Uplifting the power limit on my 4 GPUs?

Vector Sigma

Vector Sigma

Vector Sigma

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23 Jun 2015
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132
Hello everyone. :)

I'd like a second opinion whether doing away with the power limit on my GPUs is going to be a good idea. I was contemplating with the idea because I really want to get most of out of my rig.

They've already overclocked it by 100-150Mhz, and memory clock a little bit more than stock.
I have four 980 GTX cards installed.

Here is an exchange with the company from where I purchased my PC.

Company:

If you wish to push the graphics cards further than we already have the warranty that we provide would be void. This was unanimously agreed by every senior member of staff at the company. If you wish to go down this route you must understand that if it caused damage to the cards (even whilst it was with us being configured) then you would be liable for the cost of replacement graphics cards, replacement waterblocks (if applicable) as well as the labour associated.

I’m assuming you have this idea from watching videos or reading about professional overclockers over-volting their GPU’s during competitions. It’s worth noting that most of those GPU’s are used for 5 minutes at a time, they get switched on, overclocked, benchmarked and turned off again. They are not stable, they will not function in any other scenario and they will die because of it. Typically they have a shelf life of about 6 months and are used for about 3 days during that period before they’re replaced again. Under no circumstances, would I consider doing this to my own hardware and I know what I’m doing. The people doing this sort of thing are typically using free samples from the manufacturer so they’re not losing out either and it’s purely done to see what is technically possible for short term use, it is not something people use on their 24/7 system.

My response:

The desire of wanting un-clocked GPUs was never intended to be for a sustained period. I just like the feeling of knowing that I’m I can squeeze out every possible juice of performance for the system considering the amount, I spent. If I decided, I want the GPUs unlocked totally, from what point will the warrant for the GPUs expire?

Company's response:

I still think you don’t quite understand what you’re asking us to do with the GPU’s. They’re already pushed as high as they can go without physical mods to the cards themselves. The mods would not be something you can turn on or off at will. They are a permanent change to the physical PCB board in order to remove the restrictions put in place by nVidia to protect the GPU die from overloading, overvoltage and from burning out. As I said before it will likely decrease the life-span of the GPU’s to <6 months because all it will take is one voltage spike and that’s a dead GPU and you would essentially be reducing the resistance on the power limit, which in turn essentially accepts more power from the PSU and leads to greater voltage instability when pushed (this is a gross simplification of the process that’s wildly inaccurate but it’s about as close as I can get without writing an essay).

I hope I’m not being rude, I just want you to be clear about how risky this process is and how unrewarding it is.

My response:

If I’ve understood you correctly, if the power mods have been applied then even if I’m not playing an intensive game the GPU will always be running or pushing the power limits at or near around 100%?

Company's final response:

Sorry, you haven’t understood me at all. The power limit is a limit on the load. You can’t force a load on the GPU. Given your level of knowledge on this sort of stuff I really don’t think you should be even considering it. I don’t think I’m going to be able to explain this stuff better than it’s explained by others online. Even by removing (more like reducing the accuracy of) the power limit it doesn’t mean you get a better clock speed if you GPU can’t handle it. Not to mention that because you have 4 they all have to be able to achieve the same frequency, which makes this process even less likely to actually achieve something. I think you really need to understand the fundamental concepts behind the various methods of modding GPU’s before you should be asking a company to void the warranty on well over £1600 worth of gear.

I can’t teach you this stuff via email, it’s just too complex.

My questions:

1) Are they exaggerating saying the changes of any improvement in performance is remote because, I've got four cards?

2) Will the life span of each card be restricted to or around 6 months even if I don't frequently push the performance to the limit?
 
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Are you talking about about soldering a physical voltmod to your PCBs or do you mean you just wanna turn the powerlimit up in your overclocking program?

Im sure just turning the power limit up in your overclocking software is fine, i dont think that will void your warranty but actually soldering a physical mod to your PCBs is not needed really atm as i think you only really benefit if you using extreme cooling methods, like 8pack.

Sounds like its just a misunderstanding between you and the company to me.
 
First off the bat, any physical mod to a GPU (short of changing the cooler) will result in instant negation of warranty.

Second - No, they are not exaggerating. You will always be limited by your weakest card in a multi gpu set up. Think of a group walking together... they can only walk at the slowest members pace, even if they have all been overclocked with coffee.


Before anything else...how much are you actually getting from your cards? Are you monitoring their load in games? What GPU load are you seeing for them? What CPU load?
 
I don't know if I'm miss understanding something but I have heard of changing the bios so you can add more power to the gpu. Could this be what you are thinking about?
 
The only way to truly Raise power limit is to hard mod the cards via soldering and use an XOC bios.

Secondly yes you are limited by your lowest performing card but its possible to improve the limitation. Bin the cards in order of OC potential Put the best in slot one. The second best in slot 3 the third best in slot 2 and the last in slot 4. In this way often the lower OC too are fine as load on them is low and they are running x8 so stressed less.
 
Removing the power limit entirely is a physical modification to the card and carries some risks, especially if you don't know what you're doing.

Increasing the power limit can be done through overclocking software like PrecisionX and can be adjusted/removed at will.

It sounds like a misunderstanding, but from the first response it seems like you are unclear exactly what you want yourself. My personal opinion is that if you are getting a company to build or overclock a computer for you, hardmodding your graphics cards will serve little purpose other than allowing you to damage them irreparably.
 
8 Pack said:
The only way to truly Raise power limit is to hard mod the cards via soldering and use an XOC bios.

Secondly yes you are limited by your lowest performing card but its possible to improve the limitation. Bin the cards in order of OC potential Put the best in slot one. The second best in slot 3 the third best in slot 2 and the last in slot 4. In this way often the lower OC too are fine as load on them is low and they are running x8 so stressed less.
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Hi 8pack.

I'll pass on this suggestion to the vendor.

Is there a guide you can link me to that instructs how to carry out this modification?

Also, would this reduce the life-span of cards significantly?
 
kaku said:
Removing the power limit entirely is a physical modification to the card and carries some risks, especially if you don't know what you're doing.

Increasing the power limit can be done through overclocking software like PrecisionX and can be adjusted/removed at will.

It sounds like a misunderstanding, but from the first response it seems like you are unclear exactly what you want yourself. My personal opinion is that if you are getting a company to build or overclock a computer for you, hardmodding your graphics cards will serve little purpose other than allowing you to damage them irreparably.
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Hi kaku,

Thanks for your advise, I'm still mulling over it.

I'm basically wanting them to give me complete freedom and controls to push the GPU as far as I want just like one can with their CPU.

Something like this: http://overclocking.guide/increase-the-nvidia-power-limit-all-cards/
 
I personally wouldnt no. Even if you could overclock them each another +200mhz you might see several fps improvement if that. Not to mention unless your cards are watercooled they are going to be struggling to keep cool with a big jump in voltage and power.

A custom bios will raise the power limit to about 125% and increase the GPU's voltage to push the cards a little more. Which is very easy to flash, no hard modding required.

Hardmodding and soldering each card without knowing exactly what to do. Without having the correct skill level will likely be really not worth the risk.

4-way SLI is very diminishing in the way of performance returns. 1-2 cards will see a nice improvement +85-95%. 3 way might see another 25-30% ontop. 4 way might see another 10% ontop. In most cases 3-4 way is hardly worth it at all.
 
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Its too risky for your PC builder to be hard modding cards for you, its basically giving you the ability to easily kill your cards which could lead to future headaches for them.

I would find a guide, im sure kingpin will have released one for a card that old, then have a crack your self if your determined to do it, then the responsibility is all yours and your pc builder will be able to sleep at night knowing hes advised against it and its out of his hands :)

Besides you might have fun modding them your self and youll be a lot happier with the overclock knowing youve done it all ya self.
 
Maxwell tends to scale with cold rather than voltage at ambient temperatures, so I don't think you'll get any extra out of them at all under water. A custom bios would be as far as it's worth going on water. If you did ln2 or dice it would be worth it, but not for water.
 
Vector Sigma said:
Hi D1craig.

I've been told that making any changes to the GPU BIOS will not result in any changes or improvements.
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The one change that could make an improvement is the power limit. On my gpu the power limit is 110% and I think the extra voltage is 87mv? With a modded bios you could increase these limits.
 
^^ This is not doing anything to power limit unless you hard mod the card to fool the monitoring mechanism.
 
msi afterburner can increase the power limit and voltage. thats more than enough for a noob with no knowledge or understanding of card modding.
 
You measure the voltages from behind the core to check that extra core voltage is really being applied?? I think it will allow very small adjustment only.

Power limit is locked in hardware monitoring. You have to short several resistors to trick this to truly raise the power limit.
 
zipp0r said:
msi afterburner can increase the power limit and voltage. thats more than enough for a noob with no knowledge or understanding of card modding.
Click to expand...

your thinking of a different thing. your thinking power limit as in the max draw of the card "Software controlled", however the hard brick wall of power limit(Hardware) is still in place and still kicks in at the same point.
the hardware as set limits and nothing you can do will move them unless as said by 8pack you modify hardware
 
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They were suggesting that if you hard mod the cards and try and run them at the sort of speeds benchmarkers use that it would reduce the life of the card significantly which is correct yeah, without extreme cooling massively overvolting a card would kill it pretty quickly.

Just flashing a new bios with a reasonable overclock on it wont decrease the life of the cards though no, so if thats what theyre gonna do then im sure youll be fine.
 
Taking the voltage and power limits off a GPU is not something to consider lightly - you can easily go from a setup drawing 150-200watt per GPU to needing 3-5x (often for not that significant an increase in performance) that which has serious consequences for the overall system - aside from issues like dealing with extra heat you really need to know the PSU is upto it (not just the on paper spec but its actual rail distribution, etc.) any limitations of the motherboard's power delivery, etc. which is waaay beyond the experience and skillset of your average IT tech - even most of the ones doing custom builds, etc. at your average computer/component retailer.
 
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