I bought a datacenter GPU that doesn't fit in a normal motherboard, macgyvered the fan with jumper wires, and now I'm running a model that ties with Claude Sonnet 4.6 on benchmarks, all for £200.
I spent a lot of time researching and testing different methods for that, the only thing that worked was LACT in Linux. Using that I was able to undervolt 100mV and drop GPU power usage about 10%. On my B450 ITX board with a Ryzen 2400GE CPU it pulls 30w idle from the wall, and about 300w inferencing with VRAM filled. (330w before LACT).
My fan solution ended up being to buy a 3d-printed shroud off ebay, the fan that came with it was super loud so I switched to an arctic p8 Max, and control it with the motherboard targeting a t-sensor header with the probe attached to the backplate.
I spent a lot of time researching and testing different methods for that, the only thing that worked was LACT in Linux. Using that I was able to undervolt 100mV and drop GPU power usage about 10%. On my B450 ITX board with a Ryzen 2400GE CPU it pulls 30w idle from the wall, and about 300w inferencing with VRAM filled. (330w before LACT).
My fan solution ended up being to buy a 3d-printed shroud off ebay, the fan that came with it was super loud so I switched to an arctic p8 Max, and control it with the motherboard targeting a t-sensor header with the probe attached to the backplate.