Question 3090 and an ITX

cogsman

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Dec 27, 2020
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Hi All,

I am able to get an ASUS ROG Strix 3090 at a great price.

  • My case is a Thermaltake V21.
  • I am running a Ryzen 9 5900x with a Silent Loop 2 cooler.
  • Asus B550-i Gaming ITX board.
  • 32GB Ripjaws 3600.
  • I have the large front fan, a 140mm be Quiet rear fan, and 2 140mm be Quiet side fans blowing at my current EVGA XC3 Ultra 3070.
  • I have a Seasonic 850w PS.

Given the layout of the board, my 2TB EVO Pro 980 (with heat sink) would be sitting right next to the card, as it does now. I also have a 2TB Sabrent Rocket Q on the underside.

What do you think of dropping the 3090 into this build? Am I at risk of thermal throttling, or worse?
 

Phaaze88

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I won't be able to relocate my 980, but with fans set on turbo, I manage to keep the drive between 45 and 49c.
There's 2 sensors for M.2 drives. For some unknown(dumb?) reason, the less crucial of the 2 is the only one reported across most monitoring apps, and that sensor is for memory.
The controller is the more problematic one, especially on Gen 4 drives. Get HWINFO and check 'Drive Temperature 2' while the gpu is under load.
 

cogsman

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Dec 27, 2020
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There's 2 sensors for M.2 drives. For some unknown(dumb?) reason, the less crucial of the 2 is the only one reported across most monitoring apps, and that sensor is for memory.
The controller is the more problematic one, especially on Gen 4 drives. Get HWINFO and check 'Drive Temperature 2' while the gpu is under load.

Running the Heaven benchmark at maximum settings, followed by a 30 minute flight in MSFS 2020 with the GPU being the limiting factor at between 90-100%, HWInfo64 shows Drive Temperature 2 as 69c max, and 60c average. This is with my fan profile set to Turbo (one setting below Full Speed), and no fan curve set on the GPU.
 

cogsman

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Well... I put my new 3090 into the case. No issues with thermals at all.

But what DID happen? Running Unigine Heaven and Valley, and No Man's Sky at anything over 70 FPS, produces a high pitch whistle. Googling it tells me it's "coil whine" but every freaking video where they tell you to listen, I can't hear anything. My situation literally sounds like someone is blowing a whistle in my room.

Any thoughts? I am using a Seasonic Focus 850W PS. I have three independent power cables running to each of the power inputs (the cables are pigtails, but I am only using one plug per cable, leaving the end dangling).
 

Phaaze88

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The source of coil whine is vibrations of electrical wiring from the psu, gpu, or both. It will not be the same for everyone, which makes it a bit problematic to deal with.
It is however, not harmful - just annoying for the person hearing it.

The frequency can be reduced by way of fps caps(if the game doesn't already have one built in), as well as lower gpu power limits.
Some companies accept returns for coil whine, so that may be an option.
 

cogsman

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Dec 27, 2020
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The source of coil whine is vibrations of electrical wiring from the psu, gpu, or both. It will not be the same for everyone, which makes it a bit problematic to deal with.
It is however, not harmful - just annoying for the person hearing it.

The frequency can be reduced by way of fps caps(if the game doesn't already have one built in), as well as lower gpu power limits.
Some companies accept returns for coil whine, so that may be an option.

I undervolted the card to 900mv @ 1965MhZ. It's unstable lower than that. This removed the noise from Unigine completely. I am able to get 80 FPS in No Man's Sky. I'm having some issue with stability in MSFS 2020. Trying to limit that FPS as well. I tried 120 FPS and it worked, no crash, but the noise came back.

I'm going to try it at 80 FPS which should be more than enough for the sim.

My before and after undervolt readings in Heaven were:

FPS - Stock 93.1 - Undervolt 96
Score - Stock 2345 - Undervolt 2419
Min FPS - Stock 39.8 - Undervolt 40.1
Max FPS - Stock 176.7 - Undervolt 184.3
Temps at load - Stock 74.4c - Undervolt 69.1 c

Needless to say this suits me just fine.

I have to think an 850 Watt PSU should have no issue driving this card. Some threads are suggesting a bigger PSU, but how can one tell definitively what's causing the issue?

I'm running a 5900X, 6 fans, a fan controller, an AIO, a 2TB 908 EVO Pro M.2 and a 2TB Sabrent Rocket Q M.2, 32 GB of 3600 Mhz DDR4 RAM. This is on an Asus B550i Gaming MB. It should be well under the voltage requirements with the 3090 pulling 350 Watts at full tilt.
 

Phaaze88

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I undervolted the card to 900mv @ 1965MhZ. It's unstable lower than that.
Tinker with the power limit instead - it does essentially the same thing.
I've been getting the feeling that some users are being a bit too aggressive with the undervolts.

how can one tell definitively what's causing the issue?
You can't. It's a guessing game at that point.

I'm running a 5900X, 6 fans, a fan controller, an AIO, a 2TB 908 EVO Pro M.2 and a 2TB Sabrent Rocket Q M.2, 32 GB of 3600 Mhz DDR4 RAM. This is on an Asus B550i Gaming MB. It should be well under the voltage requirements with the 3090 pulling 350 Watts at full tilt.
That's not including the transient power spikes that gives RTX 30 a bad rep.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRyyCsuHFQ

[See:
'The Issue' at 4:00 - 4:47
'What Transients Actually Are' at 7:52 - 9:38
'How Power Overhead Works' at 11:20 - 14:13
Might just be better to watch the whole video though... FYI, cards of the same model yield different degrees of transients; 3090s will spike higher/lower than other 3090s.]

FYI(again), software doesn't pick up those transients.
 

cogsman

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Dec 27, 2020
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Tinker with the power limit instead - it does essentially the same thing.
I've been getting the feeling that some users are being a bit too aggressive with the undervolts.


You can't. It's a guessing game at that point.


That's not including the transient power spikes that gives RTX 30 a bad rep.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRyyCsuHFQ

[See:
'The Issue' at 4:00 - 4:47
'What Transients Actually Are' at 7:52 - 9:38
'How Power Overhead Works' at 11:20 - 14:13
Might just be better to watch the whole video though... FYI, cards of the same model yield different degrees of transients; 3090s will spike higher/lower than other 3090s.]

FYI(again), software doesn't pick up those transients.


This is really helpful. It might be worth upgrading to a 1000W PSU regardless. At least then I'll know if it's the card.