• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

3090 FE thermals and fan noise

Associate
Joined
15 May 2020
Posts
387
You guys are amazing! That guide looks awesome - cheers. @TT158 thanks mate - really appreciate it!

So I locked fans to 30 percent on the FE and all but shut down the case fans and managed to get it to 80 degrees. Totally silent, even when the newly discovered memory junction temperature hit 110 degrees, so the behaviour that you and a few others definitely seems outside of spec.

Let us know how the undervolt goes. Although in my experience, some games (Borderlands 3, for example) can pull 400W even at 900mV (worst case scenario), while others (the new Call of Duty) will be able to use well over 1V while staying under the 400W limit. Basically I'm saying that the impact of setting an undervolt as described here may vary from application to application, so don't be surprised by that.

yfgrFcf

https://imgur.com/gallery/yfgrFcf
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Feb 2019
Posts
17,935
So I locked fans to 30 percent on the FE and all but shut down the case fans and managed to get it to 80 degrees. Totally silent, even when the newly discovered memory junction temperature hit 110 degrees, so the behaviour that you and a few others definitely seems outside of spec.

Let us know how the undervolt goes. Although in my experience, some games (Borderlands 3, for example) can pull 400W even at 900mV (worst case scenario), while others (the new Call of Duty) will be able to use well over 1V while staying under the 400W limit. Basically I'm saying that the impact of setting an undervolt as described here may vary from application to application, so don't be surprised by that.

yfgrFcf

https://imgur.com/gallery/yfgrFcf


900mV is quite a lot of voltage though, my 3090 essentially will draw the same wattage as stock in 3D Mark if I "undervolt" to 900mV.

in my experience you only start seeing significant wattage savings at 850mV or lower.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Feb 2019
Posts
17,935
This video will walk you through it (you can skip to 8:35 for the Nvidia bit):


It's very easy to do and very much recommended for the Founders Editions, since they have pretty strict power limits. You'll get better performance than stock out of the card by dropping to around 950mV, or really drive down temperatures and fan speeds in exchange for a couple of percent performance by going to 850mV or so. An example of the clocks and drop in power draw (numbers might not be identical for you since silicon lottery plays a role):

graphlyk71.png


As you can see, with that particular card they shaved off 57W of power draw whilst only dropping 15MHz from the stock clock, which is great really.


I've tried following those undervolt guides but the wattage stays almost the same as stock until I get to around 875mV-850mV at which point my 3D Mark scores drop by 5-10%

after watching these guides I was under the impression I can save 50-100w without sacrificing performance but it just doesn't work on my card, the card will either crash or by the time I see those wattage savings performance has dropped 5-10%
 
Permabanned
Joined
22 Jul 2020
Posts
2,898
The Top Fan (made by Delta) where the backplate is the top is loud even at 30% but the Bottom Fan (a different brand, "A" something or other like AOC) is near silent, and even at 100% it is more a whoosh/rush of air sound not a Whirr sound like brass gears in a mechanical toy like the Delta.

I have checked for fins touching the fan and some were very close so I moved them a little but I feel I have a dodgy fan as it has an uneven gap /off centre and wobbles about 2mm where as the Front fan is bang on.

I loosened the screws but the holes have no play in them.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
16 Jul 2010
Posts
5,960
I just tried Control, but for some reason the game won't let me increase my render resolution past my 1440p desktop resolution.

However at everything maxed out, including ray tracing, GPU usage was at 98%, and at a max temp of 67 degrees. FPS between 60 and 70fps.
Core clock reached around 1780 on average, so faster than the stated boost clock of 1695.
Fan speeds reached 42% and max 1100rpm.

Throughout all this the card was barely audible.

Other games stress the card out more, especially VR games. The fans are pretty loud then, but I think that's a combo of my CPU, case, and GPU fans. Generally I'm very impressed with the cooling (except for the memory - will wait and see what non-invasive options are available to make that better).
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Aug 2009
Posts
7,861
I've tried following those undervolt guides but the wattage stays almost the same as stock until I get to around 875mV-850mV at which point my 3D Mark scores drop by 5-10%

after watching these guides I was under the impression I can save 50-100w without sacrificing performance but it just doesn't work on my card, the card will either crash or by the time I see those wattage savings performance has dropped 5-10%

I'm down to 315w i.e. 35w less than default and thats as far I can drop before either crash/lose fps with a small oc to compensate. But thats good enough to keep the heat down (and cpu/case fan noise as a result) so it'll have to do.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
14 Dec 2020
Posts
49
Location
UK
So I've been doing lots more reading and it sounds like there are a number of other people with the same issue as me. I think it's the temperature of the memory. The gpu itself stays well below 70c. I downloaded HWiNFO64 and it says the memory gets up to 104c and that's when the fans ramp up a crazy amount to 2000rpm. No idea if this is true but, the internet (and my intuition) seems to think that generally triple figures is bad for a components longevity. 3090 has a 3 year warranty so that's some reassurance.

In terms of what I have tried, put an extra fan in at the top of the case and removed a wifi card above the graphics card (just in case it's stopping heat dissipating - doubt it but worth a shot!), have the top air vent on the R6 open and the front panel open too. It has improved things very slightly but not much. I'll try and under-volt next and I have some better case fans coming. This post has some interesting things to say on fan profiles, case fans, thermal pads and undervolting.

Thanks @Ravenger

https://linustechtips.com/topic/129...hwinfo64-now-shows-hot-vram-for-rtx-30803090/
 
Associate
Joined
15 May 2020
Posts
387
So I've been doing lots more reading and it sounds like there are a number of other people with the same issue as me. I think it's the temperature of the memory. The gpu itself stays well below 70c. I downloaded HWiNFO64 and it says the memory gets up to 104c and that's when the fans ramp up a crazy amount to 2000rpm. No idea if this is true but, the internet (and my intuition) seems to think that generally triple figures is bad for a components longevity. 3090 has a 3 year warranty so that's some reassurance.

In terms of what I have tried, put an extra fan in at the top of the case and removed a wifi card above the graphics card (just in case it's stopping heat dissipating - doubt it but worth a shot!), have the top air vent on the R6 open and the front panel open too. It has improved things very slightly but not much. I'll try and under-volt next and I have some better case fans coming. This post has some interesting things to say on fan profiles, case fans, thermal pads and undervolting.

Thanks @Ravenger

https://linustechtips.com/topic/129...hwinfo64-now-shows-hot-vram-for-rtx-30803090/

I will say that my memory junction temp reads around 100 degrees and all is fine. Even when I forced it to hit 110 I didn't get fans ramping up. So still a bit of mystery there.

Better case fans is a good shout. I've got 3x Arctic P14 COs at the front of my case and they're great. The stock fans from fractal are really weak and the low static pressure doesn't work well with the restrictive front door.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
14 Dec 2020
Posts
49
Location
UK
I will say that my memory junction temp reads around 100 degrees and all is fine. Even when I forced it to hit 110 I didn't get fans ramping up. So still a bit of mystery there.

Better case fans is a good shout. I've got 3x Arctic P14 COs at the front of my case and they're great. The stock fans from fractal are really weak and the low static pressure doesn't work well with the restrictive front door.

Very interesting - perhaps I've just got a bum card. Cool, that's good to know - those are the fans I bought too so hopefully they will help. Yeah the R6 fans feel really weak - just thinking about how hot the summer was last year and how the card will cope if it's struggling in the winter!
 
Associate
OP
Joined
14 Dec 2020
Posts
49
Location
UK
Just got this back from the retailer I bought the card from;

"The VRAM chips reaching high temperatures are unfortunately normal for the FE 3080/3090, as this is consistent across more or less all of these cards, this isn't deemed as a fault as it is a design flaw on behalf of NVIDIA."

Great! They also suggested a fan profile.
 

HRL

HRL

Soldato
Joined
22 Nov 2005
Posts
3,065
Location
Devon
Thought it was only miners that were struggling with VRAM temps?

Gaming use for me has come nowhere near 110C, and that’s with +748 on the VRAM. <90C typically in fact.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Feb 2019
Posts
17,935
It does seem only miners are hitting temps where it throttles but some gamers come close just not enough to throttle - maybe after a couple years of dust buildup up they will throttle too
 
Associate
Joined
5 Mar 2017
Posts
2,278
Location
Cambridge
As mentioned on another thread, vertically mounting may help.
The issue is that, even using a fan pointed to the back plate the efficiency would be badly limited by the surface area of the backplate.
For those familiar with watercooling, here comes the fin area. The concept is to increase available surface to allow better cooling.
Ideally, a pure cooper or aluminium back plate with plenty of heatsinks would solve the issue, and eliminate the trapped heat between different surfaces: chip/thermalpad/backplate/thermalpad/heatsink. Simply using a good thermalpad straight to the heatsink would be ideal, but the best/simplest solution for now would be to invest on few heatsinks.
Enzotech used to offer some long cooper heatsinks, which would work with airflow from any direction.
Alphacool would work better with airflow from the top or the same direction of the gaps on the heatsink, otherwise the airflow will stop at the first "wall".
At the moment, the maximum I could monitor for memory was 80C. Stress test. During 3D Mark was low 70's, which I'm happy with.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
14 Dec 2020
Posts
49
Location
UK
Just an update on this. The new fans, I have really tried to cleanup the airflow in the case by using an open layout as well as installing a new processor and huge noctua D15S. Temperatures seem a lot better. GPU is super cool around 50oC and memory maxed at about 92 oC - usually it was around 86oC. Fans stick around 800rpm in Control. Put my case fans on 800rpm when I game. Sound is much more acceptable! Thanks for your help everyone.
 
Back
Top Bottom