3090 FE fan curve

[tintin82]

Hi all,

Interested to hear if anyone uses a custom Afterburner curve for their 3090 FE.

I have spent the last week tinkering and trying to lower the fan speed with some success. The stock fan curve seams to rocket from 60% once the vram temps climb, though a simple fan curve seems to overcome this, and if needed the power limit down clo ks if the vram gets too hot. I only actually witnessed this downclocking with the power limit at max 114% in a stressful title such as Control or Quake.

My new curve is 0-40 0%, 40-60 30%, 60-100 30%-100%.

This coupled with a small underclock keeps the fan around 40 % in most tiles, and around 50% for stressful games. VRAM temps do go high, but yet to hit a thermal limit on this curve and the difference in noise is great.

 

[FlyingFish]

I'm check later but my fan curve runs something like the fans at 30% from 0C (startup) which is inaudible through the case. At 45C the fans increase to 50% this remains until 70C where it starts to climb proportionally to temp.
The GPU core doesn't get over 70C, the fans don't get above 50%, and vram maxes out at 96C after prolonged gaming.

 

[Auxiliary]

got mine set a 0-30c at 30% then slowly ramping to 40% at 60c then 50% at 70c ending at 100% at 90c, never seen my core go above 70c and the memory no higher than 104c, this is in a Fractal Design R6 with 4 intake fans and 3 exhaust

 

[newuser]

I only actually witnessed this downclocking with the power limit at max 114% in a stressful title such as Control or Quake.

I've been tinkering with mine for six months and the best settings I've found are completely stock.

Raising the power limit gains nothing but heat and fan noise.

Undervolting can cause instability or stutter unless you're going low or raise the power limit to compensate which negates the undervolt.

The stock fan curve targets 70 on the core and 102 on the vram. Unless the fan noise worries you then leave it be.

So after many hours of tweaking I decided to stop worrying about it and just let it do it's thing.

I had a long gaming session Saturday gone, 4K 120, HDR, RTX and DLSS on where applicable in four different titles. I basically ran the card at high 90s utilisation all day. The fans topped out at 53%, the VRAM hit 102 as it usually does given enough time and the core got to the high 60s.

I've found case airflow more important than GPU settings.

 

[HRL]

Stock volts and a slight OC of +125/+750 on the GPU and VRAM, fan on Auto.

Played around with it for a while but couldn’t see the point in the end. Nothing seems to tax it so why bother?

65C GPU and 96C is the highest I’ve ever seen the VRAM go.

 

[tintin82]

I've been tinkering with mine for six months and the best settings I've found are completely stock.

Raising the power limit gains nothing but heat and fan noise.

Undervolting can cause instability or stutter unless you're going low or raise the power limit to compensate which negates the undervolt.

The stock fan curve targets 70 on the core and 102 on the vram. Unless the fan noise worries you then leave it be.

So after many hours of tweaking I decided to stop worrying about it and just let it do it's thing.

I had a long gaming session Saturday gone, 4K 120, HDR, RTX and DLSS on where applicable in four different titles. I basically ran the card at high 90s utilisation all day. The fans topped out at 53%, the VRAM hit 102 as it usually does given enough time and the core got to the high 60s.

I've found case airflow more important than GPU settings.

You are right about the instability with the undervolt. I found that even some undervolt settings that were rock solid in Quake RTX and Control would randomly crash in the least demanding games. So in the end my 'undervolt' is actually a mhz cap where I have the voltage curve max out at 1750mhz at the corresponding stock voltage. Reason for this is that I found non RTX titles boost all the way to 1900mhz and produce heat / noise / coil whine, while in RTX titles the core stays at 1750mhz. So I figured just cap it there. Eliminate the small bit of coil whine and I cant tell the difference in RD2 between 102fps and 100fps!

The stock fan curve seems fine, but when the VRAM gets to 102 as you say then it takes off. The airflow across the rear of my case is poor due to my massive CPU cooler blocking the way, so the VRAM does get toasty.

 

[newuser]

Reason for this is that I found non RTX titles boost all the way to 1900mhz and produce heat / noise / coil whine, while in RTX titles the core stays at 1750mhz. So I figured just cap it there.

Sounds like a reasonable approach. Mine sits between 1830 and 1980 depending on the game. The coil whine lessened over time to the point where I can no longer hear it.

I ran a 1950/950 undervolt for a while but it was marginal and got me an extra 3% in synthetic benchmarks. Power limit to 114 and an OC got me another 2%. I've found the gains to be had from tweaking to have not been worth the time I invested.

Back to case cooling, I've got 3 140s in the front and one in the back. Case fans run at a max 1300rpm in the front and 1600 in the back on a curve according to Vram temp. Airflow style case. Theres a 360 AIO for the cpu in the roof which tops out at 1100rpm but it's usually about 800. It isn't silent but it's hard to hear over the speakers while gaming with all the 3090FE settings at stock.

 

[DarkBahamut]

The problem people have with undervolts is they don't set them up properly. You either need to have the voltage cap so low you'll never ever be power limited, or you need to actually set up a proper curve. Most people just adjust one frequency step on the curve, but that actually brakes the curve in power limited situations. The card actually gains no performance at all, or actually loses performance because most UV guides make you underclock the curve so when you nudge the power limit you end up underclocked, not undervolted. If you carefully manage the curves it's possible to make reasonable gains. 30 series cards don't have a ton of headroom, but the more power limited you are the better it gets.

An example on my 3090 in MSFS2020 where I'm completely GPU limited:

Stock curve, 114% PL: Average core clock: 1860 MHz @ 0.975 V, 395 W
Undervolt, 114% PL: Average core clock: 1950 MHz @ 0.881 V, 365 W

5% more core clock for 10% less power. But if you test an RTX title like Quake II RTX:

Stock curve, 114% PL: Average core clock: 1710 MHz @ 0.862 V, 400 W
Undervolt, 114% PL: Average core clock: 1845 MHz @ 0.831 V, 395 W

+8% core clock

The real benefit is in frame time consistancy too. If you look at 30 series reviews, both the 3080 and 3090 usually have much worse 0.1%/1% lows than AMD cards, and thats because the nvidia ones are always right into the power limit and the core clock is moving round quite significantly from one frame to the next. If you can undervolt to be just below the power limit you get some impressive gains. Average frame rate might improve by 4-5%, but minimums can go up by 10-20% in the same title. That's far more useful IMO.

 

[oldestgregg]

My TUF 3090 hits 70% fan speed to keep the core at 70 degrees. To be honest Im happy with that. Boosts to 1830-ish and with a more aggressive fan curve, probably higher but 70% fan speed fine for noise/performance.

I know its not an FE but my Gigabyte 3080 was exactly the same fan curve as well.

 

[Guest2]

Think i'ev been using this same fan curve since 780Ti days, maybe before