It sounds like a motorbike throttling up and down. very very annoying. I’ve scanned with MalwareBytes, nothing. I’ve updated my drivers and this is still happening. I’ve even underclocked and undervolted my graphics card and set it into a low power mode to try and stifle the usage but to no avail.
is there any way I can literally force the 3D usage down while my computer is idle? My computer isn’t running any program that uses 3D models right now. but it’s like my GPU thinks it’s running some 3D game. hella weird
edit it’s not the fan making the noise either, I’ve manually activated the fan to see if the fan is causing the noise, and it’s a separate nose to the one annoying me. the noise I’m hearing is a more grind-y noise like a motorbike or propeller airplane that keeps going in and out
The “3D” graph is really just GPU utilization. There are other aspects of the system that will utilize the GPU, like the Desktop Window Manager or Hardware Acceleration in your web browsers.
You’re going to want to make sure the noise is indeed coming from the graphics card. CPU will also fluctuate in load / frequency and most fans’ speed logic is bound to that.
I’ve found that, a lot of the time, this repeated “revving” is the result of something crossing a threshold in the fan curve. Adjusting the fan curve can help avoid that crossing that “cusp” back and forth.