Question RTX 3060 ti trying to force PCIe 4.0 on a 3.0-only mobo?

[rollotomasty]

Bought an MSI Ventus RTX 3060 ti OC 3x (upgrade from a GTX 1070 ti) and it worked for about a minute. I loaded Resident Evil 7 with ray tracing on high and after a minute or so of in-game action it force restarted my PC. Tried to figure out MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner to get GPU temps etc to display in-game, but at the time I couldn't figure it out. So I tried loading RE7 again and the same thing happened. The card was detected properly in HWMonitor, but since my PC force restarted I don't know what temperature/power consumption etc it was at when the restart happened.

Event Viewer indicated Kernel Power Error 41. Reinstalled the 1070 ti and it was fine. It may be worth noting that the 3060 ti's TDP is 20W more than the 1070 ti, but the former requires only one 8-pin and the latter requires an 8- and 6-pin.

I've read that some AMD cards have issues with trying to use PCIe 4.0 on 3.0 machines. Might this be the case here? If so, is there a way to force the mobo to stay at 3.0? (specs below)

Since I was very tired when I was trying to get this to work, I RMAed the card before I realized I probably should have updated the BIOS (even though the most current non-beta BIOS is 5 years old); the Nvidia drivers are up to date.

And since I RMAed the card I can't test possible solutions at this point, but I would love for feedback on why this might be happening. I do have an older system (about 7 years).

Specs:
ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VII HERO
i5-4690K smart overclocked in BIOS to 4.4Ghz
16GB DDR3
Samsung 860 Evo 1TB SATA SSD

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Bought an MSI Ventus RTX 3060 ti OC 3x (upgrade from a GTX 1070 ti) and it worked for about a minute. I loaded Resident Evil 7 with ray tracing on high and after a minute or so of in-game action it force restarted my PC. Tried to figure out MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner to get GPU temps etc to display in-game, but at the time I couldn't figure it out. So I tried loading RE7 again and the same thing happened. The card was detected properly in HWMonitor, but since my PC force restarted I don't know what temperature/power consumption etc it was at when the restart happened.

Event Viewer indicated Kernel Power Error 41. Reinstalled the 1070 ti and it was fine. It may be worth noting that the 3060 ti's TDP is 20W more than the 1070 ti, but the former requires only one 8-pin and the latter requires an 8- and 6-pin.

I've read that some AMD cards have issues with trying to use PCIe 4.0 on 3.0 machines. Might this be the case here? If so, is there a way to force the mobo to stay at 3.0? (specs below)

Since I was very tired when I was trying to get this to work, I RMAed the card before I realized I probably should have updated the BIOS (even though the most current non-beta BIOS is 5 years old); the Nvidia drivers are up to date.

And since I RMAed the card I can't test possible solutions at this point, but I would love for feedback on why this might be happening. I do have an older system (about 7 years).

Specs:
ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VII HERO
i5-4690K smart overclocked in BIOS to 4.4Ghz
16GB DDR3
Samsung 860 Evo 1TB SATA SSD

Hey there,

So, that to me is pointing to a PSU issue. What PSU do you have, and how old is it?

The 3060ti and 1070ti are Nvidia cards, so there's no issue in terms of AMD. Also, PCIe 4 is backward compatible. so will work fine in a PCIe 3 mobo. Sometimes a Bios update can fix issues with compatibility.

The RTX model cards have fast 'transient power spikes'. What happens is the card will suddenly pull a high wattage, and sometimes this trips the over protections on what are deemed good PSU's. So if yours isn't of good quality or is quite old, it points to that.

 

[rollotomasty]

My PSU is a Thermaltake ToughPower 750W. It's about as old as the system.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

My PSU is a Thermaltake ToughPower 750W. It's about as old as the system.

Then it's likely that is the issue. Whilst not a bad PSU in it's day, it's possible it's simply not providing enough power for the spikes, and then it trips to protect from damage.

You may need a replacement.

You could bring to a local repair store and get them to swap it out and test for maybe 20£$€ or so. Then you can be sure it's the PSU.

 

[rollotomasty]

Hmm. Ultimately I do need to upgrade my PC in general. I may use the Newegg credit I have from the RMA toward buying/building another system.

Can you explain or show me more info about RTX cards having "transient power spikes"? I'd never heard of that before.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hmm. Ultimately I do need to upgrade my PC in general. I may use the Newegg credit I have from the RMA toward buying/building another system.

Can you explain or show me more info about RTX cards having "transient power spikes"? I'd never heard of that before.

There's lots of resource on it. A simple google search will yield a lot of info.

This is a pretty good vid to watch: The Brewing Problem with GPU Power Design | Transients - YouTube

 

[rollotomasty]

Ah, I've looked at a lot of it since. Had no idea this was a thing.

I do know that the ATX 3.0 standard has been introduced, but I'm currently searching for PSUs that actually use that standard, since it's quite new.

I see your PSU with basically the same GPU I'm trying to get. Perhaps I'll look that up.

Thank you for your time.