Venting thread!

Wife and I have been making more money lately so I said hey, I'm gonna build my first dumb expensive high-end gaming PC! Usually I'm a 3070 kinda guy, if that makes sense to you, but let's crank this baby up!

So I got a high-end card (the 7900XTX if you care) and away we go right? On to better framerates and less upscaling! I went AMD to get even more VRAM for those ultra high textures and resolutions! It's gonna be FUN baby!

Well... no. It's a pain.

First my power supply wasn't good enough, so I had to upgrade that too. Then I'm putting everything together and oh... it needs three power connections somehow, and my power supply only came with two. So off to Best Buy I go for a third cable, $30 more, but hey we're spending money now right!

So I got the power, I got the card in there, oh wait... despite me having a massive case, the card is a bit too long and hits my middle front fan. That's annoying. Well I guess for now I'll take it out and try and find a thinner one. Okay here we go everything's set up let's ROCK...

Okay these framerates are definitely better this is cool... oh it crashed. Well let's reboot, reinstall, blah blah... crashed again. Crash crash crash. Let me look at the hardwa OH MY GOD MY CASE IS ON FIRE! What the heck, there's still four fans and I got a priced up version that is supposed to run cool, why does my case feel like it's on fire? "Oh, you only have a massive case? For a card like that you need a GIGA MASSIVE CASE ESTRAORDINAIRE!!!" It's not the fans apparently, it's the size and "curve," things I never had to worry about before in my life.

VENT VENT VENT I AM ANNOYED

I think I've said this before, but a good option is to avoid thinking in GPU classes (aka what marketing wants to do to you, pidgeonhole you in a tier) and especially when upgrading your GPU look at the power consumption of the card that you are upgrading. Try to find something somewhat equivalent among the more modern options.

The laws of thermodynamics don't change between GPU generations, so that is a good way of ensuring that:
- you'll need about the same amount of power cables
- your power supply will still be good even for transient spikes
- the GPU is roughly the same size and will fit in your existing case
- you won't run into any issues with inadequate cooling/case ventilation

You'll still be getting a more than decent performance bump, but it won't be revolutionary. We're not yet at a point where 4K gaming can be done with a 2-slot/fan card (for example), so of course if you want that there will be plenty of inconveniences.

We've gone from a generation where the top tier card was in the 220W territory (Pascal) to 400W monsters these days. You can't have your performance cake and eat it too.

I've been 4king for a couple years now with a 4070. Pretty much anything a few years old runs at native 4k just fine, as does anything AA or lower. Brand new AAA games have DLSS which makes it work. I get what you mean though, playing Hogwarts Legacy at native 4k ultra is a whole other can o'beans.

Anyway I was just venting, my AMD experience has been terrible. I'm returning it and getting a 4070ti.

To be honest I've lost all interest in 4k gaming for reasons you described - high end GPU's are a must yet the cost is extortionate, case upgrade, PSU upgrade, flaky fire-hazard cables, etc. After borrowing a friend's 4k monitor for a week I found 1. 1440p was good enough for me, 2. 99% of my games will work on a short low-mid 120-170w GPU needing 1-2 fans at most, 3. Old "designed for fixed 96ppi" games just don't scale well on HiDPI monitors anyway (eg, tiny UI elements unless you upscale at which point it can look worse than running at a lower resolution natively on a lower resolution monitor). Same with cases, there's come a point where I look at the comical refrigerator sized ones built for new +400w GPU flagships and think "Isn't it easier just to build an open-air test-bench that vents heat directly into the room without needing 15x fans to move it out of a 'hotbox'?..."

1440p is the sweet spot for sure. Even with older games it's very easy to use 720p with interger scaling. I mainly got a 4k monitor because I think TAA looks blurry at 1440p, but now everything is made to use DLSS/FSR anyway so it's ended up being rather moot. Not gonna buy another monitor to "downgrade" though, seems silly.

My 3070 played most things fine at 4k so I assume the 4070 will too.

The power consumption is one of my main worries about the use of powerful GPUs.

One thing: When the computer is mostly idle, or doing basic web browsing (not using anything like WebGL), how much power do these GPUs use?

One of the many reasons to consider integrated graphics (and why they're particularly common on laptops and phones) is the power consumption (size is another one, of course). (I note that laptops with discrete GPUs often have switchable graphics, so that the integrated GPU can be used instead to conserve power.)

Pssh. 1080P for life, yo! ;) I'm only half-kdding. All the extra expense, noise, and heat just ain't worth it for me to make a game marginally prettier. It'll also allow for my 3.5 years old rig to stick around for a long time to come. I've not found a case where TAA wasn't blurry at any resolution. It's also got the nasty habit of creating shimmering outlines. I just gave up on it and went back to ye olde FXAA in all games that had TAA as the high-tier option.

This story reminds me that back when I still bought gaming desktops (nowadays only gaming laptops), I usually ended buying a whole new PC, instead of trying to upgrade some vital part of the PC, like CPU or GPU.

Then again my upgrade cycles were so long anyway that usually lots of things had changed in the meantime, e.g. the new GPU needed a newer kind of bus slot, or the new CPU wanted a newer motherboard etc.

I recall once trying to replace the PSU because the original got broken, only to find out at the installation time that this newer PSU has a different kind of connector than what my motherboard had. Luckily there was some kind of adapter cable available that could make the new PSU work with my old motherboard.

Nah, it was usually simpler just to buy a whole new PC when it was time to upgrade anything besides a simple hard drive upgrade or something.

Nowadays it is simpler as "upgrading" my gaming laptop means I have to buy a whole new laptop anyway. Everything's included and I don't have to try to make the different components work together.

I mean it's always blurrier than off but it looks a LOT crisper at 4k. DLSS similarly looks a LOT less processed and fake at 4k. Having more pixels for the temporal processes to use makes a big difference.

Big enough to deal the expense and trouble of a high-end GPU though, that's another matter.

I know, did that. Not the issue. Good tip though.

Well. i got the "hottest" card inside, a 3090 TI, and i can tell you: I had to get a big tower and a liquid CPU 360° cooler with 3 fan, any other stuff is not sufficient. But damn... this system is a beast when it comes to performance. The good thing is, the PSU was that expensive, there was enough of cables provided.

I always recommend to investigate the parts needed properly before you buy, so you will know what you actually need. Maybe you noticed yourself: Modern processors are very powerful, indeed, but they need a STRONG cooling and a lot of power... do not ever try tackling it without enough of cooling and enough of power. If you are insufficient at those 2 spots your system will start to run unstable.. and nothing is worse than having a unstable system!

Yes the 7900 XTX is a beast but, same as a 3090 TI, it need a VERY GOOD PSU and a lot of cooling. This is not a GPU any small PC is able to handle and not any weak PSU, forget about!

So, good luck on gaining the proper "parts"! Sure i can help...

In order to do that i would need the exact specs and parts, else there is to much guessing.

Sure, as a short term-solution you can try lowering your power limit of your 7900 XTX by a huge margin, for example 50% or so... the card will be a good amount weaker, sure... but it may run stable and way cooler than before. So... you actually may have a short term workaround and for long term you may replace the insufficient parts in your system. The 7900 XTX got so much sheer performance, you may not even notice the lower power limit.

Besides, if you do not have enough airflow... sometimes it is better just to leave your case OPEN, so the card with the biggest heat issues will at least be able to draw fresh air for itself. The best is having enough of airflow, but better having a open case than almost no sufficient airflow because of the extreme heat which is building up and unable to be removed,... like a cage. The card is basically "self sufficient"; it can keep itself cool enough, but ONLY if the case is allowing the card to draw fresh air all the time: NOT acting as a cage.

Surprisingly, higher end GPUs don't actually use a lot of power when in idle state, providing they are, say, 2017 and above.

Rant warning not even related to OP: Motherboards usually make bigger difference than GPUs. I don't have comparison data for the AMD X570 chipset aberration but the X470 chipset with all bells and whistles use 10-20W more at idle than a standard B350 (actual value depend on BIOS settings, CPU undervolted in both cases and similar memory speeds) with the same components and same overall performance.
While ̶A̶M̶D̶ Ryzen CPUs are very efficient when loaded compared to Intel, however when taking all the pc parts on account, they still struggle to get the same efficiency on high C-states (idle etc) and light loads. I've seen plenty of Intel desktops (mostly OEM) idling at 15-20W, even old stuff. I can't recall a single Ryzen based desktop idling below 25 (talking about "gaming" typical components like i5's and R5's).

On the desktop GPU side, AMD was and still is a power hog with multi-monitor setups and video decoding. But to be fair, the Steam Deck integrated GPU is awfully efficient. The i5 on the Surface pro 7 needs twice as much power to get similar performance as the Deck.

Integrated graphics is not always better in power consumption, infortunately. For a long time Intel has been stuck on 14nm CPU's and the integrated graphics suffer. A good example is some laptops with dual graphics 'low-power intel UHD' and some 'high-performance nVidia', on many situations using the nVidia GPU can get better overall power consumption than only the intel counterpart, including watching videos...

There is a little conspiracy theory I have in mind, where Nvidia and AMD are conspiring with developers to ensure their games release unoptimized or with fewer optimizations. That way they can continually sell you ever-more expensive generations of graphics cards, and give you the illusion that you NEED an RTX 4090 in order to run the latest titles at their best.

Doom 2016, Doom Eternal and other games like Devil May Cry 5 gave us a sneak peak at what well-optimized games could run like, even on modest hardware. They look outstanding, yet they can run at 140FPS or more.

A GPU is always the most critical part of any gamer system, it never was changing at all and it was never different.

However, it is not wise getting a GPU the system simply is unable to handle... and if so, there is some emergency methods required and proper parts.

He basically was buying a beast and most other parts are a sheep... funny stuff but unfortunately the beast may eat the sheeps. So, we have to draw some teeths for now... sorry!

You really do not need to worry with this card, it got just way to much performance, way more than you ever need i assume. So, just bring down power limit by a lot... card may run cool enough and everyone in the system could be happy. FPS limiting may help too... usually you may not need more than 120 FPS, dependable on game.

Anyway, without the exact spec of the system, no futher help possible.