Why does my GPU constantly spool up and spin down?

[noisyturtle]

It is like I'm constantly listening to waves crashing on a beach, or wind blowing through branches, but no, it is just my 2070 Super consistently spinning up the fan and immediately winding it down. Over and over, all day long.

Frankly it is kinda maddening, and I tried adjusting the fan settings to be smoother, but nothing seems to work. The only time the fan spins at a consistent rate is when I'm actually playing games. Then it spools up and stays there. But when I'm working, on the internet, watching a movie, all I hear is the fan making washing machine noises.

Why? 

[Leslieann]

Sounds like an airflow issue, specifically a dead zone.
Fans kick on, blow out the heat around it, then it heats up again and the fans kick on again. 

You need something to keep the air moving around it.

[noisyturtle]

Sounds like an airflow issue, specifically a dead zone.
Fans kick on, blow out the heat around it, then it heats up again and the fans kick on again. 

You need something to keep the air moving around it.

It has been a couple years since I've done a dust blow out. That may ease the air flow sitch a bit, hopefully.

[Aljami25]

Yeah, that ramp-up/down cycle can drive you nuts. Try setting a custom fan curve in Msi Afterburner with a small flat zone at lower temps. It’ll keep the fans steady instead of constantly kicking on and off.

[noisyturtle]

So yeah... I did spend 11hrs deep cleaning my entire case, replacing some of the case fans w/ nice new ones, and repasting my cpu & gpu w/ some MX-6
entire project cost me around $350 in new parts
dropped my overall temps by around 40° across all my hardware. Solved that cpu issue as well.

was it worth the time and effort? depends on how rich and lazy you are.