Aorus Geforce RTX 3080 Xtreme 10G Mining Results

TLDR: The recipe format post of my history with this card. If not interested don’t read it. The other pages have facts. This one has rants.

I did not plan on getting a new video card. I got lucky on randomly acquiring this one. I saw that it would be useful with mining. Having not planned any of this I just threw NiceHash on my system and let it go to work. I did not play with clocks or any additional cooling.

For the first week I just let things run at stock settings. I now had a jet engine space heater sitting next to me. Hash rate in the low eighties. Power consumption north of 310W. Fans at 100%. Efficiency numbers in the low 200s kH/J. The week end finally roles around so I take a quick look at trying to quiet the thing down.

Fans at 100% and heat pouring out of the case. It must be poor air flow and starving the card of cool air. My case will take 4x 140mm fans and a 120mm on the back. New parts show up and during the week. The week end gets here and the new fans installed. Out come 3x 120mm 3 pin fans and in go the 4 new 140mm PWM fans. I figure I want something that will react to changing conditions in the case. No change in performance or noise.

I set aggressive fan speeds on the case fans thinking more air flow is better. I now have a bunch of loud case fans along with a jet engine space heater.

It’s time to actually look into what is going on and not just assume I know what the problem is. I fire up GPU-Z and look at the numbers. While mining the GPU clock is all over the place. 1900+ MHz then dropping under 1000 MHz. Popping back up and down over seconds. Fans at 100% – ya no shit I could have told you that from the hall way. GPU temp 38°. Nice and cool. PerfCap Reason – Thermals. WTF??

A quick bit of research later and I learn what everyone already knows. RTX 3080 & 3090 cards have crap memory temperatures. OK, so not all of the cards but some manufacturers are worse then others. OK, Gigabyte has a lot of problems with memory temps. Oh they also have a history of crappy thermal pads going back for a while. Oh look lots of cards have metal backing plates but no way to transfer heat from the back of the card to the metal plate. Trying to see what is on the backside of my card. There are a couple pads I see but now where other cards show their RAM. I find I have a winner of a card.

A small air gap (as in the gap between the back of the card and the backing plate) with no air flow (as in the closed off area on the back of the card) is an insulator. There is a giant metal plate on the back of the card that they are not taking advantage of. Worse then that, just by being there, the plate makes the card hotter then if it was not there.

Somewhere around here I came across NiceHash’s quick miner and their OC Tune. Stock RAM settings 9250 and core locked at 930. Power was down to about 200W. Hash was up to the mid 80s. Efficiency over 375. Fans stuck at 100%. No more thermal throttling but memory temps were still 106-108°.

I had a few 40mm x 40mm x 10mm heat sinks. Tossed 7 of them on the back of the card over the RAM and GPU. Used some 10 year old heat sink compound that I had to keep them in place. This was enough that I could now clock the RAM to +350 with 960 core. 210W 89MH/s 422kH/J fans . Temps bounced around 106-108° but would hit 110° occasionally. Not worth destroying things so went back a bit so that temps settled more at 104°. Still way to high. Still way to loud.

I can not find any info on anyone taking apart the card I have. Videos of other Gigabyte cards on how to disassemble and adding thermal pads but nothing on my card. One card needs 1mm pads. This other one is 2mm and 3mm. Good pads are hard to find right now. Good pads are expensive. Time to see if I can make a $1000 paper weight.

A lot of the cards I found are using 2mm or 3mm pads on the back. I get a couple pieces of 6W/mK cheap pads. I open up the card and measure all the existing pads. Find where I can add a few on the back of the card. Cut up a bit of the 3mm pad and put it the backside of the RAM modules. I change none of the pads on the face of the card. I now know the sizes of pads needed though if this first bit does not help.

The heat sinks on the back of the card now get much warmer. The back plate is now actually helping pull heat away from the chips. Everyone says +900 on RAM timing so I try it. It works. +950 gives errors. More playing with OCTuner. Today’s settings 1320 core, +900 RAM, 93-95MH/s, 222W, 420 efficiency. RAM temps are still complete crap of 104-106°. GPU temp has climbed to 44°. Fans bounce from 80-90%.

Things are clocked back a bit again for now. Gelid Ultimate pads on order. More reading and everything says I really should have replaced the pads on the face of the card. At least the next guy knows what sizes to order.

I have another chance to turn this thing into a paperweight yet.