Back in 2007 I built myself a gaming PC with two brand new GTX 8800 cards (SLI, baby!) and nearly cooked/choked them to death in first week of operation. What I learned back then was that nVidia drivers did not create a proper fan curve that would ramp up with rising temperatures and that I needed a piece of 3rd party software named Afterburner to keep my system cooled.
It's been nearly 20 years and probably a dozen different graphic card models since then. I have just finished installing a render box for my wife with a 3090 in it. Installed the drivers. Installed the Afterburner. Tuned it.
Then it dawned on me: Is this still a necessary step? What would happen if I did not install Afterburner? Don't nVidia drivers control the fans properly?
Logic dictates it would be crazy for the official drivers not to keep the card cool, but I've been doing it one way for so long that I am too afraid to experiment (risking hardware damage?).
When you're afraid to let evidence lead you, next best thing is surely asking strangers on the internet - so here it goes: Is MSI Afterburner necessary? What would happen if I don't install it? Do YOU have it installed?
I'm also using FanControl and I think it's great.
My case fans ramp up based on my GPU temperature.
The only issue I have with it is it needed an AMD plugin to work with my GPU, no biggie. But the AMD drivers seems to fight FanControl over the GPU fan speed. I may have done something wrong but they seemed to affect eachother. So now I control my GPU fans from the AMD drivers and the rest of my fans from FanControl.
Don't forget to backup your config file somewhere. I'd hate to lose my config.