At what price would you scoop up 3090s?

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josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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Seeing the 3090s absolutely crater in prices recently. At what price would you go trigger happy and stack them with NVLink? Considering the A6000s go for > $4000, would 2x3090 for $2000 be a sure buy?
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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The utility of NVLink is basically zero nowadays except for ML isnt it?

Edit - just saw this was posted under ML - oops;)
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
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I'm staying the F away from 3090s. They're 99% of the time mined to shit and since they've got backside VRAM it'll go Chernobyl sooner or later.

A 1080 Ti Kingpin on the other hand... god damn, there's a almost new one for sale right now for $500.
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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I would take one of the blower fan versions for free when it's new*, but wouldn't pay anything for a 3090 because the 4090 is basically around the corner and the prices for the 3090s are still too high.

*for cad, cuda & sometimes gaming and not ai/ml stuff :D
 

josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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I'm staying the F away from 3090s. They're 99% of the time mined to shit and since they've got backside VRAM it'll go Chernobyl sooner or later.

A 1080 Ti Kingpin on the other hand... god damn, there's a almost new one for sale right now for $500.
The NEW cards are almost under $1k these days
I would take one of the blower fan versions for free when it's new*, but wouldn't pay anything for a 3090 because the 4090 is basically around the corner and the prices for the 3090s are still too high.

*for cad, cuda & sometimes gaming and not ai/ml stuff :D
You're assuming Nvidia will not do something like this to the 4090s..
[D] RTX 3090 has been purposely nerfed by Nvidia at driver level for AI training workloads. : MachineLearning (reddit.com)
Until someone manages to enable vgpu support I'd stay away. Also you can fry an egg on the Founders Edition backplate If you do memory heavy tasks.
Repad the cards and sit 1.6A Delta fans on the backplate. The cost of performance.
 

josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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You"ll loose warranty on the NVIDIA FE cards.
Some AIBs don't void the warranty for that. EVGA for example. In any case, repadding will most definitely let the card outlive the warranty period anyway.
 

josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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Trash PCB:

Stay away from Zotac this gen. If even their top card is pretty eh imagine what their lowest-end 3090 is like.
Does this matter? Most people undervolt their 3090s. Tell me you'd rather buy a top tier 3080Ti instead of underclocking an average 3090 at the same price?
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
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Does this matter? Most people undervolt their 3090s. Tell me you'd rather buy a top tier 3080Ti instead of underclocking an average 3090 at the same price?
Even undervolted they can go Chernobyl, i.e New World'ed 3090 Visions.

Man, I bet if you ran Hitman: Contracts in the main menu for long you'd pop the VRM on a 3090 that's built like garbage.
 

josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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Even undervolted they can go Chernobyl, i.e New World'ed 3090 Visions.

Man, I bet if you ran Hitman: Contracts in the main menu for long you'd pop the VRM on a 3090 that's built like garbage.
Do you realise which forum this is posted in? Question was for DL usage. No gaming related stress loads.
 
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JediAcolyte

Active Member
May 29, 2020
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Stay away from Zotac of any variety, unless you like changing out fans within the first 2 months.
Ask me how I know...
 

JediAcolyte

Active Member
May 29, 2020
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I have a 3060 that I RMA d after 1 month because the rear fan died. Within a month or 6 weeks of getting it back they have already started to wobble terribly.
 

josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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Was that during the mining craze? They probably didn't have new parts to replace with and just replaced it with another used fan.
 

JediAcolyte

Active Member
May 29, 2020
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It was last summer. They could have... But thats not how you treat your customers.
I'll continue to recommend EVGA for people looking for Nvidia parts as the premium option. After that, probably Asus and Gigabyte would be my next recommendation.
 
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