Bought a 3090, loud as hell, unusually hot? Disappointed.

Tengis

Tengis

Supreme [H]ardness
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Grabbed a 3090 from one of my buddies. Kinda disappointed with my first big PC upgrade/purchase in over a decade. Temps seem a bit high... this pic is in the Baldurs Gate 3 menu:

PXL_20230812_140508022.jpg

According to some Google searching my temps might be high. I just installed Afterburner to get the fan speed higher and now it sounds like a rack of servers.
 
More info would benefit you. Make and model of card. 78c is not abnormally high and fans at 1700rpm as shown shouldn't be very loud. If your case has a spot for bottom intake fans, that could quiet and cool your card. But the fan curve is predetermined by the vbios and at those Temps the card only calls for 69% fan.
 
mnewxcv said:
More info would benefit you. Make and model of card. 78c is not abnormally high and fans at 1700rpm as shown shouldn't be very loud. If your case has a spot for bottom intake fans, that could quiet and cool your card. But the fan curve is predetermined by the vbios and at those Temps the card only calls for 69% fan.
Click to expand...
It's a Zotac card with a double slot 3 fan cooler.

Here is a pic after gaming for an hour with fan speed on max.

PXL_20230812_150106883.jpg
 
Looks ok, these GPUs are power hungry and I would not "measurebrate over the temps".
You are only as good as the ambient case/room temps.
My Zotac is about the same temp. The VRM are rated at around 120 C from the OEM.
 
Temps will depend on case temp, ambient etc. Any card that pulls 350w will need a well ventilated case. Basically lots of fans and low resistance. E.g. with decent ventilation of 2x140mm noctuas spinning at around 1100rpm with positive case pressure and moderate airflow resistance the difference between exhaust and front of the case internal air temp would be 4-5 degrees with a 200w card and 12-15 degrees with 350w card. If you don't get rid of the hot air then your card will run very hot as it will be circulating and "cooling" with hot air. Best thing would be to measure temp just below the card with case closed and exhaust temp as those will be indicators with regards to if you have enough case ventilation.

Having 90+ degrees on the memory is normal on air and how cool it runs depends on the capacity of the cooler along with airtemp around the card. Cards with high end coolers will typically sit between low 60s and low 70s depending on the fan profile, but not sure if the zotac card has a high end cooler. With high end coolers I'm thinking of cards like Asus Strix, the MSI Gaming and Supreme series and similar.
 
3090s are notorious for running very hot. They have memory modules on the backside of the PCB. Your hotspot looks pretty hot. Consider a heat wicking backplate if you want to improve temps. Repasting the cooler with higher end paste will help a little also. These are things you can do but also mess up the installation of the backplate or main cooler on the card if you're not experienced. I've done it many times but some for some it could be intimidating if a mistake is made it could be a can of worms. Generally speaking it's a better idea to buy a newer generation card vs the older equivalent because of improvement in tech that has better thermal performance etc. I've been screaming stay away from the 3000 series for a while now but that's just my preference. A lot of users will say it's fine and just ignore the high temps. Personally I'm sensitive to the heat my rig puts out. So I spend extra on cooling (u can see in my sig) and it definitely is unnecessary and costs more but it is more "luxurious". Takes things that matter to you into consideration for how you go about building your rig.
 
hititnquitit said:
Has the heatsink ever been pulled and die repasted. If not that may give you a nice drop in temps. While your at it take a look at the thermal pads or just go ahead and replace them if the card is 4 to 5 years old.
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I don't think it's been pulled before.

I got the card for $500 from my friend or else I wouldn't have even considered it.
 
I'd be looking into your case airflow. 100% fan shouldn't be needed. You also can try undervolting alongside power limiting to get the card cooler with the same performance after that.
 
Those ran hot. I have a 3090Fe, and I replaced the thermal pads with better ones, and repasted the GPU with thermal grizzly kryonaut (and really there are better pastes than this now. Stay away from the liquid metal ones, more trouble than it's worth).

I forgot to screencap the before temps, but you get the idea from your own experience. After some hours of Cyberpunk, before the thermal rework, I was seeing up to 104C on memory, and iirc mid 80's or low 90's on the GPU. I know the hotspot was more than 10C higher than GPU temp.

This is after the thermal pads and paste work:
After several hours of cyberpunk2077 - gpu at +100 cv, +100 clock, +750 vram, 114 power limit
1691856151193.png


15 to 18C lower on the vRam
10 to 12C lower on the GPU

The ram temps were a huge improvement. The chips on the backside of the card only have the backplate as a heatsink. The power usage for vRam is 51.1W (see MVDDC max), which is both sides' chips, so 25.5W power thru the backside 12Gb vRam.
So it's not a huge amount of power in the vRam (as long as you don't mine on it) to dissipate.
This was also right next to my CPU.

You have a different brand of card, but I suspect you would see comparable temp improvements.
 
GoodBoy said:
Those ran hot. I have a 3090Fe, and I replaced the thermal pads with better ones, and repasted the GPU with thermal grizzly kryonaut (and really there are better pastes than this now. Stay away from the liquid metal ones, more trouble than it's worth).

I forgot to screencap the before temps, but you get the idea from your own experience. After some hours of Cyberpunk, before the thermal rework, I was seeing up to 104C on memory, and iirc mid 80's or low 90's on the GPU. I know the hotspot was more than 10C higher than GPU temp.

This is after the thermal pads and paste work:
After several hours of cyberpunk2077 - gpu at +100 cv, +100 clock, +750 vram, 114 power limit
View attachment 589800

15 to 18C lower on the vRam
10 to 12C lower on the GPU

The ram temps were a huge improvement. The chips on the backside of the card only have the backplate as a heatsink. The power usage for vRam is 51.1W (see MVDDC max), which is both sides' chips, so 25.5W power thru the backside 12Gb vRam.
So it's not a huge amount of power in the vRam (as long as you don't mine on it) to dissipate.
This was also right next to my CPU.

You have a different brand of card, but I suspect you would see comparable temp improvements.
Click to expand...
Awesome results. Good job.

Just if you're a first timer make sure you understand the different sized thermal pads that need to be placed on all the different spots. The slightest difference in another pad size can mean the difference between proper contact or not resulting in even further performance decrease.

Also 500 is an amazing deal. I guess he/she really wanted to get rid of it. I sold my 3080Ti EK blocked for 600 a while back so I understand and I'm pretty certain he/she went with a 4000 series card lol.
 
Yeah I followed a how-to youtube video specific to the Fe, I knew the proper thickness to get, how to take the card apart, etc. Even still it was a bit scary as it was a brand new $1500 GPU. But it worked out.

Tengis is you do a thermal rework on yours, I would look for a how-to specific to your card, and if you need to, contact Zotac to ask them what the thermal pad thickness should be.

For $500 that's a score, congrats!
 
Your card should not be that hot and loud by default:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zotac-geforce-rtx-3090-trinity/31.html

Perhaps try to run it with side panels of the case off to check if its starved for airflow. If still hot, this card might need repasting and new thermal pads as people have stated above.

Remove the overclock you made already first (if you have one), so you have a baseline.
 
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All your charts look completely normal to me. Few things I'm noting. First off, it's a Zotac 3090. AFAIK Zotac is one of the cheaper AIB solutions where you pay less and you get less cooling performance. Keep in mind that even the better-tested and more expensive AIB cards can get pretty hot and pretty loud, especially with the 3090 is concerned. Second, is that you will most likely not see a measurable difference from swapping out thermal paste. It's never a bad idea to refresh thermal paste but nine times out of ten, there's simply not going to be a difference. When I worked in the IT shop and people paid me just to swap out their GPU's thermal paste, I've began to consider it to be a "meme" fix.

I'd venture to guess the reality of the situation is that you weren't at all aware how hot and loud these cards can be. Again, even the 3090's with the best cooling capabilities run decently hot and loud compared to previous generations. Yet I notice from the beginning of the thread that you're suspicious that your card is overheating other than vague Google-fu suspicions. This suggests you're sensitive to the issue or searching out an issue without any reference as to if you're actually experiencing an issue or not.

And in case if you're not aware how modern GPU's work - they basically run as hot as they're programmed to, and then throttle when they get too hot. The only thing you can do that would make a significant difference in this regard is to undervolt your GPU. In fact, 3090's are ripe for undervolting.
Tamlin_WSGF said:
Your card should not be that hot and loud by default:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zotac-geforce-rtx-3090-trinity/31.html

Perhaps try to run it with side panels of the case off to check if its starved for airflow. If still hot, this card might need repasting and new thermal pads as people have stated above.

Remove the overclock you made already first (if you have one), so you have a baseline.
Click to expand...
How do you figure? Based off that chart, his initial screenshot makes perfect sense. At 1700RPM, he's getting 78C under load. The techpowerup chart says 76C at 1700RPM. Accounting for potential different ambient temp, case-cooling capabilities, ASIC, etc. - it's more or less where it should be.
 
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Zotac card runs very loud. However, the temps are fine. I don't recommend a thermal job on it. Waste of time. I repasted my 3090 FTW3 12 times. Nothing happened. Tried everything. It was worse than stock always.
90 C on hotspot is very respectable. When I was mining on my 3090s it would easily hit 100 C hot spot.
 
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I'm borrowing a friends 3090Ti because he got it for super cheap and it won't fit in his case (lol.) So I'm "testing" it for him while he waits to get a new case and power supply.
It's a Zotac model, which is unnecessarily long.

1691864413827.png


I reduced the power limit to 80% of its max because it saved me 100w of power and heat, and about 30mhz on the max boost clock. Maybe you should try the same? It's silent as can be in my case. I know I could fine tune the voltage curve a lot better, but I only have it for a week or so and I didn't want to bother.
It's being used mostly for AI image generation.

Edit: oh yeah, my ambient temp is likely WAY hotter than yours as due to a quirk of wiring of our old house - I can't have AC in the office where my computer lives.
 
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t1337duder said:
How do you figure? Based off that chart, his initial screenshot makes perfect sense. At 1700RPM, he's getting 78C under load. The techpowerup chart says 76C at 1700RPM. Accounting for potential different ambient temp, case-cooling capabilities, ASIC, etc. - it's more or less where it should be.
Click to expand...
Because of his second screenshot taken after an hour with full fan blast. Techpowerup takes its measurements 2 minutes after card have reached its thermal equilibrium after a period of 100% load. Clearly thats not the case for OP from initial screenshot vs second one. Bad airflow or shitty pasting can often be the cause of that.
 
I don't have BG3 to test to see what it does to my 3090, but I haven't noticed anything abnormal with it running anymore loud and hot than I think it should. It certainly can be a power hungry card and my understanding is BG3 can be a pretty demanding game. Depending on when the GPU was manufactured, the earliest 3090s can be several years old now. It may not be the worst idea to repaste it and replace the thermal pads, while also making sure the fans and heatsink assembly are thoroughly cleaned.

My 2080Ti did have with some issues with some games and I would have to go into the nVidia Control Panel to force some of the settings there rather than in game. When I did that, utilization in those games dropped to where they should have been and allowed the temps and fans to come down.
 
Looking at the first shot of the op and the 2nd shot of the slysly it seems as though reducing teh power limit is a good idea. Same goes for the 4090 where 75% power limit still nets you 90-95% performance. It's the last 10-20% of power that is reaching the extremely inefficient zone, where it doesn't make sense to push it up to because the juice isn't worth the squeeze and by squeeze I mean roasting the card even if it can take the heat the heat is unwelcome lol
 
If the temps bug you, even though they are fine, cap the FPS in the game. It's not a twitch shooter, 72 FPS looks really good, and will let the card settle down a smidge.

Beyond that, I'll say I aggressively downclock my 3080 on titles like this, Diablo 4, etc. Makes no difference in performance, because it wasn't capped out.
 
Just played BG3. Hot spot was 80C. Regular 3090 not TI. Room is a bit warm too.
 
OutOfPhase said:
If the temps bug you, even though they are fine, cap the FPS in the game. It's not a twitch shooter, 72 FPS looks really good, and will let the card settle down a smidge.

Beyond that, I'll say I aggressively downclock my 3080 on titles like this, Diablo 4, etc. Makes no difference in performance, because it wasn't capped out.
Click to expand...
I do similar tricks especially in the summer when It over 90c every day here in Cali. If it's 90c outside imagine how hot it is in my small OC room with a fire breathing dragon right in the middle lmao I play shooters so I can't sacrifice the FPS but the 4090 is so powerful that I can set the power limit to 55% in the GeForce control panel and the game still easily maxes out 144fps locked. The temps are laughable in the high 30s degrees lol like 34-38 lol that's with the AC set to 79c. I also down clock the CPU to keep the voltage to as low as I need. Really makes a massive difference in the temperature of my PC room.
 
Tengis said:
Grabbed a 3090 from one of my buddies. Kinda disappointed with my first big PC upgrade/purchase in over a decade. Temps seem a bit high... this pic is in the Baldurs Gate 3 menu:

View attachment 589781

According to some Google searching my temps might be high. I just installed Afterburner to get the fan speed higher and now it sounds like a rack of servers.
Click to expand...
What make of 3090? FE? AIB?

As a miner, i had to repad/sink my 3080 / 3070 Ti's cause of the GDDR6X temps and deficient FE/AIB cooling solutions..
 
https://www.coolmygpu.com/ either way.

I got them on my above-mentioned 3080s/3070 Ti's.

20-30c ram temp reductions, especially with the 3080 FEs.

Went from ~90ish C to low 70s C stable on the ram temps/junction.
 
OutOfPhase said:
If the temps bug you, even though they are fine, cap the FPS in the game. It's not a twitch shooter, 72 FPS looks really good, and will let the card settle down a smidge.

Beyond that, I'll say I aggressively downclock my 3080 on titles like this, Diablo 4, etc. Makes no difference in performance, because it wasn't capped out.
Click to expand...
Temps he have can be run 24/7 without a problem (but if he has bad paste and/or poor airflow, it might be higher after extended use). I think noise is his primary problem. I totally agree with capping the FPS and downclocking/power limiting the card. As many have stated, the loss is not that big compared to the gains, especially if you want a cool and quiet system.

In OPs case, it might even give him more fluid gameplay doing so. Looking at his second screenshot, the graph of GPU load indicates that he might be CPU bottlenecked. OP also states this is his first major upgrade in a decade, which makes me suspect his CPU is severely underpowered for a 3090. Capping FPS and power limiting the card might give his CPU some breathing room and smoother gameplay as result, in addition to a cooler and more quiet system overall.
 
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Tamlin_WSGF said:
Temps he have can be run 24/7 without a problem (but if he has bad paste and/or poor airflow, it might be higher after extended use). I think noise is his primary problem. I totally agree with capping the FPS and downclocking/power limiting the card. As many have stated, the loss is not that big compared to the gains, especially if you want a cool and quiet system.

In OPs case, it might even give him more fluid gameplay doing so. Looking at his second screenshot, the graph of GPU load indicates that he might be CPU bottlenecked. OP also states this is his first major upgrade in a decade, which makes me suspect his CPU is severely underpowered for a 3090. Capping FPS and power limiting the card might give his CPU some breathing room and smoother gameplay as result, in addition to a cooler and more quiet system overall.
Click to expand...
I have a Ryzen 5 5600x... I mostly just meant that I havent spent a lot of money on any one component.

I will mess around with the power limit and see what happens.
 
Tengis said:
I have a Ryzen 5 5600x... I mostly just meant that I havent spent a lot of money on any one component.

I will mess around with the power limit and see what happens.
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5600x is still a decent CPU. :)

Baldurs Gate 3 is a very CPU intensive game, so using power limit for that game would not be a bad thing for your system.
 
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CruisD64 said:
This sounds like a Linus Tech Tips challenge. How do various builds react to temperature variances? Let's build the best possible machine for AZ dry heat! Sounds fun.
Click to expand...
That is easy, just put a chiller in another room and run the CPU and GPU on that. Not what the OP was asking for though.

My guess is the main culprit for his temps is lack of airflow. Repasting might help a bit, but his temps aren't out of line compared to what one would expect in a case with mediocre airflow. Based on the techpowerup reviews the Zotac coolers are among the worst as they have among the highest temps along with the highest noise so unless he wants to go with water, then increasing airflow and use sound damping any unused top of the case fan slots are his best bets, but it will still be fairly loud.
 
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xDiVolatilX said:
3090s are notorious for running very hot. They have memory modules on the backside of the PCB. Your hotspot looks pretty hot. Consider a heat wicking backplate if you want to improve temps. Repasting the cooler with higher end paste will help a little also. These are things you can do but also mess up the installation of the backplate or main cooler on the card if you're not experienced. I've done it many times but some for some it could be intimidating if a mistake is made it could be a can of worms. Generally speaking it's a better idea to buy a newer generation card vs the older equivalent because of improvement in tech that has better thermal performance etc. I've been screaming stay away from the 3000 series for a while now but that's just my preference. A lot of users will say it's fine and just ignore the high temps. Personally I'm sensitive to the heat my rig puts out. So I spend extra on cooling (u can see in my sig) and it definitely is unnecessary and costs more but it is more "luxurious". Takes things that matter to you into consideration for how you go about building your rig.
Click to expand...
My 3080 was pretty good with temps considering it's Ampere - also, it was very quiet - Asus Tuf 3080. I was considering getting a 3090 - I sold my 3080 to a friend partly because I wanted to upgrade but partly because it is a 10gb vram version - the part I wanted to upgrade was also because my friend was interested in buying it (saving $ on a new card - the 40 series is too expensive here and they didnt' want to spend that kind of $ - plus, my card was 'known' - knew about its performance). The OP got it from a 'buddy' - but, didn't know it was a hot and noisy card?
Zotac seems to have improved its tech - or maybe it's just Nvidia Lovelace in general? But, many 3090s were perceived to have temp issues - and were repasted by ppl, right? That is one of the concerns I had - but, if the paste job was good, maybe it was already done? I contemplated a 3090 and I could even buy one now (that's the $$ amount I have now) but I agree with you - the 40 series is a tech advancement - they're more efficient and hopefully won't have this temp problem. Zotac 30 series - seem to have their share of complaints with fans - I dunno about heat and noise - but, I recall reading Zotac owners complain about the fans. I doubt they're as bad as EVGA XC fans though - stay away from that series/model. I dunno about the FTW but the XC has many fan complaints and I can vouch for it.
What's the RMA status on the Zotac? At least, the buddy could help if he went that route? Either that or re-paste it or live with - 3 options?
 
KickAssCop said:
Zotac card runs very loud. However, the temps are fine. I don't recommend a thermal job on it. Waste of time. I repasted my 3090 FTW3 12 times. Nothing happened. Tried everything. It was worse than stock always.
90 C on hotspot is very respectable. When I was mining on my 3090s it would easily hit 100 C hot spot.
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Interesting but mining - that is a different thing than just gaming on occasion - even if you are gaming non-stop - you are not stressing the card in-game 24/7 but that debate still rages on, I think. :)
 
evhvis said:
That is easy, just put a chiller in another room and run the CPU and GPU on that. Not what the OP was asking for though.

My guess is the main culprit for his temps is lack of airflow. Repasting might help a bit, but his temps aren't out of line compared to what one would expect in a case with mediocre airflow. Based on the techpowerup reviews the Zotac coolers are among the worst as they have among the highest temps along with the highest noise so unless he wants to go with water, then increasing airflow and use sound damping any unused top of the case fan slots are his best bets, but it will still be fairly loud.
Click to expand...
I briefly looked for a better air cooler for it but... meh. I can put up with the noise, its just excessive compared to anything Ive ever had. I remember some single slot cooler back in the day that sounded like a hair drier.

Ive got a Thermaltake Core V21, so I cant really get positive airflow with virtually all of the sides being a mesh. Ive got plenty of fans though.

Since the video card is so close to the side, I could cut a few holes and 3d print a duct... and then have a fan above the video card sucking out.
 
Tengis said:
I briefly looked for a better air cooler for it but... meh. I can put up with the noise, its just excessive compared to anything Ive ever had. I remember some single slot cooler back in the day that sounded like a hair drier.

Ive got a Thermaltake Core V21, so I cant really get positive airflow with virtually all of the sides being a mesh. Ive got plenty of fans though.

Since the video card is so close to the side, I could cut a few holes and 3d print a duct... and then have a fan above the video card sucking out.
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Do this you might be shocked.
Run your favorite benchmark for example 3DMark Timespy Extreme (that's what I run) stock

Then go into the GeForce Experience Overlay options Performance tab and slide the power meter down 5% at a time and re-run the benchmark again taking notes of the scores/temps/boost clocks/fan speeds and if you don't mind report back your results here. I am willing to bet that you will see a very substantial decrease in temperature 🌡️ particularly but see a much smaller decrease in performance in corallation to power loss vs temperature decrease. In other words you can easily decrease the temperature while sacrificing almost no performance if you can find the sweet spot of the power target. Interested in your finding tbh as I have and still do experiment this way with my 4090 till this day.
 
pavel said:
My 3080 was pretty good with temps considering it's Ampere - also, it was very quiet - Asus Tuf 3080. I was considering getting a 3090 - I sold my 3080 to a friend partly because I wanted to upgrade but partly because it is a 10gb vram version - the part I wanted to upgrade was also because my friend was interested in buying it (saving $ on a new card - the 40 series is too expensive here and they didnt' want to spend that kind of $ - plus, my card was 'known' - knew about its performance). The OP got it from a 'buddy' - but, didn't know it was a hot and noisy card?
Zotac seems to have improved its tech - or maybe it's just Nvidia Lovelace in general? But, many 3090s were perceived to have temp issues - and were repasted by ppl, right? That is one of the concerns I had - but, if the paste job was good, maybe it was already done? I contemplated a 3090 and I could even buy one now (that's the $$ amount I have now) but I agree with you - the 40 series is a tech advancement - they're more efficient and hopefully won't have this temp problem. Zotac 30 series - seem to have their share of complaints with fans - I dunno about heat and noise - but, I recall reading Zotac owners complain about the fans. I doubt they're as bad as EVGA XC fans though - stay away from that series/model. I dunno about the FTW but the XC has many fan complaints and I can vouch for it.
What's the RMA status on the Zotac? At least, the buddy could help if he went that route? Either that or re-paste it or live with - 3 options?
Click to expand...
Ya personally I would be tunnel visioned on the 4080 vs the 3090 because of how much better it's efficiency is in comparison. If I had a 3090 I would be looking for the fastest way to get it out of my hands. I am particularly sensitive to heat though since I live in hell (California) and sweating with headphones on makes me cringe 😬
 
Tengis said:
I briefly looked for a better air cooler for it but... meh. I can put up with the noise, its just excessive compared to anything Ive ever had. I remember some single slot cooler back in the day that sounded like a hair drier.

Ive got a Thermaltake Core V21, so I cant really get positive airflow with virtually all of the sides being a mesh. Ive got plenty of fans though.

Since the video card is so close to the side, I could cut a few holes and 3d print a duct... and then have a fan above the video card sucking out.
Click to expand...
Positive pressure is just that you bring more air into the case then you exhaust. If you have negative pressure then you would pull air in through everywhere while positive will force air out of the case and make the exhaust fans work less.

So it is a small form factor case with very little air inside the case. GPUs often like either lots of airflow through the case or larger cases. Are the intake fans on the GPU close to the glass or do you run the MB in vertical positioning? If there is very little room between the GPU fans and the case then the cooling performance will most likely be compromised.

Anyways I wouldn't worry too much about the temps unless your ram starts to go past 100 degrees C on a regular basis. The 3090 runs hot and my 3080 (340w card at stock) with one of best coolers still ran it's ram into the 92-94 degree range and all the memory chips on a 3080 are connected to the finstack through thermal pads. If you want cool and quiet then water is the only solution for a 3090, but not needed if you can live with the noise.
 
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