Between this and the ridiculous TDP expectations for this generations latest graphic cards people are going to have to start thinking about using dedicated circuits per gaming computer.
I did a nCase M1 build recently and my objective for the build was small as possible, quiet as possible, and as powerful as possible in that order. I still ended up with a pretty powerful machine by going with an i3-12100 instead of an i5/i7 which uses much less power and puts out less heat. The RTX 3080 reference card was the biggest card that could fit into the case which I undervolted.
A lot of people are undervolting their RTX GPU's because for an only about a ~3% performance loss you get about 10C less temp which translates to far less fan noise. I don't know why Nvidia doesn't just have a one click button for people.
nCase unfortunately have discontinued this case based on 'market factors' which I suspect means that they don't anticipate things to be getting smaller and cooler any time soon.
Certainly not much more expensive than a regular mATX build imho.
Bah, this is brilliant. I just upgraded a 1070 to a 3070 and am flabbergasted at how much heat it dumps into my room. One of the reasons I did not go with the 3080 was the ~100 watt lower draw.
Do you know of any good tooling to assess the impact of undervolting or is it a manual guess-and-check process?
Perhaps I'll wait with the video card until they give me the option to do the same there...
You can get great results pretty fast this way. My Mini-ITX build is about as thermally compact as possible given the parts (3080+Ryzen 5600X, NZXT H1), and I'm pushing my PSU to the absolute limits in the stock settings, so undervolting is important for safe power margins since the 3080 can reach ~360W in my testing. I think 30 minutes of tweaking got me something like a +80W power drop for only 10% FPS in Read Dead Redemption 2 @ 4k60fps; I never breach 300W now which is within my personal safety margins, and can native 4k everything.
Some software like Afterburner have "Overclock Scanner" tools that will run benchmarks and repeatedly try to dial these settings in for you, but it really is easier to just modify the curve manually and test your specific workloads.
so not only does this not test the rest of the cpu at all - meaning you can run into problems with other parts of the CPU that aren't stable at those frequencies, because they're not being tested because it's only running the AVX units - but it also doesn't test frequency/power state changes at all, so you can run into situations where as soon as you close prime95 and it drops to a lower p-state, it'll crash.
gpus have run into similar things with furmark and kombuster and other power-virus tests... actually the GPUs themselves will detect when they're running and throttle down, so they no longer even do the thing they're supposed to, but, gpus also change power/frequency states under real-world workloads, just like CPUs, and they don't under furmark/kombuster. this actually caused a crisis at the ampere launch... all the testing had been done with a "pre-release bios" that only allowed these sorts of power/thermal testing, and it turned out that while the chips might be stable at max p-state, they weren't stable when they shifted back to a lower p-state, or from a lower p-state back to maximum. That was the whole "POSCAP vs MLCC" thing.
prime95 and furmark were very very popular 10 years ago but that's where they belong, they don't do the job anymore these days.
For variable refresh rate monitors, it's best to use framerate limiters as well: either in-game or in the Nvidia control panel. Set the cap at least a few fps lower than your monitor's max refresh rate. Even better, aim for 90-100 fps cap, beyond which diminishing returns kick in and power bills continue to creep up.
I also have a mini-ITX Lone L5 build with an i3-12100 and no GPU with a 192W PSU. (Effectively - PSU is technically a bit more, but the AC/DC adapter is only 192W.)
With the same priorities and a deemphasis on graphics, I present to you the Mellori-ITX: https://github.com/phkahler/mellori_ITX
Uses the CPU fan as a case fan. By protruding through the top we get a lower profile than is possible with any other ITX case (well the standoffs can be cut down but that has not be optimized).
My next build will be an upgrade of the same design but with a Zen 4 or 5 chip with 8 or 16 cores depending what fits in the power constraints of the Pico-PSU. It will be a while though because that system is still more than enough for everything I do with it.
You can also limit your i7 power usage, so no need to go for an i3 if you have the money.
Yeah, I did exactly that with my 3080. Dropped ~50W depending on the game and I was able to keep the same clock speeds.
Rented house so can't do much about the absolutely useless heating setup.
A beefy CPU, GPU and a couple of high end monitors can take you to the edge of that and over.
Why would monitors even be factored in? They shouldn't be on the same circuit anyway.
I’ve never seen anyone, in corporate and home environments , split their circuit use like you describe.
All they would see is an electrical cable and plug in hand, and an electrical outlet on the wall. Put two and two together, computer turns on. Circuits? Watts? Load? Might as well be pig latin.
I have a microwave (1270W) and dishwasher (2400W) on the same circuit (230V, 16A). It didn't trip yet...
Alternatively, if you already have a multi-phase connection, then you would of course have the lines on different phases. If you have a 3-phase connection 25A main fuse is common, for single phase connections 35A is common.
For context, most American homes have 240V split phase (single phase for all intents and purposes) service with a 200A main breaker.
Three phase on the other hand is a slight of hand, since that gives you more power than what 230V would imply ;)
3kW is typical kitchen power.
> 3kW is typical kitchen power
Most stoves used to be gas powered. Now induction is becoming more common (but it requires an upgrade to 4.5kW).
I have a relative whose house burnt down due to stapled wiring in the attic. Thermal cycling eventually created a short. When your attic catches on fire the smoke alarms go off in time to save the people, but the moment the ceiling starts to cave in the entire house is involved and you’re mostly trying to keep the neighboring houses from burning.
We have the original fabric sheathed wire as well in the walls still which needs to be replaced to modernize the electrical system.
if you run a separate circut for the Microwave, and separate your bathroom vent + your bathroom LED lights, you can run all of them at the same time with your toster. Running circuts is comparatively easy, vs installing a new 200A fuse box.
With a steady load you can run a circuit breaker past the rated amperage on the breaker. But look at it funny and it will pop.
The most obvious case of this was when I knew someone who would plug a vacuum into a different circuit and blow a breaker. Just a little noise on the wires and click.
A friend of mine is an electrician so the price was very reasonable, and it has been worth it, especially during this hot summer.
It was reasonably cheap, and in my next house I'll do the same again. Running additional circuits is pretty easy if you have an attic or crawl space.
Printing often pops the breaker. I had to move the printer out of my home office into a bedroom, but even then we've popped the breaker when printing while vacuuming.
(It's not a case of bad wiring, either.)
I've been assuming it was current, because if it has the circuit to itself, nothing trips.
(My office only has one circuit, which is dedicated to the room. I could have asked for 20 amps, but it didn't occur to me.)
And I've only got a 3900X+2070 Super...
Opportunity for software that dynamically adjusts CPU and GPU power targets in the middle of various games, learns the game's power/performance profile and whether it's CPU/GPU bottlenecked, and optimizes perf/watt while maintaining a given FPS target?
Throw in 2 monitors and a speaker system and you're coming close to overloading your 15amp breaker.
I already have issues where the breaker would pop with my current gaming PC if it fully spins up and I had to get a 20A circuit put in to handle it (mostly because there is more than one computer on the circuit).
But you don't have to buy those cards. I play my games in QHD on a Radeon 6700XT 12GB, which tops out at about 165W.
I am unsure what the normal household circuit amperage is in the EU or elsewhere...
If you have to wire a room, ask for a larger gauge of wire so have the option of a larger breaker if you want it.
Even if you ran 1kW (...somehow) you could still connect 3 of them and still have 600W left for audio/monitors.
I would say it's more normal to be fused to 10A for most indoor things, anything else is not normal, as most home appliance power cables are not even thick enough to carry the 16A 230V power safely.
Probably would've been fine if it were a 20A circuit and not a 15A, but it did remind me how much power these things draw...
Or with power in SF averaging 40-ish cents per kWh a standard evening gaming session can easily cost a non-negligible amount of money.