3090 and 3090 Ti power spikes?

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pavel

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My memory is crap, sorry..... I might have asked a similar question or discussed this already - in fact, I will say, probably.

I'm reading about power spikes with the Ampere 3090 series - so both 3090 and 3090 Ti (Ti, especially?) - and I have a Corsair RM850x psu - so, it's a good Gold rated one - but, I dunno if the 850W is enough. If either of this series should have a 1000W psu - on the safe side - then, my investment in a gpu goes up another $200 or more - which is going into 7900 XT and 4070 Ti territory (used).

I am looking at used cards too - which are 'good' deals if nothing is wrong with the card. MSI 3090 Ti Trio and ASUS 3090 Tuf. Same price more or less.

I want it for gaming, Compute/Blender and Video Editing/DR - gaming is 2nd priority. I don't see the 4080 being discounted enough and even the used ones are $1300 - that's still $500 more. I was gonna wait until Black Friday and see if there's any deals but I doubt it will go down very much. The 4080 Super is supposedly coming out but I don't think the prices of the other cards will go down much.

If I went for a used 3090 / 3090 Ti - is the power spike issue/possibility - requiring me to upgrade my psu? :-/ I know I can undervolt and I was going to pursue that - but, in Linux, that's a pita and I would like to dual boot at some point. I guess I'd use Windows for a while and undervolt. I'd have to?
 
3090 has 350W TDP, up to about 417W if overclocked and ran at 114% power target.
650W is the minimum, so they are allowing 300w for the rest of the computer. If you have 850W it would be fine. If you OC the 3090 that still leaves 433W for the rest of the computer.

Those power amounts are the peaks, the loads are not typically at the max, 100% of the time. 1000W gives you more headroom, but I think you will be fine. When your PSU wears out eventually, replace it with a 1000W to 1200W at that time. But for now I think you are good to go.
 
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Power spikes on RTX 3090 cards are a real thing. Twice now I've had 1200w PSU's that I ran in my main gaming rig and neither of those units can do so now. The Corsair AX1200 I had was close to five years old when I got my RTX 3090 and after about two weeks, my system would hard lock anytime I played Cyberpunk 2077. When I investigated the cause of this problem, I found that the system would hard lock or shut down anytime the GPU drew 347w exactly. Due to capacitor aging or whatever, it couldn't handle that. Yet, the PSU was sufficient for every other game at the time.

Just this last week I ran into the exact same problem. Same thing. At 347w my PSU would suddenly shut off and come right back on leading to the random reboot of the system. In the second case it only happened when the PSU had been operating for about two hours. Once it started causing random reboots, they'd happen every 20 minutes or so. This time it was a Seasonic Platinum 1200w (or 1250w) PSU.

I'm not an electrical engineer, so I am not sure what's going on here but I don't think its total wattage that's the problem but rather how hard they spike in terms of draw that may be causing issues. I do game more than most people so I'm probably harder on PSU's than most people. My system demands a lot for what it is. I have lots of fans, a waterpump, RGB crap, 4x SSD's, a mechancial drive and so on.
 
You can go up to about 1500w on a residential 15amp power circuit under the "don't draw over 80%" normative thinking. But that better be the only thing on that circuit.
 
Gamers Nexus did a video about transient power spikes on gpus, and specifically the RTX 3080 and 3090. The video was over a year ago and those were the highest power draw cards at the time. Anyway, they pulled almost double the average power draw for very short spikes.
Some power supplies can handle this and others have issues.

Just found a thread with link to video here:
https://hardforum.com/threads/transient-power-consumption-spikes.2020336/

Not any kind of expert myself so it would be best to watch some of the video if you want more detail.
 
pgaster said:
Gamers Nexus did a video about transient power spikes on gpus, and specifically the RTX 3080 and 3090. The video was over a year ago and those were the highest power draw cards at the time. Anyway, they pulled almost double the average power draw for very short spikes.
Some power supplies can handle this and others have issues.

Just found a thread with link to video here:
https://hardforum.com/threads/transient-power-consumption-spikes.2020336/

Not any kind of expert myself so it would be best to watch some of the video if you want more detail.
Click to expand...
My 650W + 3090 system locked up occasionally during taxing games. After undervolting, the issue disappeared. I'm not sure if there's a connection there, but the 3090 was a power hungry card that really benefitted from undervolting. I wasn't aware of the transient power spikes at that time.
 
pavel said:
My memory is crap, sorry..... I might have asked a similar question or discussed this already - in fact, I will say, probably.

I'm reading about power spikes with the Ampere 3090 series - so both 3090 and 3090 Ti (Ti, especially?) - and I have a Corsair RM850x psu - so, it's a good Gold rated one - but, I dunno if the 850W is enough. If either of this series should have a 1000W psu - on the safe side - then, my investment in a gpu goes up another $200 or more - which is going into 7900 XT and 4070 Ti territory (used).

I am looking at used cards too - which are 'good' deals if nothing is wrong with the card. MSI 3090 Ti Trio and ASUS 3090 Tuf. Same price more or less.

I want it for gaming, Compute/Blender and Video Editing/DR - gaming is 2nd priority. I don't see the 4080 being discounted enough and even the used ones are $1300 - that's still $500 more. I was gonna wait until Black Friday and see if there's any deals but I doubt it will go down very much. The 4080 Super is supposedly coming out but I don't think the prices of the other cards will go down much.

If I went for a used 3090 / 3090 Ti - is the power spike issue/possibility - requiring me to upgrade my psu? :-/ I know I can undervolt and I was going to pursue that - but, in Linux, that's a pita and I would like to dual boot at some point. I guess I'd use Windows for a while and undervolt. I'd have to?
Click to expand...
My 3080ti would cause my Seasonic 850w to trip. However, this was an issue with the earlier models of that PSU being too sensitive with their over current protection and they replaced it no questions asked, which fixed the issue.
 
Mchart said:
My 3080ti would cause my Seasonic 850w to trip. However, this was an issue with the earlier models of that PSU being too sensitive with their over current protection and they replaced it no questions asked, which fixed the issue.
Click to expand...
I've been running my 5800x and a 3080 on a EVGA 750W for a couple years now, luckily no issues.
 
Mchart said:
My 3080ti would cause my Seasonic 850w to trip. However, this was an issue with the earlier models of that PSU being too sensitive with their over current protection and they replaced it no questions asked, which fixed the issue.
Click to expand...
I hear Corsair was doing the same.


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Techpowerup updated their power testing and have more accurate "spike" data in their power usage charts. Check the charts for a recent GPU review. Such as the Asrock 7800 XT Steel Legend.
 
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