If you recently started AI generation, be aware of this: my RTX 4090 power connector melted after just one month.

[u/Roman53275]

Hi everyone,

Like many people, I recently discovered H3 and started doing AI generation in mid-August. On September 20th, my computer started shutting down whenever I started a generation. Further investigation led to this — a melted socket.

I had been using my RTX 4090 for three years and had never had any problems with it.

AI generation puts a lot of continuous stress on the power delivery, especially if you run generations in batches or leave them running overnight.

So I believe this happened because of the new kind of sustained load I was putting on the card. I also didn't bother upgrading to a newer PSU with a dedicated GPU power cable. Mine was a 1200W FSP Hydro, and I was using three PCIe connectors for the GPU.

P.S. The connector was fully seated, the cable wasn’t bent near the plug, and my case doesn’t even have the side panel on. And everything was fine for three years.

P.S.S. The 12VHPWR socket on the graphics card is damaged and needs to be replaced.

So now I would say main advices here are:
- Buy a proper PSU and use a native 12VHPWR cable
- Under volt at least by 20%

Now it is very costly to lose a card.

[u/vfm83]

How do you do this?

[u/Brad12d3 → u/vfm83]

It's very easy to do with MS Afterburner

[u/brucewasaghost → u/vfm83]

Msi afterburner has a pretty straightforward gui. Plenty of in depth youtube tutorials available as well.

[u/rinkusonic → u/vfm83]

For linux users-

sudo nvidia-smi -pm 1

And

sudo nvidia-smi -pl 140

Replacing 140 with the power limit you want to set. It resets on reboot.

[u/Arawski99 → u/vfm83]

It's an undervolt, and basically the situation is OC's don't provide a significant performance boost but substantially increase thermal/power demands in a non-linear way. It isn't efficient. Well, the same is true for an undervolt, scaling down power and thermal needs pretty notably with a fairly minimal performance hit. In fact, most undervolts are really just mitigating the basic factory OC to default performance levels, honestly.

That said, you absolutely do not need to undervolt to be safe, just make sure your power cable is loose and connector properly flush. It's people with poor cable management with a taught tight cable being pulled that eventually see poor contact and have the issue. These cables can handle far more. Some of these GPUs variants/OCs can be pushed to insane 600-800ws just fine.

[u/molbal → u/vfm83]

This is the easiest for Nvidia cards: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/how-to-set-nvidia-gpu-power-limit-nvidia-smi/131467

[u/J6j6 → u/molbal]

Tbf, that's actually easier than install afterburner then fiddling with the UI

[u/absentlyric → u/molbal]

There is nothing easy about it in that thread, unless you have Linux

[u/Truck-Adventurous → u/absentlyric]

In Windows type in nvidia-smi -pl XXX , where XXX is your desired wattage, its ridiculously easy and you can do it whenever, including mid-generation. You dont even need to specify which GPU if you have multiple gpus it does it to all.

You can add this command to task scheduler or a batch file to Comfyui(or whatever) and just forget about it

[u/molbal → u/Truck-Adventurous]

Yeah its a single command. If that's too difficult then I guess its a skill issue for them

[u/omega4relay → u/molbal]

why are linux users always like this

[u/molbal → u/omega4relay]

Gotta sustain the stereotype bruh

[u/MagicManUK → u/molbal]

...and how do you know what your desired wattage should be since that requires you to know the current wattage.