Question RTX 2070 MSI Gaming Z - Power delivery ISSUE - Power limit stuck at 75-85%

May 23, 2020
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Hi guys, yesterday I noticed my performance where lower while gaming so I checked msi afterburned and immediately noticed that something was wrong...

I've noticed that my GPU at stock settings performed around 30/40% less...
I've also noticed that lowering my power limit to 75% get me more or less the performance the card should do (it's crazy)
I've also noticed that with my OC profile (111% tdp + core and mem oc) I get less fps...
So I did some benchmarks in games and in unigine superpositions... those are the strange results:

1080p Extreme (the card should do 5400pts)
Power limit 75% max temp limit 73 deg------------------------------------------> score: 5230
Power limit 100% max temp limit 81 deg (stock setup) -----------------------> score: 3870
Power limit 111% max temp limit 88 deg----------------------------------------> score: 3610

no temp. throttling, always (in all 3 scenarios) power limit at 1, sometimes voltage limit at 1.

There's something wrong for sure, I've also recorded 2 videos where you can clearly see that changing the power limit cause fps to do incoherent changes... (it does the same in other games)

I've tried to: check bios update, update gpu driver, uninstall gpu driver with DDU and reinstall, uninstall and reinstall afterburner with revo uninstaller, deleted all afterburner profiles/settings files.... Nothing...
My GPU at stock does 30/40% performance and for some magic at 75% power limit it does around what it should do at stock... maybe it's some kind of software/firmware problem.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbra3ZiMzRU

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRRIgSdDHxE
 
May 23, 2020
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UPDATE:
Just find out that no matter how I set up the Power Limit, the GPU never goes beyond 75-80-85% (in kombustor, furmark and games) (keeps changing between those values).
So I think it's some power delivery issue. I have a corsair CX650M from 3/4 years.
I've tried to switch the gpu power camble and also changed the pins where it is attached but nothing.
That problem appeared randomly so I think the PSU is dying or the GPU has some problem. Maybe some software problem but I doubt.
Any suggestion? In few days I will try the GPU on another computer and in the same one but with a different psu.
 
May 23, 2020
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9700K, as I said the gpu was ok until yesterday....
By the way software like furmark does not use a lot of CPU, they are designed to push the GPU at their limit.
 
Jan 12, 2021
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I had the exact same power limit issue with pretty much the same PC config (i7 9700k + msi rtx 2070 gaming z) apart from the PSU.

I've managed to find what exactly caused my gpu to behave like that. It turned out that my gpu's VRAM chips were severly overheating for some reason I have't figured out yet (and I probably never will, lol). The die temps were looking a-okay as far as I could tell from the sensors reading in GPU-Z, but the gpu was throttling the power consumption anyway, so it couldn't quite reach the supposed performance.
Upon gpu's disassembly I found VRAM thermal pads to be severly damaged by the heat. They were not resilient at all and were coming off the chips tearing and in pieces, while other pads (VRM ones for instance) were looking factory new. I replaced all eight of the VRAM thermal pads and partially replaced the VRM ones too (I used 1.5mm thick thermal pads, which were a perfect hit) and also did a die repaste with a good thermal compound. Oh yeah, for my finishing move I gave the whole gpu cooling system a good cleanup to remove any dust/dirt. This whole operation actually brought the performance back to 100%. No clue if it will last long, but I hope for it. So far it's been almost a week without any signs of power throttling, but your mileage may vary of course
 

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