I need some help undervolting rtx 4090

[rippy4500]

I want to undervolt my rtx 4090 to reduce temps. And I heard it can actually improve performance, im mostly limited by my cpu anyways so it wouldnt matter much.

 

I dont really have experience tweaking newer cards, my old gpu was a gtx 970 and it worked differently. I dont understand how to use the voltage curve in msi afterburner. Also I dont know any good stress testing tools for this.

 

Specs:

MSI RTX 4090 Gaming X Trio

AMD R5 5600x 4.8ghz smt off

trident z rgb 3800mhz cl18 2x8gb

evga 1000 t2 psu

[Jon-Slow]

You just have to do it with a tool like MSI afterburner. Although I've personally stopped using Afterburner but there are different alternative software out there you can use as well.

 

There is not much to it tbh, you just reduce the power and adjust your clock speed acordingly. You can take a look here.

 

[RONOTHAN##]

20 minutes ago, rippy4500 said:

And I heard it can actually improve performance

It did on the 20/30 series cards (10 series it didn't for weird reasons), but it doesn't on 40 series cards. The reason those cards did was because they were so power limited, but 4090s aren't constantly bouncing off the power limit like 20/30 series cards were, so undervolting actually doesn't help. 

 

If you want to reduce temps with a 4090, lower the power limit. That simple. You will lose performance, but barely any (~5-10% at most given Der8auer's testing IIRC) if you set it to something like 70-80% power limit. Doing anything to actually undervolt the card tends to result in worse performance overall than just lowering the power limit, so it's generally not a good idea unless you're limiting the power limit to something stupid low (~50%, but if you're doing that you should just get a 4080 instead). 

[rippy4500]

12 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It did on the 20/30 series cards (10 series it didn't for weird reasons), but it doesn't on 40 series cards. The reason those cards did was because they were so power limited, but 4090s aren't constantly bouncing off the power limit like 20/30 series cards were, so undervolting actually doesn't help. 

 

If you want to reduce temps with a 4090, lower the power limit. That simple. You will lose performance, but barely any (~5-10% at most given Der8auer's testing IIRC) if you set it to something like 70-80% power limit. Doing anything to actually undervolt the card tends to result in worse performance overall than just lowering the power limit, so it's generally not a good idea unless you're limiting the power limit to something stupid low (~50%, but if you're doing that you should just get a 4080 instead). 

Well is there any way to keep all my performance and still decrease temps? I dont want to lose any performance even if its not that much.

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, rippy4500 said:

Well is there any way to keep all my performance and still decrease temps? I dont want to lose any performance even if its not that much.

Not really, it's just how 4090s behave. It's not like you'd notice 5-10%, and odds are with a 5600X you're going to be super CPU bottlenecked anyway so it wouldn't matter there either. You might be able to make up some of that performance difference by doing a core clock offset at a lower power limit, effectively overclocking the GPU at that lower power limit, but again, it's not like you're gonna notice it. 

[rippy4500]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Not really, it's just how 4090s behave. It's not like you'd notice 5-10%, and odds are with a 5600X you're going to be super CPU bottlenecked anyway so it wouldn't matter there either. You might be able to make up some of that performance difference by doing a core clock offset at a lower power limit, effectively overclocking the GPU at that lower power limit, but again, it's not like you're gonna notice it. 

I can notice small performance differences alot of the time, especially if its a fast paced fps game or something like that. I might just do like 95% power limit and mess with the offset.

 

Also what kind of cpu would I need to not bottleneck the 4090? I may upgrade because some games feel stuttery when the cpu load is really high.

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, rippy4500 said:

Also what kind of cpu would I need to not bottleneck the 4090? I may upgrade because some games feel stuttery when the cpu load is really high.

Depends on the game, though realistically you're gonna need an 5800X3D, Ryzen 7000 series chip (optimally an X3D SKU when released), or a 13th gen chip like a 13600K. I'd probably go for a 13600K and an overclocked kit of Hynix DDR5 (preferably A die, but M die still performs well), though a 5800X3D would be an in socket upgrade if you wanted that. 

[rippy4500]

Just now, RONOTHAN## said:

Depends on the game, though realistically you're gonna need an 5800X3D, Ryzen 7000 series chip (optimally an X3D SKU when released), or a 13th gen chip like a 13600K. I'd probably go for a 13600K and an overclocked kit of Hynix DDR5 (preferably A die, but M die still performs well), though a 5800X3D would be an in socket upgrade if you wanted that. 

I want to go 13th gen, but its a little expensive and they have high temperatures, I would probably go with the i7 or i9 though because they have 8 cores instead of 6 and that helps some games. The 5800x3d is probably fine but it cant be overclocked which I dont like.

[RONOTHAN##]

Just now, rippy4500 said:

I want to go 13th gen, but its a little expensive and they have high temperatures

I've heard people say that, yet I've yet to see it actually be true. They draw a ton of power, yeah, but at the same time they just aren't that hot. Heck, with my setup on a 13700K a single pass of R23 will hit somewhere between 60-70C when at stock settings, no where close to the ~100C that people report and actually lower than my 5900X in the same setup. Granted, I'm on a custom loop and a contact frame, but that's not gonna get 20-30C lower temps. 13th gen, relatively speaking, actually runs rather cool, especially in comparison to AM4, AM5, and 12th gen Intel. 

 

I will give you it's expensive, and it is a very finnicky platform, especially on my Unify-X (there is only one BIOS revision that exists currently that can enable XMP on my memory kit (6000 CL30-38-38-96, so nothing crazy fast), reliably train high frequencies, and makes it behave actually like a 1DPC motherboard with Hynix A die, and it breaks CPU overclocking), but at the same time you're willing to spend 4090 money so I doubt costs really are your #1 concern. Also a 6 core chip really is fine for games, very few actually scale beyond that, and if they do the E cores exist. Only reason I went 13700K is a) I wanted to go for 8 core HWBot scores and b) it was a $50 difference at Micro center between the 13600K and the 13700K, so figured I might as well get the 13700K. 

[rippy4500]

3 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I've heard people say that, yet I've yet to see it actually be true. They draw a ton of power, yeah, but at the same time they just aren't that hot. Heck, with my setup on a 13700K a single pass of R23 will hit somewhere between 60-70C when at stock settings, no where close to the ~100C that people report and actually lower than my 5900X in the same setup. Granted, I'm on a custom loop and a contact frame, but that's not gonna get 20-30C lower temps. 13th gen, relatively speaking, actually runs rather cool, especially in comparison to AM4, AM5, and 12th gen Intel. 

 

I will give you it's expensive, and it is a very finnicky platform, especially on my Unify-X (there is only one BIOS revision that exists currently that can enable XMP on my memory kit (6000 CL30-38-38-96, so nothing crazy fast), reliably train high frequencies, and makes it behave actually like a 1DPC motherboard with Hynix A die, and it breaks CPU overclocking), but at the same time you're willing to spend 4090 money so I doubt costs really are your #1 concern. Also a 6 core chip really is fine for games, very few actually scale beyond that, and if they do the E cores exist. Only reason I went 13700K is a) I wanted to go for 8 core HWBot scores and b) it was a $50 difference at Micro center between the 13600K and the 13700K, so figured I might as well get the 13700K. 

The 13700k also runs at higher speeds which may also help. I can wait for a sale or something on the 13700k and maybe even 13900k if I get lucky but probably not.

 

I could also just get a 4k 144hz monitor. That would probably be the simpler and maybe even cheaper solution to fixing the cpu bottleneck.

[Jon-Slow]

=

1 hour ago, rippy4500 said:

I want to go 13th gen, but its a little expensive and they have high temperatures

 

That's what I thought too. But they really do not.

[Ben_the_average]

On 1/30/2023 at 7:31 AM, rippy4500 said:

Well is there any way to keep all my performance and still decrease temps? I dont want to lose any performance even if its not that much.

what temps are you hitting and what temps are you aiming for?

 

My gigabyte 4090 gaming OC didn't get super hot stock, peaked at 65-70c during stress tests and now I have a water block on it the temps during timespy just now was 48c with a loop temp of 28c and an ambient temp of 25c