My 3090 is pretty quiet regardless of the game. It does sound like this one has problems. 

5 hours ago, andy1252 said:

@MrFuzzy, thanks for that! I will try messing with both those settings today and see how I get on. It'd be nice to get it all acceptable without having to splash out on a 4090, as the performance with the 3090 is pretty acceptable to me if it would just keep quiet!

The 3090 Ti is still a beast. If you undervolt it with MSI Afterburner and limit the framerate it will get quiet enough and will serve you well until the next gen.

There is a comprehensive guide here and many Youtube videos explaining how to do it.

IMHO it's not convenient to sell it for maybe 700 $ and spend 1500-2000 $ for a 4090, unless you have money to burn...

Sorted!

I've had a day messing around with MSI Afterburner and Youtube, and I'm now running the 3090 undervolted at 880 mV, and 1860 Mhz frequency cap, and it is still giving me my 40-60 frames but at a typical temp of 70C or just below and the fans running at about 60%.

The fan noise now is a lot less noticeable, and if I turn the soundbar on my screen up a little bit (it's normally pretty much turned off) then the in-sim (aircraft) noise is mostly enough to mask the fan noise altogether.

So thanks to everybody, and @MrFuzzy in particular, for all the suggestions and help. I'd been intellectually aware of underclocking (in that I'd heard of it) but wouldn't have thought of it as the apparent solution to my issues. I will do further research and experimentation, but I feel that I can put off the 4090 for now (although tech envy may yet win out in the end - always gotta have new toys). Maybe I'll manage to hold off until the 5090!

cheers,

Andy

1 hour ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

High fan speeds are not necessarily a sign of high GPU temperatures.

 

I agree with your statement; however, it's important to note that the fan speed is controlled by the temperature sensor. This means that the fans will either go high or idle, depending on the temperature. There is a balance where running the fans at 100% speed is unnecessary, as it can lead to wear and tear. On the other hand, some people might prefer the noise. We can achieve a quiet, high-performing PC by monitoring and adjusting fan speed using tools like MSI Afterburner or GPU-Z. I hope this additional information is useful.

18 hours ago, LRBS said:

High-speed running of computer fans is a clear indication of high temperatures. That will lead to premature failure of the components, shorten the life span, and eventually kill it. You are more than welcome to believe that high temperatures and high fan speeds are not an indication of a problem and are not harmful at all.

We ran a bank of 6 Palit RTX3080's for 18 months using them for crypto mining and sold them when mining came to an end (the buyer knew what they had been used for and tested them himself).  They all ran 24/7 for all that time with the fans running like the clappers with no problems and I kept the best one back which I've been using for flightsimming for the last 6 months.

The fans may eventually give out but they are built to last a very long time and from a heat perpective, all modern CPUs and GPUs are designed to throttle before they become damaged by heat (usually around 90°C ish I believe).

GPU fans are not usually that hard to replace anyway.

I concur with the suggestions to limit FPS BTW and normally lock mine at 30 even though I can run at 120 at times if I wanted to (some of my heavy addon sceneries struggle to even get to 30 FPS).

Edited September 6, 20232 yr by cianpars

2 hours ago, LRBS said:

If I understand correctly, you don't believe that extended high temperatures on a PC can result in component malfunctions, errors, or even irreparable damage. It is widely known in the PC tech world that excessive overheating can cause high fan speeds and lead to throttling, potentially damaging the computer. That's where "research" comes into play. 

Interestingly enough, you mention that bigger fans will provide better airflow and "would help tremendously." Wouldn't that help maintain optimal temperatures? At this point, when you dismiss and claim, "That's completely not true".  it is pointless to carry on with this topic.

See Glenns and ciannpars response, and have a nice day 😉 

Edited September 6, 20232 yr by Ianrivaldosmith

This might help?

 

1 hour ago, LRBS said:

This might help?

I'd actually put this in place months ago, but I didn't find it helped. I'd have it set  using a temperature/speed response curve for the 3090 but it still ended up heading up the temperature scale and so the fans ramped up to match. Now, having reduced the voltage I guess the card is simply not heating up as much (and so the fans don't need to ramp up in the same way).

I liked the idea of fan control, and thought it was really nicely done, but it never did resolve my issue as it was in effect coming in after the fact, i.e. the card's temperature was driving the problem and the fans were just following.

2 hours ago, andy1252 said:

I'd actually put this in place months ago, but I didn't find it helped. I'd have it set  using a temperature/speed response curve for the 3090 but it still ended up heading up the temperature scale and so the fans ramped up to match. Now, having reduced the voltage I guess the card is simply not heating up as much (and so the fans don't need to ramp up in the same way).

I liked the idea of fan control, and thought it was really nicely done, but it never did resolve my issue as it was in effect coming in after the fact, i.e. the card's temperature was driving the problem and the fans were just following.

Undervolting your 3090 is a questionable workaround, I don't think is a good think to reduce your powerful device to a 3070. Never heard before on a RTX 3090. You need to understand why your temps are so high, maybe some pictures of your pc could be useful, consider to show some hardware monitoring reports, also.

47 minutes ago, Claudius_ said:

Undervolting your 3090 is a questionable workaround, I don't think is a good think to reduce your powerful device to a 3070. Never heard before on a RTX 3090. You need to understand why your temps are so high, maybe some pictures of your pc could be useful, consider to show some hardware monitoring reports, also.

Well I would think if he reduced his device to a 3070, he wouldn't be happy with the performance.

I can't speak for undervolting as I never did that with my 3080ti, but I certainly did underclock it with very good results.

Also, he has a Corsair 7000D Airflow.  Short of a Fractal Torrent or something like that, I'd consider a 7000D in the upper tier of cases for cooling.  Its front 140mm fans blow right across the video card too.  Unless he removed them or did a vertical mount.

4 hours ago, andy1252 said:

 

Andy, I just remembered a situation that I faced a while ago. I replaced a PSU and had an issue related to the built-in fan controller. I discovered that the sensor was malfunctioning and causing incorrect temperature readings, and overheating which led to the entire PC running hotter than normal. After checking the proper installation and airflow direction, I realized that an incorrect power supply combined with a faulty sensor could result in increased temperatures. Please see if that can be an issue. Hopefully not. 

Replacing my MSI 3070ti with a PNY 4080 was the best decision I have made for my PC recently lol. Runs cooler and quieter while blowing the 3070ti out of the water. I'm starting to think the 3XXX series wasn't the greatest, starting with the low VRAM numbers.

11 hours ago, LRBS said:

It is widely known in the PC tech world that excessive overheating can cause high fan speeds and lead to throttling, potentially damaging the computer.

This was true in the 90's/early 2000's. The whole point of thermal throttling in modern CPUs/GPUs is to keep the chips from overheating to a point where they get damaged. If you've used a high-performance Intel laptop such as a Dell XPS, it is literally impossible to max the CPU for any amount of time without thermal throttling kicking in at 100C, because that is how the system was designed. The default fan profile happily keeps the fan idle until the CPU is at 100C for over 30 seconds. And once the fan turns on, you'll still be thermally limited unless you go to extremes such as replacing the stock thermal paste or adding a cooling stand.

I've always run with small cases and quiet fan profiles. My last i7 system lasted 7 years, and it was a power spike from my 3090 that killed the motherboard, not anything related to heat. Of course, if the ambient temperature in the case is 80C that is not good, but CPUs and GPUs will gladly run at their thermal limits for their expected lifespan. In fact, assuming studies done on hard drive failures in data centers gives any indication, it is safer to have consistent warm temperatures vs temperatures that constantly fluctuate between hot and cold. Google used their studies to raise their datacenter temperatures to 26C (80F), which is warmer than many people keep their homes in the summer.

8 hours ago, Claudius_ said:

Undervolting your 3090 is a questionable workaround, I don't think is a good think to reduce your powerful device to a 3070. Never heard before on a RTX 3090. You need to understand why your temps are so high, maybe some pictures of your pc could be useful, consider to show some hardware monitoring reports, also.

LOL what? Undervolt usually increases sustained clock speeds and often results in the same or increased performance. The average clock speed of my 3090 is higher since I undervolted it, and the 3DMark score slightly higher. 

Heavy undervolt and power limiting can decrease the performance but some people opt for it anyway because the tradeoff for a -30% power consumption is merely a 5-10% performance decrease.

Undervolt is a very well known practice for 3090 and 3080, there are many guides and videos online attesting its efficacy. 

I had another little sim session last night and it all was fine. A noise level that I never found intrusive and still getting my 40-45 frames, which is what I usually get and with which I'm happy - I am running 4k, TLOD 300 and pretty much everything maxed out, after all. Without a dB meter reading it is of course all a bit subjective, and I know I do have very sensitive hearing - I can often hear both ends of a phone conversation from the other side of the road (I've thought of contacting GCHQ, they might want to install me in a flat next to the Russian Embassy - I could probably pick up most of what was going on!), but so far - so good.

Plus, as I mentioned, all this only occurs with MSFS. I have all the same sort of maxed out settings in XP and that has always been fine. I don't want to kick off any kind of intersim comparison thread here, but it does feel a bit more than just "well, MSFS is throwing a lot more detail at the card". Things like the fans racing when sitting on the runway, or at the hangar screen or whatever you call it (the one with the world map on) would seem to indicate to me that MSFS is doing something it didn't oughta, and so maybe that will get resolved at some point as well.