How (and why) you should undervolt your GPU - A step by step guide (Deep Learning/Gaming/Mining) 

*UPDATE 2021-03-24:* MSI Afterburner just updated how their GUI looks like but it's the exact same process just the buttons looks different and might be located slightly differently. You can still follow it without any issues (the important things in the video remain the same) but to make it easier you can go to Settings -> User Interface -> Look for skin and choose MSI Cyborg Afterburner Skin White by Drerex Design. Then it should be exactly as you see in the video. One detail I forgot to mention that is super useful is when you open MSI Afterburner around the top right region there's a windows button and you should press this button to apply your undervolt profile at boot (press this after you've tested it like I showed in the video). Also on the right side of MSI Afterburner there is 5 different "Profile" where you can also save different presets that you've found to work well for your GPU. *CORRECTIONS* - I said microvolts but it's millivolts, my bad!

I know this video is already 9 months old, but I just wanted to give my thanks to you for this step by step guide. It really helped me bring my laptop's temperature down from mid 80's - low 90s to 64-70 at it's highest. I'm using a MSI GE76 RAIDER with a Nvidia 3060 and I was worried I would have to deal with the high temperatures forever. You just gave a lot more time to this machine's life expectancy lmao. Thank you so much for the guide.

Absolutely the best step by step video I've seen regarding getting better temp's on the 3080 TI was constantly 80c now 65 -70, 850mw 1850 core clock , I appreciate it very much

I can’t thank you enough. I’m new to pc gaming and was struggling with my gpu temps. This video gave me the courage to try undervolting. A+

Thank you so much for making this! I've been insanely paranoid about my gpu temps for months and custom fan curves weren't doing anything but my temps are now down a significant amount

Literally the best video about undervolting! Great job! Thank you so much, my GPU temps dropped from 80ºC to under 70ºC.

A really great tutorial, you laid it out very simply and was able to reduce the heat from my 3080 ti to something more reasonable.

this might be the best video on RU-vid platform for this, thanks for taking the time to share the process, it was very easy to understand.

probably the best explanation on how to undervolt a gpu, by far the best video, seriously

never left a comment on a video before watching this one. my 1660ti was hitting 83 degrees on warzone and now its at 73. thank you so much for the easy to follow video!

I was having temp issues with temps pushing 80-82. I replaced the thermal paste on the GPU and temps are now always below 70 at max voltage. Just another option that’s out there. I like your video- never thought about undervolting but it makes sense.

used this video more than a year ago to undervolt my 1080, finally upgraded to a used 3080 and im back again for round 2 lol, thanks again.

My GPU was pulling 1037mV. Fans just going crazy over hight temps. I have got it down to 900mV VERY stable and my temps have dropped 15c in some cases and 10c in most. Fans are quiet and even my CPU has dropped a few C from the cooler temps. Thank you for this guide. It was great! I had the same result about a 1% drop in performance but it is well worth the temps and quiet fans.

This is by far the best explanation yet. Great job. 👍

Great video man . Honestly bro this helped so much went from 70c to about 53c under full load on a 1080ti FE witch is hard enough to cool as it only has 1 fan but this was such a descriptive video and easy to follow along . Such a life saver

This video is incredibly well made man. Best guide on RU-vid hands down thank you for this

I’ve seen a lot of undervolt guides and this one is one of the best guides online. Thanks for your help

thank you for posting this. you got got my 3080 ti down from 78-70 @ ultra high settings down to 73-74. great video and appreciate that you did not rush through the tutorial and took your time.

finally. a clear and logical explanation of how and why you would undervolt. Can't tell you how many videos I watched before this one, which were neither. Thanks dude.

Amazing guide. The numbered steps made it much easier to follow than other videos who just did things. Results below: Minimum 40% less power consumption. Temperature down 18 degrees Celsius. And obviously much less loud since the fans don't have to work as hard to cool the GPU anymore. All this for 6% less performance. The GPU I was working with was a factory overclocked Zotac 2X sized 2060. Thank you so much for the video!! You've made my life a little bit better and a lot less noisy :) Edit: Turns out stability in unigen heaven doesnt exactly translate to other games haha. Had to adjust a bit after games started to crash. New numbers: 30% less power consumption, 15 degrees celcius less and obviously less noise than stock. 5-7% less performance

Awesome video once again! Could you make this guide for Linux (Ubuntu for example)? Since most deep learning environments are not designed for windows.

It took me about 5 minutes into this video to figure out where you’re from: I’m guessing, strongly, Sweden. You’ve got an amazing ear for English phonology. Bravo!

Thank you very much sir! I was so frustrated with my pc build. My 2080 was always running hot and fans were super loud. I tried changing the fans, opening the case, controlling the fan speed... nothing. Undervolting was the solution for me. Even playing apex legends with 144fps the gpu never goes higher than 75° and the fans are super quiet. It’s like a whole new pc build. This is amazing! Thank you again!

I've watched many undervolt videos and have no idea what they do. But I understand all things you explain. Good jobs.

Went from 95°C to 80°C max in games on my MSI Laptop with 1050 Ti Max-Q, thanks. Though I did it a bit differently: first, shift + drag the node above the desired voltage up to the best frequency (just as he explained, this is the frequency before throttle), second, flatten the rest post that voltage. I stopped at 900mV @ 1670 MHz, probably could have gone further but decided not to, good enough for me

super useful, thank you! I built my first PC with a 3070ti and followed your guide and noticed a reduction in temperature on the Heaven benchmark while maintaining performance. On gaming, the GPU runs now much cooler!

I honestly cant thank you enough, I got red dead 2 for my newly built pc with a 3080 and when i got into the game i noticed my temps were going as high as 76-80 celsius, and being a 3080 i was a bit nervous and didnt want it going that high for lets say 2-3hours at a time, so I decided to look into this undervolting thing and its saved me my sanity! My gpu now is at max 67-68 celsius while playing and i cant thank you enough for this video, its super easy to follow along and you explain everything nicely! Definitely earned a sub.

Awesome video. I loved the way you typed out what you were explaining. Helped me understand it .

This is a year old, and the UI has changed, but this totally worked for me. I balanced it out from hitting 84-85 degrees down to under 70 for an EVGA FTW3 3090 Ultra.

I'd like to take a brief moment to explain what is actually happening physically when you perform this activity. Thermal energy emitted in an electric circuit, measured in watts, is produced by voltage multiplied by current. P = I*V (Watt's Law, where P is Power, I is current in amps, and V is voltage in Volts. Remember, Power is HEAT here. So Watts are HEAT. Temperature is thus how much HEAT is stuck on your card overall.) In the process of a transistor (electronic switch) flipping from an off to an on state, or vice-versa, you have three states. High-current, no-voltage at the switch; high-voltage, no-current at the switch; and medium-voltage, medium-current at the switch. Suffice to say when the switch is in either of the end states, high current or high voltage, the opposing value is zero, so the total of the equation is zero. That is to say, using simplified numbers, high voltage times no current is no watts. 10 * 0 = 0 No voltage times high current is also no watts. 0 * 10 = 0 However, as the switch 'switches', as they do every single clock cycle, current and voltage must cross over, twice. In this middle state, you could say that you have half-voltage, and half-current. At which point, actual values matter. In this case, 5 * 5 = 25 watts. With this happening twice a clock cycle, you get 50 watts of power, or heat, dumped into the hardware of the switch. If you're beginning to see how this pertains to voltage and frequency, you're instincts serve you well. The faster your clock speed (frequency), the more times the switch crosses that middle state for a given amount of time (usually seconds). Which means more heat per given amount of time. Likewise, the more your driving voltage is, the more the value of that middle state jumps up as you multiply values together. Heat will rise in a linear fashion with the clock cycles, but exponentially with voltage since voltage ALSO drives current (Ohm's Law, or I = V/r). At the end of putting this together, the overall calculation of your heat looks something like this: '2X(V*I) = P ' OR Voltage times current, times Clock Cycles (X in this example) times two. What undervolting is doing to achieve your thermal reduction, is slowly dropping the voltage as far down as you can, while still being able to fire off the transistors inside the processor. Or rather, trying to find the 'knee voltage' that turns the switches ON. Depending on what the transistors are made of, that can be a value like 0.7 volts... Ideally. But the caveats that make this a bit of a guess-and-check process is that no transistor is perfect, and you have LOTS of them packed into your GPU. Thus, you're trying to find the point where you're feeding enough voltage so that the average '100 percent this transistor will operate correctly all the time' across ALL the transistors is firmly above minimum, while cutting out the excess voltage and thus, current, and ultimately, heat generated. In short, you're tuning your GPU to be as efficient as possible. Undervolting the GPU will not harm it. Damage is caused by heat. Heat burns conductor channels and breaks down their conductivity. Undervolting causes GPU crashes because transistors refuse to 'turn on' if you're voltage is too low, and thus the processor cannot operate. All it takes is one transistor somewhere in the thousands (yes, I said thousands, if not millions depending on the generation of processor) to not fire for the whole processor to malfunction and fail. If you kept up with this explanation, now you know why microprocessors produce huge amounts of heat at 5 GHz.

I love how you not only explained how to undervolt but you also explained why.

Thank you. My temparature went down from 84 to 71 celsius with no noticable differencw in FPS. Amazing work! 😍❤

It works. This helps more with the smaller single fan cards for the average gamer imo.

Very good explanation of how to undervolt. Thanks, man. Well done.

Thanks for this. Really well explained and easy to follow guide :)

I've already heard about undervolting since a pretty long time but never really messed with it this video made it look really easy so I tried it gotta thank you for it bro it made my gpu run as smooth as before with -10 degrees temps.

This helped me a lot! Built my first PC yesterday and got my RTX 3080 Ti undervolted. Stabilises at 1900MHz / 825mV with temps hovering between 65-66 degree celcius (from the usual 75 at stock settings). Definitely decreases some fan noises. Thanks for the video!

Best in-depth guide with explanation for everything you're doing. Thanks a bunch

Thank you man, fantastic guide! I had a problem with my GTX 1070. It was heating up to 93°. So I replaced thermal paste and the pads. After that the temperature was constantly at 83° level at any game. I continued searching for the solution and that's how I found your guide. When I tested my card with Heaven I saw that it was working at 1823 MHz frequency which is much higher than should be for a Founders Edition accordingly to Nvidia. After it reached 83° it was thermal caping down to 1503 MHz and 0.8 mv. So I set the frequency at 1600 MHz with 0.8 MV. I also made a custom fan curve. As a result now the temperature never goes higher than 60°. I was really amazed by the result since My computer is small and doesn't have a good cooling system. Maybe I'll even consider to increase the frequency but I'm just enjoying the temperatures right now. So, thank you so much for your help!

Great video! With this simple guide I managed to undervolt my GPU which saved me easily 10°C and about 15% to 20% less fan speed (from ~80% before undervolting to ~60% after)

Hi young man, big thanks to you and to the youtube algorithm. I've managed to undervolt my 3060 by following your instructions (and reasoning), now my gpu won't go above 69C° (and I have a shitty case with bad airflow). I undervolt my cpu (while overclocking), the whole thing is smooth.

thank you,it helped me a lot!

what a good guide dude thank's a lot !

I bought a renewed EVGA 2070 super XC and it kept crashing while gaming randomly. As soon as I lowered the memory clock a tiny bit and core clock it works perfect!!! Thank you!!

My temps were pretty low since I'm using a GTX 1070 Seahawk X, but this allowed me to lower them by 3 degrees and keep similar performance after combining it with an OC. Thank you!

Thank you for this video…watched many vids and this was the one that helped the most.

I appreciate your hard work dude , you probably would've worked day and night to produce this masterpiece

You have a gift of teaching, i think you'll use it well on this platform.

WOW. I went from receiving a 3087 score with 80c in temps, to receiving 3097 score with 68c in temps. Thanks man! For reference: My card is a geforce evga 2080 and use a mini itx case

Hey, great explanation. i appreciate your video!

So helpful! Thanks, and you're a good typist

Theres a huge difference between micro and milli

Thanks for the guide it helped out also i put my 3060 Ti at 1790MHz instead and my Mv at 900 cause i wanted to keep it at a stable level and now when i play my games the max temps i end up getting is 56c (before i was getting 68c) which i am glad because now the system is more quiet than it was before because the only noise i would get in my whole system is the GPU fans.

Excellent guide! I didn't know there was a button in the old version of the program to open the curve lol, it's just so tiny and doesn't even look like a button.

Thank you for this clear and easy to understand explanation video, I watched a specific video on a "simple trick" to get better performance out of my exact card and I had absolutely no idea WHY I was undervolting, just that it would bring my GPU temps down and hence reduce the horrendous aggressive fan noise, after watching your video I feel like I've gained so much more information, brilliant exactly what I was looking for, thank you

One little extra tip. You can safely increase the memory speed by 400 or 500 mz and test it again. It should raise performance so you gonna have the same or more performance even while underclocking

those are not microvolts [µV] (10^-6 Volt), but millivolts [mV] (10^-3 Volt) on the diagram in MSI Afterburner.

Thanks a bunch, you have helped me with MSI afterburner more than anyone else on youtube.

Thanks for doing this, man. You broke all the info down in an easy-to-understand way. I really appreciate it!

Really thanks man you're a big legend 😄😄

Thank you for the video I followed your method on my 3090, it idles around 34 degrees and so far highest temp is about 65 when playing control with DLSS and 2K res.

Nice easy tutorial, works wonders. Thanks man!

Great video, clear and pretty concise! I come back here everytime I get a new GPU lol

Out of all the videos online yours was the clearest and precise one. Thank You!

Thank you sooo muchhhhh :))))

Thanks to your guide I was finally able to undervolt my 3060 with slightly better clock than stock. I was trying to undervolt from a max stable OC but just couldn't dialed it in (temp seems to stay high and I was trying to undervolt frm a high voltage side of 1081mV). The starting/target voltage of 950mV really helped me. Now I can maintain the highest clock throughout the test

Best , best, best, vid on this subject. Thank you! :*

Thank you for the video it help me so much. I have a 2060rtx and I was getting 81c on warzone and after doing this, the highest the temp is 74c and it and low as 69c at 1950. Everything is on normal and low settings at 1080, and only lost 2-3 fps. Thanks once again

Another great video Aladdin! 👍 From 5:28 onwards it should be millivolt. There is one more problem: In order to undervolt I need a GPU! Amazon cancelled my order - I wonder if any RTX 3060ti or 3070 will be sold in 2021 for close to RSP! 😓

I only went for 950 mV and that was more than enough. I wish there were more videos like yours around, my friend. May your channel grow

Best under voltage tutorial I’ve seen ! Easy to follow steps 🐾 I was able to reduce temperature by 12°C, from 74°C -> 62°C !

I'd say that overall this was fairly informative, however most of the time that "thermal throttling" was happening was actually "boost binning", where the card is still boosting over stock settings, but just reducing the boost frequency to control temps. Proper thermal throttling is when the frequencies reduce below stock base settings!

Yeah just followed this guide... totally works. Rtx 2700super. Was 1830mhz at 1030mv at 80°c Now 1860mhz at 925mv at 71°c Also getting higher fps slightly and less stutter. Many thanks

"Ur gpu never gonna run on that microvolt" said he while he pointed at 1200 mv, the exact number my gpu is running at

Excellent well explained had to come back to comment and like after sorting my card....best of luck for the future :0)

Great video. You explained the reasoning and the process very well.

Would you share your results on the RTX 3090. This is something I have been interested in because I use Ubuntu and we cannot control fan speed here easily so the alternative I have found was undervolting. So far the highest temperature is 73° which is nice. But I want to take care of my card and I want to check if undervolting is worth it because I don't think I'll be able to get this kind of card again.

Hey man, thanks a lot for this video. I've been avoiding undervolting my gpu for years now on my previous and current laptop because of this graph (I know, ahah), and you are the only one who made it simple and clear. Long story short for my gtx 1650 : From -925mv : score 3125 // min fps 30 // max 127 // temp 62°c To -775mv : score 3276 // min fps 31.2 // max 120.4 // temp ~55°c lost some fps, but gotta cool down in the summer, even more on a laptop right ? Plus I'll be really honest, I didn't see any difference. Anyway, thanks a lot ! Edit : Put it "back up" to 800mv for more stability, after 3.5hours of rdr2 my temp was at 54°c. Crazy. thank you !

Okay, I actually understood that. Awesome video.

thank you so much for this video very well detailed :)

I don't understand why you downclocked by 250, I do undervolting but I completely skip the -250 undervolt part. I actually overclock by 100 mv and cap it to whichever voltage I feel comfortable. (725mV at 1500 mhz for older games, and 850mV at 1750 Mhz for modern ones)

You're a legend mate, was having trouble with MSI afterburner resetting the voltage based on temperature, the -250 clock trick worked wonders.

this was super helpful, subscribed, thanks

I wish I new about undervolting ages ago! I just did it with my rtx 3070. Temps went from 77 down to 70 and performance actually slightly increased, incredible!

perfect guide, I´m already on 800mv with my 1070, no crashes, further tests are coming :)

I basically combined this with overclocking on my GTX 1060 6GB, because I was not happy with the temperature after overclocking. Here are the results: Stock: Core 1822 MHz, Memory 4006 MHz, 70°C, Score: 2100 Overclocked: Core 2021 MHz (@1043 mv), Memory 4551 MHz, 77°C, Score: 2363 Undervolt: Core 2021 MHz (@950 mv), Memory 4551 MHz, 67°C, Score: 2314 Completely stable so far and I've gained 10% performance while reducing temperature by 3°C compared to the stock values. Incredible.

Ok my gpu was usually running at 68 or 69 celcius when gaming. Temps were just fine, but was looking up a safe range for the average gpu and cem across this video. Undervolted my gpu and now it's running at 63-65 degrees and much quieter, even with my custom fan curve. Heaven benchmark score even went up by 90 points and performance didn't even suffer. Great video, great results.

Thanks for video! By this moment I've seen many of similar videos about undervolting. But yours seem to explain things much better than others 👍 I also have 3090 water-cooled, so temperatures are totally not a problem to me, but an interesting fact was that after I undervolted it, it showed better score in 3D Mark Time Spy. Not sure though if that's exactly the result of undervolting or just a coincidence (maybe drivers got some optimizational updates). But will now do a more thorough undervolting as you showed and see what will it result in.

Hello! Can i ask what's your pc specifications?

Imagine running above 60°C whilst running max settings + Ray Tracing on your RTX3070. This post was made by airflow gang

Very nice video thank you! Keep up the good work!

Great tutorial! Thanks a lot!

I've got a different graph from you, with frequency and voltage being on two separate tables, so I'm not sure how to adjust them

Thanks to your step-by-step guide, I finally dared to try to undervolt my RTX 3070 EVGA XC3 (black lips), currently at 800 mV at 1860 Mhz boost speed, 9-10 degrees cooler, so, most importantly, much less louder even without using a quiet fan profile !!! Thank you again. Btw. should I try going lower or just be happy with where I got?

Returning here 2 years after I first saw the video, I realised just now how much I have learnt. I am so grateful for your channel, everytNice tutorialng

excellent. you took the time to step-by-step this perfectly. is it too much to ask for an update (but just the new msi afterburner layout in the latest stable, not beta, version?)

Well this was impressive my Geforce GTX 1660 hit 78 degrees during the benchmark and although that is quite fine for temperature I wanted to reduce it more. So after following this guide I ended up with 875 voltage at 2000 clock speed and it never reached higher than 65 and even then it stayed at 65 for a few microsecond before dropping to 64 degrees. Very nicely done, I tried dropping the voltage to 850 but soon as the unigen started (not even started the benchmark) the computer instantly crashed lol. So 875 it is.

Thanks mate i've watched a few videos on undervolting this is by far the best explanation. I went from 82°c to 62°c playing Warzone on my RTX 3070Ti FE. If anyone is curious I set my core clock to -200 and raised 925mV to 1900. I also set a fan curve to help with my temps and they don't go above 60%.

i've had oc gear for 10 years on 3 machines and barely ever touched it, but this guy's confidence is reassuring...i just increased a miner's eff by 15 percent no sweat, thanks bruv. The setting the voltage curve action is this vid is money.

Very helpful video, thanks!