GTX 1080TI FE - MSI Afterburner flashing " LIM : POWER "

FloppyPoppy · 30 Apr 2017 at 23:28

Hi everyone hope you are all good. I have been googling this and can find literally nothing on it.

I have a Zotac gtx 1080ti founders edition and it's powered by an EVGA 500W 80Plus Psu.

I understand that this is probably on the far reach of a 500W psu. I was running a gtx 1080 for a good while before this card and had no issues.

I am having no crashes/no noticable performance issues. However MSI Afterburner keeps popping up with " LIM : POWER " on the OSD during games. This comes and goes. This happens with the power limit % at stock and at max. With and without any overclock.

Is this a GPU thing or is this possibly occurring due to my psu being stretched to it's limits?

Has anyone else with one of these cards experienced this before?

Razor Time · 1 May 2017 at 00:30

Put your power limit up to 120% in Afterbuner. Its basically your gpu reporting that it is hitting the power limit/threshold.

r7slayer · 1 May 2017 at 00:32

harry5522 said:
Hi everyone hope you are all good. I have been googling this and can find literally nothing on it.

I have a Zotac gtx 1080ti founders edition and it's powered by an EVGA 500W 80Plus Psu.

I understand that this is probably on the far reach of a 500W psu. I was running a gtx 1080 for a good while before this card and had no issues.

I am having no crashes/no noticable performance issues. However MSI Afterburner keeps popping up with " LIM : POWER " on the OSD during games. This comes and goes. This happens with the power limit % at stock and at max. With and without any overclock.

Is this a GPU thing or is this possibly occurring due to my psu being stretched to it's limits?

Has anyone else with one of these cards experienced this before?

Its the gpu. Its saying the gpu is limited by power. If you did the shunt mod for example. Not saying you should but that would remove power limitations. On the osd on your screen you would most likley see LIM: Voltage. Don't worry about it. Its not your power supply causing that. See that 118% next to gpu. Thats what your power limit is at and if you have increased the power limit to 120% that is your hard limit. Before you card goes oops okay power limit need to throttle.

FloppyPoppy · 1 May 2017 at 00:38

Razor Time said:
Put your power limit up to 120% in Afterbuner. Its basically your gpu reporting that it is hitting the power limit/threshold.

It already is

r7slayer said:
Its the gpu. Its saying the gpu is limited by power. If you did the shunt mod for example. Not saying you should but that would remove power limitations. On the osd on your screen you would most likley see LIM: Voltage. Don't worry about it. Its not your power supply causing that. See that 118% next to gpu. Thats what your power limit is at and if you have increased the power limit to 120% that is your hard limit. Before you card goes oops okay power limit need to throttle.

Could you maybe elaborate on what the shunt mod is? I did get an closed beta for afterburner that opens voltage control for me. Doesn't work on any of the public releases for me.

EDIT : Just looked into the shunt mod, that's a bit out of what im willing to risk attempting with my limited experience / lack of wanting to buy another card.

r7slayer · 1 May 2017 at 04:45

harry5522 said:
It already is

Could you maybe elaborate on what the shunt mod is? I did get an closed beta for afterburner that opens voltage control for me. Doesn't work on any of the public releases for me.

EDIT : Just looked into the shunt mod, that's a bit out of what im willing to risk attempting with my limited experience / lack of wanting to buy another card.

Yea thats why i wasnt advising it. Tbh i would not even look at increasing the voltage in your case if your hitting the power limit. Adding voltage would only increase power draw and temps. Its a shame you cant undervolt.
Shunt mod is very risky. Ive got all the stuff to do it but still kinda off put by it.

FloppyPoppy · 1 May 2017 at 06:29

r7slayer said:
Yea thats why i wasnt advising it. Tbh i would not even look at increasing the voltage in your case if your hitting the power limit. Adding voltage would only increase power draw and temps. Its a shame you cant undervolt.
Shunt mod is very risky. Ive got all the stuff to do it but still kinda off put by it.

Yeah it seems a little OTT given im still getting fantastic performance. Think i need to buy myself one of those wall watt readers. Would be interesting to know what i am pulling.

Besty · 1 May 2017 at 08:45

hi. all FE cards do this, shunt mod not worth it as card still limited by its circuitry. cheerz.

FloppyPoppy · 1 May 2017 at 09:35

Cheers for all the help

r7slayer · 1 May 2017 at 10:13

Besty said:
hi. all FE cards do this, shunt mod not worth it as card still limited by its circuitry. cheerz.

No its not limited by it's circuitry at all. Ive seen the power delivery and infact its overkill for what the GPU needs and can deliver. It's how much the GPU is locked down by limits in the bios where you can only get upto 1.09 volts and draw no more than 300 watts. If there was no limits the card could quite easily handle more power draw.
And shunt mod is the difference between keeping 2ghz and upto 2.1ghz stable. No shunt mod and it will throttle like crazy in any demanding game.

Besty · 1 May 2017 at 12:56

that's not accurate because in the Fe card the increased power draw will come from the PCI-E slot and not all from the power connectors on the top of the card.

any FE card that is hard modded or flashed with a higher tier bios risks killing the motherboard.

if you shunt the card the evidence says no real perceivable perf increase for all that risk anyway.

this is why the top cards (classified, half of fame) have small phases on the PCI slot which usually drive just the VRAM and not the GPU. it is likely that the top tier cards will have 3 8-pin power connectors.

to hit higher clocks than the FE allows you really need 1.2v and a 135% power limit. you will only get that on the top tier cards.

geordiejc · 1 May 2017 at 15:22

I was constantly hitting LIM: Power on my Gigabyte 1080 Ti Gaming OC https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/power-limit-overclocking-1080-ti.18775390/ - even with 120% power on stock settings. IT used 1 x 8 pin and 1 x 6 pin. There's nothing wrong with your PSU.

I now have an Asus ROG 1080 Ti OC and it never hits power limit unless i overclock it. 2 x 8 pins.

r7slayer · 2 May 2017 at 00:33

Besty said:
that's not accurate because in the Fe card the increased power draw will come from the PCI-E slot and not all from the power connectors on the top of the card.

any FE card that is hard modded or flashed with a higher tier bios risks killing the motherboard.

if you shunt the card the evidence says no real perceivable perf increase for all that risk anyway.

this is why the top cards (classified, half of fame) have small phases on the PCI slot which usually drive just the VRAM and not the GPU. it is likely that the top tier cards will have 3 8-pin power connectors.

to hit higher clocks than the FE allows you really need 1.2v and a 135% power limit. you will only get that on the top tier cards.

Wrong because if you do the shunt mod on only the top two shunt resistors that are connected to the 6 pin and 8pin they will be the only things where extra power is drawn from. So it is accurate. Thats why you only do the shunt mod on the two shunts. Not only that but doing all three will put your card into safe mode meaning permanent 139Mhz until you undo the shunt mod. And once again is wrong because another bios does not make the card draw more power from the PCI_E slot. Do you have any evidence that proves otherwise? All PCI_E are rated for 75 watts even though most know it can provide much more power. So all GPU manufacturers have the same power spec on the PCI_E power deliveries on their cards. And yes there is increased performance. Ive seen people running Witcher 3 with increased performance and getting better scores with 3D mark. But the performance increase granted is not as great as overclocking from stock boost. Ive listened a lot to Actually Hardcore Overclocking and personally i think he is a lot more upto date on how card's power deliveries work than you mate no offence.

You do realise that the motherboard is capable of providing atleast 75watts to each PIC_E Slot that a card is inserted into? So if you had 2way or 3way SLI for example that is 150Watts and over the motherboard is providing. It's only low end cheap motherboards that run the risk of been killed. And lets be honest if you own a 1080ti you don't own a cheapo motherboard or power supply for that matter. Iv'e listened to Actually hardcore Overclocking talk about this and he thinks people are worrying too much about this ever since the 480 cards. He even said the only time you run the risk of your motherboard dieing is when its a cheap motherboard. Your Motherboard power connector has more chance of melting before that happening on a high end motherboard thats has been designed for multi gpu. So for a single card no way.

Besty · 2 May 2017 at 08:38

by all means do the hard mod, flash the FE card with a 135% bios, set the slider to maximum and report back.

you won't find anyone on the boards who is willing to own up trying it because they have, in most certainty either RMA'ed their card, their motherboard or, both.

there are peeps who have done the above and set a moderate power limit on the FE card and their scores went up by a couple of points which is within the margin of error.

FloppyPoppy · 2 May 2017 at 08:42

I frankly don't care for scores. All i wanted to really find out was if #1 my psu was possibly causing any issues to the card. #2 If i wasn't getting the performance i had paid for IE throttling due to power limitations on my end. As i have seen above this isn't the case and i am happy

Greebo · 2 May 2017 at 09:43

Besty said:
by all means do the hard mod, flash the FE card with a 135% bios, set the slider to maximum and report back.

you won't find anyone on the boards who is willing to own up trying it because they have, in most certainty either RMA'ed their card, their motherboard or, both.

there are peeps who have done the above and set a moderate power limit on the FE card and their scores went up by a couple of points which is within the margin of error.

What bios? Didnt think there was any modded bios?

tyler_jrb · 2 May 2017 at 09:51

Greebo said:
What bios? Didnt think there was any modded bios?

No modding as of yet. You can only really flash them with another vendor card bios. Some people reporting this helps due to the higher power limit they offer, others not so.

Don't think many here have tested it so not sure exactly.

Greebo · 2 May 2017 at 10:00

tyler_jrb said:
No modding as of yet. You can only really flash them with another vendor card bios. Some people reporting this helps due to the higher power limit they offer, others not so.

Don't think many here have tested it so not sure exactly.

Thought so as I hadnt heard of a 135% FE bios.

varkanoid · 2 May 2017 at 10:19

harry5522 said:
I frankly don't care for scores. All i wanted to really find out was if #1 my psu was possibly causing any issues to the card. #2 If i wasn't getting the performance i had paid for IE throttling due to power limitations on my end. As i have seen above this isn't the case and i am happy

Thats all that counts. You are happy. What limits the FE cards is the cooler. To free up FE cards you dont do a mod or whatever was thats said above its balderdash with a FE card. To release the power of the FE cards you need to put them under water or a better cooler, eg AIO water cooler. I know, I did it with the 1080 FE. Brought the temps down to 50-60C which meant the card could run faster without any power mods.

FloppyPoppy · 2 May 2017 at 11:05

varkanoid said:
Thats all that counts. You are happy. What limits the FE cards is the cooler. To free up FE cards you dont do a mod or whatever was thats said above its balderdash with a FE card. To release the power of the FE cards you need to put them under water or a better cooler, eg AIO water cooler. I know, I did it with the 1080 FE. Brought the temps down to 50-60C which meant the card could run faster without any power mods.

I do have some nice radiators about. Might have to get back into water cooling

r7slayer · 2 May 2017 at 13:27

Besty said:
by all means do the hard mod, flash the FE card with a 135% bios, set the slider to maximum and report back.

you won't find anyone on the boards who is willing to own up trying it because they have, in most certainty either RMA'ed their card, their motherboard or, both.

there are peeps who have done the above and set a moderate power limit on the FE card and their scores went up by a couple of points which is within the margin of error.

Stop acting like you know what you are talking about. Lowering the resistance of the two shunt mods connected to the 6 pin and 8pin makes the card think its drawing less power from these two sources thus allowing the card to draw more power from the 6pin and 8pin. You leave the shunt alone that is connected to the PCI_E so it only allows it to draw upto 75watts. It does not and i repeat does not make the card draw more power from the PCI_E by lowering the resistance of those two shunts. However it's still a risky mod because you have to use liquid metal and ofc it runs the risk of shorting stuff. However there has been many people who have done this mod. Some use electrical tape or nailvarnish to isolate the surrounding area. Personally i recommended using liquid electrical tape as its much easier to work with and does a better job. As long as you don't leave a blob on the shunt which would short it anyway, you're supposed to only lower the resistance. Then non will run off. Unless your case makes your card hang vertically meaning mavity could take effect. Many have done this mod from looking at reddit and Overclock.net and not had any problems. Ofc when some one has a problem they are more likley to post about it.

Flashing your FE with say the Strix bios will just put more pressure on your VRMs that get power from 6pin and 8pin. And the slight issue with load balancing seen as the Strix has two 8 pin connectors so the 6pin may end up drawing just as much power as the 8pin. But once again ive seen a lot do this mod and it reduces the power limit usage. The Strix bios does not make the card draw more power from the PCI_E slot as its still the same spec as the FE.... So once again your wrong. And as ive stated the PCI_E slot can supply more power than 75 watts. Just like 6pin can easily supply more than 75watts too. It's only cheapo motherboards that run the risk of dieing. Id take Actually Hardcore Overclocking's knowledge and advice over yours seen as he has a lot of experience in this field not to mention he is a electrical engineer. He knows what does what on a PCB. And how do you know they have all RMA'ed thier Mobos and GPUs? Can you link me please? I'm assuming one or two people may have because not everyone is careful and there is still a risk of bricking or being a idiot and putting too much liquid metal on the shunt and it running off. There is significantly more risk of this happening than what your stating....

Also when you do the shunt mod it does not increase the power limit.... It just makes the card think the amount of power drawn is less than it is. Other bios just increase the power limit. An extra 15% is power limit gives you about 37 watts extra leg room drawn from the 6pin and 8pin. Problem is you don't know how the load is being distributed over the 6 and 8pin because of the different power deliveries.

And it does give more performance than what you would like to believe(margin of error okay...) However if you notice that in game is a different matter. It could be 1-2 FPS extra at 4k in something like witcher 3 because that game is reknown for making cards throttle back into the 19xxs so keeping 2GHz + Stable makes a difference as not dropping 50-75Mhz from throttling is a performance increase more than margin of error. Ive overclocked my card +165Mhz and noticed a performance increase.

Problem is doing a risky mod like this is not worth that little extra performance for the majority, only some people with OCD.