Hey y’all,
I recently upgraded from an RTX3070 to a 9070 XT (Powercolor Hellhound) GPU. The performance is very good and the extra VRAM is very welcome, so from that side of things I’m very happy with the purchase.
But the new card is noisy - if I have Adrenaline open, then as I see the board power approach 275-300W, there is audible clicking or ticking from the card. I live alone so I don’t usually wear headphones for gaming, which means this noise really impacts me.
And herein lies my question…originally I bought the Powercolor card because it has 2 PCIe connectors, and that was all I had available with my PSU. When I correlated this noise issue with power draw, I thought that my problem was probably that I was running a 750W PSU which is the minimum recommended wattage, but that mine is 3-4 years old. So I upgraded the PSU to an 850W which made things better but hasn’t cured it.
However, with the new PSU now I have 4 PCIe power connectors available (and since I bought an ATX 3.0 model I even have a 12V HPWR), which means the full range of 9070 XT cards are now an option to me when they weren’t before. The retailer has said that I’m still within the period where I can return the Powercolor card and buy a card from a different manufacturer if I want to.
In my head as a non-electrical engineer, taking the ~300W power and splitting that power consumption across three sets of connectors and power hardware means that the load is going to be spread differently and potentially cure this noise issue - but there are going to be people on here who understand this stuff much better than I do, so what’s your consensus? Appreciate any advice!
You might just have a noisy card. So if you are still within your return window. You might want to try and get another card.
I think that getting a card with 3 power connectors might spread out the load a little and possibly provide cleaner power to card. It will also provide you with more overclocking headroom. Or the card might be clocked higher from the factory.
However i would double check and make sure the noise is coming from the card and not the PSU. If it is the PSU you might need a UPS or something to provide cleaner power to the PSU.
I suppose it is possible that there is a correlation between card noise and # of connectors, but the # of connectors absolutely does not have a direct effect on the sound output of a gpu.
That’s equivalent to an athlete’s shoe size making them run faster.
However i would double check and make sure the noise is coming from the card and not the PSU. If it is the PSU you might need a UPS or something to provide cleaner power to the PSU.
As far as I can tell, it’s coming from the GPU but yes, I’ll check again a little more and make totally sure. Perhaps a small UPS is also not a bad idea in the long term anyway, something to think about.
You might just have a noisy card. So if you are still within your return window. You might want to try and get another card.
Yeah, I might give it a go. I’ll check with the retailer that I can 100% return it (they’ve explicitly said this wouldn’t be considered a fault so I need to check my consumer rights). If they say yes, I might buy a second card with three connectors and keep whichever card is the least annoying of the two, returning the other for a full refund.
I suppose it is possible that there is a correlation between card noise and # of connectors, but the # of connectors absolutely does not have a direct effect on the sound output of a gpu.
I’m not saying that there’s a direct (or intentional) correlation. But if I’m remembering high school science correctly then if the card draws 300W at 12V, that’s 25 amps. Currently that current is being supplied by two connectors and whatever “power hardware” they connect to, at 12.5 amps each. If there’s 3 connectors and 3 sets of “power hardware” then a 300W card only needs to pull ~8.3 amps off each of them under less load.
Having more power connectors spreads the load on the wires (rather than using two big wires that are bulky and expensive), but on the card it’s all just connected together so having more connectors wouldn’t change the potential for noise.
I’m sure typical arrangement / binning, for the 9070XT, would have it being a 2x8 PCIe hookup
The theoretical peek draw support, would be 375W [75W PCIe toe + (2)*150W 8Pin]
Typical 9070XT power window is 305, with let us guess, probably closer to 340 max
Any instance of a 3x PCIe hookup, would have to be a high strung / well binned variant
[ex being Powercolors Red Devil]
Since you mentioned, an audible noise-- Is it off the GPU board, or along its heatsink/fans?
A little hard to tell as my PC is not quiet but as far as I can tell it’s coming from the board. I did try tweaking Adrenaline’s fan curves so that under low draw the fan was running (no noise) and under high draw the fan was temporarily slowed down but not stopped (which kept the noise at the same pitch/frequency as before) so I don’t think it’s related to the fan/airflow because the noise doesn’t change when I change the behaviour of the fan.
I’ve confirmed with the retailer that I can order a second card and keep whichever one is least annoying, so that’s what I’ve ended up doing today. They also said they don’t expect the number of PCIe connectors to make any difference and that it’s just the luck of the draw. So I’ve got an Asus card on the way and I can compare both cards and keep the best one, which is acceptable to me and seems a reasonable way to handle this apparent “lottery” without risking actually ending up with a worse card.
As always, appreciate all the input on this thread!
Depends on the card but looking a little higher, more like 315 minimum and 365 max depending on the extent of the overclock. They’re mostly 3x8-pin, so no +12 problem.
It’s pretty common dGPUs cheat so, given like 2x8-pin and 350 W, I’d tend to expect the +12 draw to be more like 330 W worth of current on the 8-pins and 20 W from the slot. The return current’ll probably be something like 230-320 W worth through the slot. Likely with some influence from whether it’s 3x8, 2x8, or 12+4 but there’s next to no data on that.
Some borderline 2x8-pin cards are PCIe compliant for +12 but I’d be fairly surprised if any card pulling more than ~150 W is 75 W slot ground compliant.
Your analysis is correct for perfect current balance. Real world, figure like ~1.4x imbalance at the pin level, though, and as high as 2.6x has been measured on 12+4.
I’m not thinking of any open measurements of how balanced draws are per 8-pin connector but if you want to find out Elmor PMD2 or Benchlab isn’t that expensive. Absent data I’d guess at least 10-20% imbalance.
In my experience when GPU clicking comes up it usually turns out to be something with a fan, though.