Dropping hashrate on Gigabyte RTX 3080 with ETH mining
This story is about dropping in-time hashrate on my Gigabyte RTX 3080.
When I bought my first Gigabyte RTX 3080 and run it the hashrate was below 90 MH/s. I started to play with settings. I must say that it was easy as I use SimpleMining.net, where example settings are also given. And I must say they are good ones.
I just put them and Save.
Hashrate was something like 94 MH/s. I heard that some people achieve even 100 MH/s. So I looked after information on the net. Found that I need to set memory to 2000 MHz. I did it and hashrate jumped to around 97 MH/s. But it lowered quickly. Then I read that fan must work faster. For Gigabyte it was even 100%. It was not solutions for me because of noise. So I decided to move rig to colder room. It was working with 80% fans and was fine.
But it did not last long. After few days I bought two more Gigabyte RTX 3080. Add them to rig with same settings. And then it started. Hashrate was dropping. Now I know it was too hot as more card was around. But then I did not know. I set fans to 100%, but it did not help. So started digging on net and search for solution. I found one. Its name is Thermal throttling. The solution was to put some extra thermal pads between board and plate.
I decided to take a chance and try. The 3 mm supposed to be good. So I bought Thermalpad Grizzly Minus Pad 8. The question was where to put them. I watched video very carefully and measured areas where to put thermal pad. The pad was 120 mm long, so I was not sure if the covered area was correct. Below you could see draft of it.
After such maintenance the card was working with hashrate 94–97 MH/s depending of Memory MHz settings. But again it did not last long. After some time hashrate started dropping. Exactly I was jumping between hours. I observed that was not GPU temperature dependent. So it was strange for me. After some time I discover that it was weather or room temperature dependent. When it was sunny then hashrate dropped to 74 MH/s. When it was colder and windy it jumped to 91–92 MH/s. And what was more strange other cards had similar hashrate. I was confused.
In this time I was sure that original thermal pads on memory should be good. So I started to think that settings are not correct. I was playing a lot with rig settings. As you can see: Core MHz, Memory MHz, Power Limit, target temperature and fan speed.
Nothing helped. It was rally hard issue, because I really thought that original thermal pads should be good. They was just few days working. After dip breath I said that there is more more thing which could cause thermal throttling issue and made decision to just replace thermal pads in one card and see result. First time I unfold card to check thickness of pads. Pads are soft, so I was not sure if to take 1 mm or 1,5 mm. I decided to try with 1 mm. I’m talking about all pads besides the ones on memory. They are 2 mm or 2,5 mm. I decided to use 2 mm. Exactly I used 1 mm for all, but put two layers on RAM.
I bought Arctic Thermal pad 1 mm version 145 mm x 145 mm. This one is enough for tho cards. Just remember to cat longest pads first. You could cut them same way then lying on the picture below.
First step was to unfold card. I used screwdriver with pin PH00.
You could see that original pads has grease on it. It might be because of to much of constant hot.
Next step was to cut same size of new pads. Two lower rows on photo below shows doubled pieces as they goes on RAM.
And put them on card. By the way I also replaced Thermal paste on GPU. I used ARCTIC MX-4. Previously I used Thermal grizzly paste, but this time decided to use Arctic one as someone recommended it for me.
And here is important part. As I mentioned RAM needs two 1 mm pads. So I put one on top of the other. REMEMBER to put second layer carefully to avoid air bladder. Just put it starting from one side and press down in the middle of pad moving your finger little by little to the second side of pad.
Then job is done. It is time to start mining. Lets check hashrate in Simplemining.net board.
As you can see it is 94 MH/s. It is with memory set to 1400 MHz. I could run it even faster with 97 MH/s, with 2000 MHz. But then fans to needs to goes faster. Now it is 65–70%, which very good for me, and I will stay with it.
So me final settings are:
Yes, you see it correct, I got fourth card. It arrives me two days ago.
Lets take a look at its hashrate. Yes, it is RTX 3080 with speed … 48,36 MH/s.
So I have another card to upgrade with thermal pads.
And how does last card behave through a whole day ? Below you can see 24h statistics.
In this point we could ask how pads works after longer period of time. I can tell you that they are working more that a week till now. Simplemining.net has GPU statistics graph for such period too. It looks like this.
Two first cards was upgraded first. The third one was upgraded on evening march 10. You can see that from upgrade time its hashrate is stable and around 94 MH/s with memory MHz set to 1400 MHz. The hashrate drops around 11 march was at the time I set memory to 2000 MHz and hashrate was 97 MH/s. After this date I set again to 1400 MHz all cards and leave such till today.
Is it worth to set hashrate to 97 MH/s with such drops and fan set to higher speed ? For me not. But it is up to you.
Happy mining!
