Question Upgrading to RTX 4070; Should I consider upgrading something else?

[or10nsharkfin]

This is a relatively small upgrade that I'm making here as I've got an RTX 3070 already.

However, the problem that I'm facing with my 3070 right now is that every once in a while the system just completely shuts off. I could be doing nothing--absolutely nothing at all--and at some point it's like my system detects a power spike and just shuts completely off. Doing some research into the issue I first discovered that it was because, based on what I read, certain 30-series after-market cards might cause potential spikes in power draw which could trigger a PSU's safeguard and shut the system down without warning.

Another problem I run into is that in most games that I play, even on lowered settings, I start getting some serious framerate drops. These might last a few seconds, other times they don't get back to normal until I either close and reopen the games or I alt-tab a few times and it clears up on its own. I've never been able to determine what this was; I think it's the GPU but I can't be too sure.

Regardless of all this I've had the 3070 since around when they released back in 2020 and I'm finding myself more and more inclined to just replace it with a brand new GPU. So I'm electing to take the marginal step up and pick up a 4070.

My current system specs are;

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
32GB DDR4 3200MHz
ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Air Cooler
Corsair RM1000x 80+ Gold Fully Modular PSU

What I would like help determining is if anything I'm using now will cause a significant bottleneck.

 

[geofelt]

Could you be thermal throttling?
Hyper212 is hard to mount properly.
Run HWmonitor.
It will give you the current, minimum and maximum cpu temperatures by core.
If, after having a problem, look at the max temperatures to see if a core or two throttled.

If heat is the issue, get a better cooler.

Or, consider upgrading the 3900X to a processor with better single thread performance.
Run the cpu-z bench and look at the single thread rating.
You should see something like 569:

CPU-Z Benchmark for AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (1T) - CPU-Z VALIDATOR

Best CPU performance - 64-bit - October 2024

valid.x86.fr

Yes, you would do better with the 4070, but not by all that much.

 

[hotaru.hino]

However, the problem that I'm facing with my 3070 right now is that every once in a while the system just completely shuts off. I could be doing nothing--absolutely nothing at all--and at some point it's like my system detects a power spike and just shuts completely off. Doing some research into the issue I first discovered that it was because, based on what I read, certain 30-series after-market cards might cause potential spikes in power draw which could trigger a PSU's safeguard and shut the system down without warning.

The RTX 3070's power spike shouldn't be that high. A cursory glance on the internet is its power spike hits around 350W (though I'll call it 400W). Unless all of that is going down one PCIe power cable or you have 800W worth of other components, your PSU should be able to handle that just fine.

Another problem I run into is that in most games that I play, even on lowered settings, I start getting some serious framerate drops. These might last a few seconds, other times they don't get back to normal until I either close and reopen the games or I alt-tab a few times and it clears up on its own. I've never been able to determine what this was; I think it's the GPU but I can't be too sure.

What's the GPU and CPU doing during these events with regards to say clock speeds, temperatures, etc?

 

[or10nsharkfin]

Appreciate the responses.

The RTX 3070's power spike shouldn't be that high. A cursory glance on the internet is its power spike hits around 350W (though I'll call it 400W). Unless all of that is going down one PCIe power cable or you have 800W worth of other components, your PSU should be able to handle that just fine.

I can't explain this myself. I was definitely using two separate power cables after learning daisy-chaining off of just one was a horrible idea. It would just happen every now and then where the power would just shut off. I've made sure to get the mounting screws lined up correctly on my cooler. I'm not even really sure how to look for a CPU failure if that was the case--and I certainly hope it isn't the CPU as I can't really afford to upgrade anything else for a little bit.

I do need to add that regardless of the responses, I've bought and installed a brand new 4070. I'm already noticing a massive improvement over the issues I've been listing--as in, the games that usually had issues with severe unexplainable framerate drops are no longer doing it. I've been running my PC since installing the GPU about 9 hours ago and it hasn't shut off once. At this point I'm resigned to just believing the 3070 was the culprit, somehow.