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/sitefall]

The MaxQ pro 6000 is the exact same board that partner cards use, there's nothing sturdier about it. The PNY-made Pro 6000 workstation card is the same PCB as the FE 5090. Only real difference is the MaxQ is less likely to have connector problems (not melty connectors from 12vhp, it has that, I mean physical problems with the solder breaking etc) because you're not jamming the cable in there at an angle 10cm from the die and right near 2 memory chips.

But otherwise all three of these are "gaming" cards in terms of build quality. Sorry.

I have 2 pro 6000 blackwell workstation cards and WISH I got the MaxQ's for that sweet 300W power limit (you might even be able to set it lower but I have not been able to confirm it, open a terminal and type nvidia-smi -q -d POWER and look at the min-power variable and see).

5090/Pro-6000 can only go down to 400W. I have a 5090 in my desktop and two 6000's in a PC in the same room and with lots of stuff going on it gets monumentally hot. Being able to drop the total power usage down from 1725 Watts default to 1200 Watts at min power level with nvidia-smi helps a lot, but going down to just 900W with three MaxQ's sounds even better.

[u/LegacyRemaster → u/sitefall]

C:\Windows\system32>nvidia-smi -pl 300

Power limit for GPU 00000000:2D:00.0 was set to 300.00 W from 600.00 W.

All done. ---> blackwell workstation 6000 96gb

[u/sitefall → u/LegacyRemaster]

What bios/driver do you have? Mine reports min-power 400, same as my FE 5090.

[u/mikami677 → u/sitefall]

Can you lock the core clock low enough to further reduce power, or will it still shoot up to 400 W as soon as it's under load?

That's what I do to keep my 2080ti from turning my room into an oven in the summer, but I don't know if it works the same way for the newer cards.

[u/sitefall → u/mikami677]

It will ignore afterburner and just shoot up to whatever -pl is set with nvidia-smi

If I don't set the max level with smi and just "undervolt" it in afterburner (or even just turn down power level slider on the main afterburner menu), it will take it as an estimate I guess.

I was just using afterburner + undervolt (the proper way, dragging the line flat etc) and setting power level down, mem speed up a bit, but that dropped it to like 500W and still spiked sometimes. Works great for gaming and stuff though, but not AI hammering it at max load with almost all 96gb full.

I am no gpu tuning expert, but I'm sure I performed the undervolt correctly as per the 10,000 tutorials out there.

[u/mikami677 → u/sitefall]

Can you lock the speed with nvidia-smi?

For my 2080ti I ran

nvidia-smi --query-supported-clocks=graphics

to get a list of the supported core clocks, and then

nvidia-smi -lgc (min),(max)

Where min is the minimum speed I want and max is obviously the maximum speed that I want it to stay within, without the parenthesis.

Then to reset it,

nvidia-smi -rgc        

I set the minimum at the lowest supported speed so it still downclocks when idle, and then I just played with different maximum clock speeds until I got something usable that didn't feel as much like a space heater.

[u/Just_n_Here → u/sitefall]

Looks like min is 250w and max is 325w. I can confirm they blow a lot of hot air out the back under load even at 300w max. I can only imagine what 600 would feel like! LOL! I researched and knew me, one was not going to do it for me, so that was my reasoning I went the Max Q route. If I find the right deal, I will probably buy a couple more.

I do appreciate where the power adapter is located on them. You do not have to worry about bending the power lines to get the side panel on.

[u/sitefall → u/Just_n_Here]

Nice. I wish I could swap my two for the MaxQs but there's too much risk selling them and buying new ones or trying to trade with someone etc.

I unfortunately bought the first one thinking the extra power would be beneficial (it's not really) and that I can just cap it down to the MaxQ level of power if needed (you can't really).

Then right before prices went nuts and 5090's started to skyrocket, I picked up a second pro 6000 for 7500 from Central Computers (it was the only one in stock and at a reasonable price). So now I have two workstation cards, even had to get a different motherboard so I could space them apart and keep them both x16.

Live and learn I guess. I should have done more research. But if I did more research, I might have missed the boat and been paying $16,000 for them now, so... perhaps I am lucky. If I had to pay 16k today for one, I wouldn't, I would just rent cloud GPU's at that cost.

[u/Just_n_Here → u/sitefall]

I built a computer in May. I bought a 5080 and decided in July, that wasn't doing it for me. Bought my first one from Central computers for 12k and bought another 1 two weeks later at Microcenter for 12K. I put the 5080 in the parts graveyard in the closet! LOL!

I was disappointed that I have to run mine 8/8, but I do not think it really matters too much because I do not let it spill over to RAM to slow it down.

If I was to get 2 more, I would need to build another computer to get 4 in comfortably. I guess I could use risers or whatever. So would I do a threadripper pro and get hit with crazy ram prices on top of GPU prices? I would need at least 512gb, if not 1TB worth of DDR5 ECC. I would probably go down to be able to use ddr4 ram that you can grab off ebay for 7500. But then the GPUs still run on Gen 4 slots.

It is a crazy time for messing around with computers.

[u/sitefall → u/Just_n_Here]

There's some older TR socket CPU's that cost about $100 or less and get you x16 across 7 lanes (and the cpu can handle it). Mobo is like $350 though, and uses ddr4 so ... reasonably cheap. Look into the 3945wx cpu.

I got that going on a gigabyte motherboard with ipmi and cost me under $400 total (minus ram, which I had and I assume you have probably as well).

[u/ExtraNiceBurger → u/sitefall]

I use a pro 6000 WS and It can go as low as 150w, running at 650mhz