How to undervolt a GTX 590 and will it help with overheating?

[CK011885]

I have a GTX 590 that gets too hot while playing newer games. When I disable SLI to use only one of the 2 GPU's on board it actually gets worse than when SLI is on and the load is divided. I'm interested in undervolting the card and lower the clocks to see if I can make the temperatures a little better and still run games alright. First off, is this a bad idea? Second, if not, how can I try it? Are there any dangers to the card trying this, or is it similar to playing around with a CPU where if the clocks are too high for the voltage it'll just crash and try another setting?

 

[coozie78]

Lowering the voltage is safe but can lead to an unstable card, you're better off just underclocking and leaving the voltages alone, you can underclock through the Nvidia drivers, if not Afterburner will allow it.
Before playing with the card there is some other things to try, things that will not hurt the frame rate:
Airflow: What case do you have and how many fans are installed? Just adding a second or stronger front intake fan/s can have a surprisingly large effect.
Cleaning: Like all high performance cards the 590 is sensitive to dust build up, computer shops sell can of gas that can be used to clean out the heatsink-if you're unsure as to how to do this, Youtube has plenty of tutorials on the subject.
Thermal paste: It's an old card by now, stripping the cooler off and replacing the thermal paste will probably help-again, check Youtube, there is plenty of tutorials on how this is done.
Cap the frame rate: Oldest trick in the book, just turn Vsync on. Particularly useful if you lower the AA settings to reduce the cards workload.

 

[Ruyki]

I undervolt my gtx460 from 1.037v to 0.912v and that gets me 5-10°C lower temps and also less noise.

I use nvidia inspector software.

I'm pretty sure it can't hurt the card but no guarantees.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Why bother? Sell the card and get a GTX770/780. Less heat, less noise, same performance or better in some cases, less power consumption, more usable vram, single gpu.

 

[Xaser04]

Why bother? Sell the card and get a GTX770/780. Less heat, less noise, same performance or better in some cases, less power consumption, more usable vram, single gpu.

Perhaps because simply buying a new GPU is not an option?!

If the op can get lower temperatures by tweaking a few settings on his GTX590 they why NOT bother?!

Lowering the voltage may be possible with MSI Afterburner although IIRC Nvidia locked down the voltage on the 590 pretty hard to prevent failures. This may mean that the voltage option is not available in Afterburner.