Question gpu Crosing power limit and PC causing power trips

Mar 13, 2022
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Constant Power trips while gaming

just got a new system been about 3 weeks back but now I'am facing several issues. whenever i play any game (rdr, watch dogs) cranked to the highest settings I keep getting power and volt limit indicators on msi afterburner, and the power usage on msi afterbuner goes above 100% at times(using stock msi afterburner settings). also the boost clock for my card shows 1750 but in game it shows 1900+Mhz, i haven't even overclocked it. plus whenever im gaming on my system after 30 mins the main power breaker seems to trip. I live in a hostel and share the breaker among the floor. There isn't any heavy load item except my PC, this wasn't the case before it just started happening now. I spent alot of money and am really worried, it would mean alot to me if anyone could help. I've attached a picture of it aswell.

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[ (https://imgur.com/a/TzWrrbR)]View: https://imgur.com/a/TzWrrbR](https://imgur.com/a/TzWrrbR)


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Specs :

CPU: intel core i5-12400f

Cooler: cooler master ML240L V2

Motherboard: gigabyte b660m DS3H DDR4

Ram: 2x XPG Spectrix D50 8GB 3600MHz DDR4

Gpu: ASUS Dual GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti V2 OC Edition 8GB GDDR6

Storage: 1x WD 1TB M.2

1x 250GB SSD

3x 7.2k RPM HDD (2TB)

Psu: Thermaltake Smart RGB 700W 80 PLUS

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what can be the issue? psu or gpu? will it damage my gpu and how can fix this? Thank you so much.
 

Phaaze88

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i haven't even overclocked it.
The gpu's overclock themselves, as seen here: also the boost clock for my card shows 1750 but in game it shows 1900+Mhz
To add to this, the aftermarket models tend to have factory OCs already applied on top.


Power management on these gpus isn't great. Try capping the power limit in Afterburner to 85% and see what happens.
In Afterburner, make sure you unlink the power and temperature limits(that chain link icon) before dragging down the power limit slider.


Also, Thermaltake Smart series is crap for gaming on - a psu for office use.
 
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Mar 13, 2022
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The gpu's overclock themselves, as seen here: also the boost clock for my card shows 1750 but in game it shows 1900+Mhz
To add to this, the aftermarket models tend to have factory OCs already applied on top.


Power management on these gpus isn't great. Try capping the power limit in Afterburner to 85% and see what happens.
In Afterburner, make sure you unlink the power and temperature limits(that chain link icon) before dragging down the power limit slider.


Also, Thermaltake Smart series is crap for gaming on - a psu for office use.
thanks for the reply. I have been using this psu for 3 weeks no issue, problem occured today also been using the 500w version with i5-9400f and 1660 super for 2 years no issue there thats why i decided to go for the same psu. ill try your suggestion and let you know. again thank you so much
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Mar 13, 2022
19
0
10
The gpu's overclock themselves, as seen here: also the boost clock for my card shows 1750 but in game it shows 1900+Mhz
To add to this, the aftermarket models tend to have factory OCs already applied on top.


Power management on these gpus isn't great. Try capping the power limit in Afterburner to 85% and see what happens.
In Afterburner, make sure you unlink the power and temperature limits(that chain link icon) before dragging down the power limit slider.


Also, Thermaltake Smart series is crap for gaming on - a psu for office use.
just tried it, dropped it down to 85 still power going above 103%
 

Phaaze88

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sorry clicked apply and now it goes max 87% but lost alot of performance, rdr frames dropped down as low as 48
That's not the point of the test, which is whether the PC continues to shut off or not.
I'd consider the loss of performance a minor thing if it means the PC doesn't shut off - that's annoying.

If it doesn't shut off anymore, I'd point to the psu or the hotel's power grid.
 
Mar 13, 2022
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That's not the point of the test, which is whether the PC continues to shut off or not.
I'd consider the loss of performance a minor thing if it means the PC doesn't shut off - that's annoying.

If it doesn't shut off anymore, I'd point to the psu or the hotel's power grid.
ill do a little testing and let you know, also it's a brand new psu. is 700w not enough for 3060ti? i didn't have any one to consult so i got the one i thought seemed okay. btw is crossing 100% power limit normal or not ?
 
Mar 13, 2022
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That breaker tripping would give good reason to also think about a Apc backup to me.
I would rather Not have what would be the equal to someone pulling my power supply cord out the wall while gaming or whatever? Because someone turned on their airfrayer.
🤣 I'll look into that but I'm still confused. Is the gpu going above the power limit the problem?
 
Two key parts of your story: the setup worked fine before (at the same hostel I presume?); and the tripping happening about half an hour of gaming. The former means the hostel grid was able to supply enough power to your rig - unless something changed there it should still work - so it points out to failure of your rig. The later points to PSU directly - if GPU were to blame the trip should be happening as soon as you start playing since GPU will not draw more power just because you play longer.
My guess about what is happening is that PSU might overheat under heavy load and short thus causing trip. The whole story about using low quality PSU - they work fine until they suddenly fail miserably.
 
So true on the Failing Miserably.

My wife's sytem that had a 750w Thermaltake that was in a Fx build and carried into her ryzen upgraded got replaced about 1 yr ago when her system would just reboot out of nowhere.
That 750w had a easy life and was overkill for her system.
A 2600x not Oc'd and a Gtx 960 4gb.
Run some tests watching the 12v and it would drop to around 11.40v.
I replaced the psu and have had no more issue's.

If I looked your Gpu up right the minimum psu requirement is 750w.

Have you lowered the power limit as suggested and are able to play without tripping the breaker?

Is it just 1 game or is it any game you play this is happing on.
1 over power limt
2 breaker tripping.

I put a portable A/c unit in my son's room,
that was a 8000btu unit @ 8amps.
This apt has 15amp breakers with breakers being tripped we found out that his room, the living room, bathroom and half the kitchen was on that 1 breaker.
If we started the airfryer, vaccum cleaner, or anything else as such it was an immediate trip when the a/c was on.
An Apc helped at least give time to do a normal shutdown. That's why I mentioned it.
Now the 8000btu is in our room and put a 6000btu 6amp in his room.
 

KyaraM

Admirable
If I looked your Gpu up right the minimum psu requirement is 750w.

Have you lowered the power limit as suggested and are able to play without tripping the breaker?

Is it just 1 game or is it any game you play this is happing on.
1 over power limt
2 breaker tripping.
That's a 3060 Ti, not a 3070 Ti, it needing the same PSU as my card would be extremely weird. And my 3070Ti runs on a 750W PSU with a power-hungry monster CPU (i7-12700k), at higher clocks and certainly higher power draw than TC's system without any issues xD
CPU+GPU combined draws around 300-350W in my case, so I don't think my power draw should noticeably go beyond 500W or 600W during peaks. TC's CPU is more frugal at 65W and the GPU should be, too, it got a TDP of 200W vs my card's 290W.
I doubt size of the PSU is the issue. More like quality. Heck, even a PSU calculator spews out a lower wattsge PSU for that GPU than TC has.

What might be worth a try could be undervolting, that reduces power draw of my GPU by around 40-50W. However, most important upgrade, independent of if it fixes the issue or not, would be a better quality PSU.
 
Mar 13, 2022
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Update : I reduced the power by 85% still the breaker goes off. So I went to another location and tried it there. Full load but breaker didn't go off. I'm guessing the issue is with my hostel's breaker. Can anyone tell me how I can fix this ?
Also a weird situation but when I plugged my PC in the other area my frames kept dropping quite a lot. Idk why but the frames and performance went down I would get 80+ frames in GTA before but now I was suddenly getting 65 fps. What could be the reason here ?
 

Karadjgne

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Shared power. You have no idea exactly what someone else is using. At 240v, your whole pc is only using @ 3Amp, which in the big scheme isn't much, but combined with someone using a vacuum or hairdryer or curling iron etc which can use 10Amp or more, that extra by you is a lot. Also figure that hostel is beat up electrically, not exactly a shining example of over-compensation, but more like the cheapest job done by the lowest bidder.

An APC will help, but only to protect you, not to stop the tripping. The wattage used by the gpu going over the power limit is chump change, but at least a battery backup will give you time to shutdown and prevent data loss or damage.

Don't assume it's you tripping the breaker 🤣
 
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Shared power. You have no idea exactly what someone else is using. At 240v, your whole pc is only using @ 3Amp, which in the big scheme isn't much, but combined with someone using a vacuum or hairdryer or curling iron etc which can use 10Amp or more, that extra by you is a lot. Also figure that hostel is beat up electrically, not exactly a shining example of over-compensation, but more like the cheapest job done by the lowest bidder.

An APC will help, but only to protect you, not to stop the tripping. The wattage used by the gpu going over the power limit is chump change, but at least a battery backup will give you time to shutdown and prevent data loss or damage.

Don't assume it's you tripping the breaker 🤣
Okay now I understand thank you for explaining it so well. But can you please tell me why the change in performance?
 
The other outlet might have had low voltage from the other users causing your PSU to struggle to keep up. That is why they always say to put somthing like an electric heater or window AC on a separate circuit. Are you using 220 or 120volts?
 

Karadjgne

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Okay now I understand thank you for explaining it so well. But can you please tell me why the change in performance?
You lowered the power limit. Gpus come with standard clock speeds for whatever they happen to be. Nvidia has an avi called GpuBoost3, which will push a card for as much performance as it can handle. That's limited by power, temps and loads. If your temps are within tolerances, the gpu will try and boost higher, especially if the load isn't that difficult.

Cpu sets the fps. It combines, formulates, compiles, deciphers, places objects, assigns vectors and motion etc to every single frame. The amount of times it can do that in one second, is your fps.

Then it gets shipped to the gpu which renders a wire frame with all that info, then adds color and details, finish renders that frame, all according to resolution.

So the cpu might ship 100fps to the gpu, but then it's on the gpu to put all 100 on screen. If it can't, lowering detail levels can help. That's a gpu bound scenario. If it can, then the fps limit is set by the cpu, cpu bound scenario.

When you lowered the power limit, you limited the clock speeds, limited the boosted vram speeds, basically putting shackles on the card. In a gpu bound game, that's going to hurt performance. In a cpu bound game, it'll have little to no affect with such a small drop in power.

If an 85% power limit shows 87-88% in Afterburner, raise the limit back up some, closer to 95%, that should put you around 97-98%ish, close enough to get basically max safe performance without the annoying 'over limit' warnings.
 
Mar 13, 2022
19
0
10
You lowered the power limit. Gpus come with standard clock speeds for whatever they happen to be. Nvidia has an avi called GpuBoost3, which will push a card for as much performance as it can handle. That's limited by power, temps and loads. If your temps are within tolerances, the gpu will try and boost higher, especially if the load isn't that difficult.

Cpu sets the fps. It combines, formulates, compiles, deciphers, places objects, assigns vectors and motion etc to every single frame. The amount of times it can do that in one second, is your fps.

Then it gets shipped to the gpu which renders a wire frame with all that info, then adds color and details, finish renders that frame, all according to resolution.

So the cpu might ship 100fps to the gpu, but then it's on the gpu to put all 100 on screen. If it can't, lowering detail levels can help. That's a gpu bound scenario. If it can, then the fps limit is set by the cpu, cpu bound scenario.

When you lowered the power limit, you limited the clock speeds, limited the boosted vram speeds, basically putting shackles on the card. In a gpu bound game, that's going to hurt performance. In a cpu bound game, it'll have little to no affect with such a small drop in power.

If an 85% power limit shows 87-88% in Afterburner, raise the limit back up some, closer to 95%, that should put you around 97-98%ish, close enough to get basically max safe performance without the annoying 'over limit' warnings.
But when I switched the circuits I changed back to 100% power limit (default) but had different performance from when I used to play before
 

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