I've been using wrong PCIe lane...

[Mac141]

Hello, this is my first post here, but let's go straight to the point. I think I've been using wrong PCIe lane for around 3 months.

 

My PSU is BeQuiet Straight Power 11 750w gold. Manual says that while using single PCIe cable (with dual Y splitter in this case) it has to be connected to PCIe 2 but mine was connected to PCIe 1. The question is, could It damage my graphics card? I also started experiencing black screens not long ago. It usually happens once a week while using fullscreen apps. My screen goes black for 2-3 seconds and recovers quickly. There is no classic TDR error. People from nvidia forum told me that it's a common problem with RTX 3000 cards and that I should use two separate cables instead (still 2x6+2). 

 

[FloRolf]

What 3000 Series card is it? If it's only a 3060 then don't worry about it. For anything higher I'd go with two separate cables just to make sure it gets all the power it needs. 

You can't really break anything though. 

[Mac141]

6 minutes ago, FloRolf said:

What 3000 Series card is it? If it's only a 3060 then don't worry about it. For anything higher I'd go with two separate cables just to make sure it gets all the power it needs. 

You can't really break anything though. 

It's RTX 3080 Gigabyte Vision lhr. It requires 16 pins. I've just finished replacing cables. 

 

edit: This wrong lane I've been using since October... It still concerns me. Could I damage GPU this way?

[kb5zue]

The folks from Nvidia are correct.  Use two different power cables from the psu.

[Kilrah]

15 minutes ago, Mac141 said:

edit: This wrong lane I've been using since October... It still concerns me. Could I damage GPU this way?

No, but single cable on a PSU output that preumably can't supply as much could be the source of the crashes/black screen.

[Eighjan]

23 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

No, but single cable on a PSU output that preumably can't supply as much could be the source of the crashes/black screen.

To echo this; one single cable is designed to supply 150W of supplemental power, even over a pit-tailed lead.  A 3080 needs a good deal more than the total 225w that a single PCI-e lead & a PCI-e slot can supply so it IS best to use TWO PCI-e leads - or a separate PCI-e lead for each power socket on the card in question - to make sure the power supplied is consistent.

[--SID--]

7 hours ago, Eighjan said:

one single cable is designed to supply 150W of supplemental power, even over a pit-tailed lead.

That's a Seasonic recommandation. We're talking about be quite! here.

 

 

[Ralf]

Your psu is multi rail, you should use two cables to ballance the load on both gpu rails. Or else it was a waste of money getting 750w since one rail is idle by using only PCIe 1.

[Mac141]

28 minutes ago, Ralf said:

Your psu is multi rail, you should use two cables to ballance the load on both gpu rails. Or else it was a waste of money getting 750w since one rail is idle by using only PCIe 1.

So these rare black screens are probably related to this. Could this damage my PSU or GPU? I'm kinda paranoid here.

[Eighjan]

9 hours ago, --SID-- said:

That's a Seasonic recommandation. We're talking about be quite! here.

 

 

No single PCI-e cable can handle 300w+, if that's what you've been lead to believe...

[--SID--]

2 hours ago, Eighjan said:

No single PCI-e cable can handle 300w+

I'm not talking about >300w. A single daisy chained cable can provide >150w, 288w to be exact.

[Eighjan]

1 hour ago, --SID-- said:

I'm not talking about >300w. A single daisy chained cable can provide >150w, 288w to be exact.

... which is too little for the 3080, in this instance.