find a perfect fan speed setting that will keep your GPU cool.

AMD allows you to adjust fan curves through the default AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition application. For Nvidia GPUs, you can either use MSI Afterburner or Fan Control — the latter provides deeper control over fan speeds.

From here, you can either control your GPU’s max fan speed, which was at just 67% for me by default. You can either increase that total limit or adjust the fan curve manually. With a custom fan curve, you can decide how fast they should spin upon reaching specific utilization levels.

To adjust your GPU’s fan curve, follow these steps:

1. Open AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition.
2. Go to Performance.
3. Click the Tuning tab.
4. Toggle Manual Tuning.
5. Enable Fan Tuning.

Here’s the curve I use as a reference:

This might be aggressive for some users, and then again, I live in a notably hot climate. During winter, I will set the fan curves to default because thermal throttling is hardly an issue for me then, and my GPU barely even touches 70°C/158°F​​​.

The benchmark numbers speak for themselves

I got cooler temperatures and steady clock speeds with the custom fan curve

Credit: Shaheer Khan/MUO

I ran FurMark at a 2K resolution under default and custom fan configuration to test my GPU’s average temperature.

Here’s the difference that I noted:

Aside from the 7°C/13°F difference in temperatures, I noted that my GPU’s minimum clock speeds were higher with the custom fan curve, which translates to better 1% lows in games.

These tests were done on an RX 5600 XT, which is a mid-range GPU from 2020. While this is a big difference in temperatures, users with beefier cards will notice a bigger impact on temperatures, leading to better performance and clock speeds.

You can pair your fan curve with an undervolt

Less power draw and more stable performance

Contrary to expectations that undervolting decreases performance, that’s a very oversimplified statement. Modern GPUs ship with extra voltage headroom as a safety margin, and the stock volts are often too much. You can reduce the volts and find a stable range where you won’t sacrifice much performance and limit the overall power draw, which will, in turn, reduce temperatures too.

I recommend shaving off voltages in 10mV increments until you find the sweet spot. With steady temperatures, your GPU can even perform better than at stock settings, since staying within a stable range allows it to boost clocks more frequently.

Don’t push your fan speeds too hard

I don’t recommend pushing the fan curve to the absolute limit since doing so will wear them out earlier than their expected lifespan, and replacing fans is a more difficult process than changing thermal paste, if you’ve got thick fingers like me. Anyhow, my fan configuration isn’t universal, and I recommend playing around with the curve to find the optimal point where you can control the temperatures without pushing the fans hard, because they can become quite loud.