NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3090 has already become infamous for its higher power draw, but can you imagine four of those space heaters in a single system? That’s exactly what Puget Systems dared to try in a recent test to determine the feasibility of a custom workstation featuring a quad-BFGPU setup.
Puget Systems chose GIGABYTE’s GeForce RTX 3090 TURBO 24G for its tests, which ditches the open-air, tri-axial fan setup seen in most custom GeForce RTX 3090 cards for a blower design that can directly exhaust heat out of the system. Each of these cards were power limited to 300 watts (1,400 watts total) to see whether they could cope with a single 1,600-watt power supply.
After testing different configurations (i.e., single vs. dual PSU setup), Puget found that a single 1,600-watt power supply could technically power a system with four GeForce RTX 3090 cards, but that it wasn’t recommended at all based on peak power usage.
“…it is cutting [it] extremely close,” Puget’s Matt Bach wrote. “Remember that this is power draw from the wall, and going by the rated 92% efficiency of the EVGA unit we are using, our peak power draw of 1,717 watts should only translate to 1,580 watts of power internally. That leaves a whole 20 watts to spare!”
“We didn’t have the system shut down on us during our testing, but this is way too close for long-term use,” he added. “Not to mention that if we used a more power-hungry CPU, or even just added a few more storage drives, we likely would have been pushed over the edge. So, while we technically succeeded with four RTX 3090s on a single 1600W power supply, that is definitely not something we would recommend.”
In contrast, thermal levels were a lot less scary. Puget was surprised to find that GIGABYTE’s GeForce RTX 3090 TURBO 24G cards only ranged from 73°C to 80°C despite running at full speed.
You can check out the video below to get an idea of how loud the system is. Puget says that it isn’t too bad, but it sounds pretty obnoxious to us.