8 replies to this topic

[Davegt27]

I thought this might help people

[Meep Meep]

I'm rocking the last evga 3090 ever made. Nvidia really screwed the pooch with the 40xx launch and evga was having no part of it and bailed. The 3090 is still smoking everything at 4k though and will last me years to come which is good because its looking like both nvidia and amd are falling apart. Plus intel is rapidly gaining ground as they refine their own gpu line. Still lacking a bit on the high end but the prices are good for what you get.

[LordNothing]

ive been generally happy with the 7900xt. but im getting fed up with the size and power consumption of current line gpus. especially the latter now i got to upgrade my psu because the corsair sf750 overheats close to its limits. its kind of a tall order since the sf750 was supposedly a top rated sfx supply. corsair now has an 850w and 1kw successor but its only gold rated (in other words it runs hot). the rest of the system runs cool as a cucumber.

Edited by LordNothing, 13 October 2023 - 11:19 AM.

[Meep Meep]

I got lucky when I bought the 3090 there was also an evga 850w supernova platinum psu for $130. Microcenter best center for those tasty flash sales. Just wish it wasn't a five hour round trip. It runs cool but the 3090 doesn't. I mean the super size cooler keeps it just under 70c at 100% load but that just means its dumping all that heat into the room.

[LordNothing]

my psu is platnum rated. its got to be sfx because its a 12 liter case, im not even sure an sfx-l will work. gpu eats 300w easy, and maybe 200w for the rest of the system (if my math is correct 300w+200w < 750w with a margin of error of 50%, pretty sure its in thermal cutoff rather than overwatt cuttoff). candidates are slim, corsair has gold rated sfx-l in an 850w and 1kw sizes. silverstone has an 800w and 1kw i think platnum rated, though they cheated on the dimensional spec by using protruding modular connections which makes the psu longer than it ought to be. they are all expensive, at around in the $150-200 range. il have to check some power curves, but il use a gold if the efficiency peak is somewhere about 600w.

[Meep Meep]

Have you tried undervolting your cpu and gpu yet? You can drastically lower temps and power consumption for the cost of a few percent of performance or even slight gains in performance in some cases.

This may or may not apply to your cpu but its a good general primer to get you ready to search up the specifics on how to undervolt your cpu and gpu.

[LordNothing]

the cpu is pretty cool running so i dont think i will mess with it too much. undervolting the gpu might help on those games that push the card too hard, but many do not. ive just been lowering the res to 1440 in games that give it problems (mwo is not one of them and readily runs 4k at 120+ hz). i dont like limiting performance on those things that already run well. my gpu software might let me undervolt on a per game basis which might also help. there are a lot of power settings i still havent tried.

the heat is coming from the psu. it gets uncomfortably warm to the touch, its silent fan feature is likely at fault and doesnt kick in soon enough or run the fan fast enough. i think i might just replace it, since i have the funds and i kind of need an extra sfx supply for another project. good news is i think that the sfx-l will fit, i got about 3 cm of clearance. the bigger psu fan will help at least.

ive been building systems for almost 30 years now and its always a bit suspicious when manufacturers start sucking power when their products dont reach performance targets. its happened a few times. i had a core2 build once that also doubled as a space heater. before that i built low spec machines and it really turned me off to performance builds, then i aimed for the upper middle tier for several builds and had really good results because they didnt demand too much power. then the gpu crisis happened and i eventually got fed up and bough the 7900xt and decided id keep it for several generations until gpu prices stabilize.

e:

that corsair sf1000l i was looking at peaks around where my load is. really hard to tell because their graphs are non-linear. but the sf750 peaks at around 45% load at just shy of 93% efficiency. the sf1000l has a peak around 50% load and gets a little more than 94% efficiency. and since i figure i will be operating in the 500-600w range this lines up good. the former is platinum and the latter is gold. those 80+ ratings are misleading. you really need to check the curves to get the real picture. and its on its way. 1000w is still stupid.

Edited by LordNothing, 16 October 2023 - 04:41 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Heh you really go in depth with your builds. I'm a lazy fk and just dump my parts into old stripped out atx tower cases with no covers. No worries about cooling or efficiency at all.

Well I did buy a flashy rgb tower case for my gaming build but that was only because it was on deep discount so why not. Still have the side panel off.

[LordNothing]

Meep Meep, on 20 October 2023 - 04:00 AM, said:

Heh you really go in depth with your builds. I'm a lazy fk and just dump my parts into old stripped out atx tower cases with no covers. No worries about cooling or efficiency at all. Well I did buy a flashy rgb tower case for my gaming build but that was only because it was on deep discount so why not. Still have the side panel off.

ive just been building computers for a long time. building working apple 2s out of piles of parts in high school. that got me into an electronics program at a tech school, built pcs there, then in college i had an internship with a system integrator. i make a point to build a new computer every few years to keep my knowledge up to date.

lots of people run open computers, i cant on the grounds that i have a cat that's a known cable chewer. but there are some nice open chassis sff builds out there. had to armor my cables with conduit and no-chew tape. but the fact is that most middle tier parts that gamers buy are nothing spectacular and high end video cards are a money pit. just upgrade in the middle tier more frequently. water cooling and led lighting are just more things that can go wrong, and really aren't needed unless you are doing something really crazy (read expensive). and a window in a side to show off your gear is just a hole in your emi shielding. my case is a completely nondescript black box with mesh sides and a really nice black anodized aluminum finish, air cooled and tiny, and in a few short days when my psu arrives it will be able to push a kw, not that i want it to.