It was unusually cool here last night, so I tried to do some benchmarking while taking advantage of the cooler temperatures(45-50F).  I did this once before a few weeks ago and it worked well last time I tried it.  I opened the side of the case and put the case next to the window screen to give the system some cool air.  Last time I did that, I achieved some of my highest benchmark scores.
 
However last night, my 3090 FTW3 kept tripping the 15 amp circuit breaker in the room.  It happened in both my PC with the EVGA 1300 watt G2 power supply and when I put the 3090 in my old 6700K system with an 850 watt 80+ Gold Seasonic power supply. 
 
After some troubleshooting, I decided to try to put my SLI water cooled 2080 Super cards back in my system.  Even though the 2080 Supers draw a combined ~700 watts when they have the power limits raised and are overclocked, the circuit breakers did not trip with them in either PC.  However, when I put the 3090 back in my PC and ran some benchmarks, the circuit breaker tripped again.
 
Why would a 3090 that rarely even hits 460 watts trip a circuit breaker in either PC while the 2080 supers pulling 700 watts don't?  I'm beginning to wonder if something is wrong with my second 3090 after having to get a RMA for the first one.  It makes me wonder if I can even water cool the card without issues if cool air causes it to trip circuit breakers.

You don’t have anything else running on that circuit do you? Do you have electric heat?

Just wondering if it was a ground fault circuit breaker?

Don't keep using that 3090.... if something trips the PSU power protection consider yourself fortunate. Many people try to repower the hardware to troubleshoot but eventually the protection circuit doesn't trip in time just once, and presto they get instagibbed hardware. Since you're saying it's the house breaker that's even more scary, because it means your PSU protection didn't kick in first.
 
I don't know what happened to your first 3090, but unless it exhibited the same problem I'd assume the card has a dangerous fault somewhere and it needs an RMA. Best leave it unpowered and not even mess with it.

kougar
Don't keep using that 3090.... if something trips the PSU power protection consider yourself fortunate....
  Since you're saying it's the house breaker that's even more scary, because it means your PSU protection didn't kick in first.
... I'd assume the card has a dangerous fault somewhere and it needs an RMA. Best leave it unpowered and not even mess with it.

808sting
Older houses have multiple outlets and/or rooms sharing a circuit.  My system with 1080ti sli pulled +900w at the UPS.  My current setup pulls 800w.  If you can, put a current meter on the PS power cable and measure the load.  Add up the load for all the devices and if you're pulling over 1500w over time, it could heat up and trip the breaker.  Max constant 75% load on circuit is a good practice.  If it spikes past 1800w, you're overloading the 15a circuit.  Better to trip via spikes than build the load gradually and constant near max rating.  Wires will heat up and over time, be a potential fired hazard. 
 
A single high end computer with monitors should not exceed 12 amps and spike to trip a 15 amp breaker unless sometime is wrong.  There are exceptions to the "high end computer" descriptions I used.
 
You can keep the breaker off and see how many outlets are served by that circuit.  Sometimes, I run my portable AC and when the compressor cycles on, the current in-rush can spike over 8 amps for the AC alone.  I need two circuits for my home office.

I agree and was going to type up something similar reading thru this thread; a circuit for a single 15amp breaker is not just the single outlet on the wall but several spread throughout the house (seemingly randomly) and can include ceiling lights. Using a portable AC unit or heater in a different part of the house can count depending on how the house is wired. Generally if you have a shop, work-room or dedicated utility outlet; these might be single outlets on a circuit but are fairly rare in houses and are usually (not always) located in the basement.

That's interesting for sure. hum...

Shoklen
Just a random thought, have you tried GPU-Z? Under sensors it lists the boards power draw in realtime.

Every time I've used GPU-Z on this card its shown 400-440 with the normal BIOS and 430-460+ with the XOC BIOS.
 
I had it the card shut off on me twice recently while playing games.  Both monitors go black and the fans on the card go to 100%.  I'm pretty sure this is my second defective 3090 now.  0 for 2 with properly functioning cards so far.

dmisiur
Test it with a power meter at the socket and see how much you are really pulling. 3000 series are monsterously power hungry. Also maybe your monitor is pulling slightly more power too if your new card pushes more fps, not that would be more than a drop in the bucket.

Its hard to believe that a single 3090 and a 3950X would pull more than 1300 watts(or really more than 1600+ watts) and cause a 15 amp circuit breaker to trip when the pair of 2080 Supers, that use more wattage than the 3090, in the same computer when it was plugged into the same outlet doesn't hit 900 watts power draw at the wall.  The circuit breaker never tripped with the pair of overclocked 2080 supers in the system and I put them back in and tested it after the 3090 caused my circuit breaker to trip twice.
 
Now I have a new problem where the monitor goes black and the fans on the 3090 spin up to full speed randomly when I'm playing games.  I contacted EVGA support.  I think this is the second defective 3080 FTW3 ultra I've received.

bavor
Support got back to me today and told me to try one of the other BIOS available for the card in the 3090 FTW3 Ultra BIOS thread.
https://forums.evga.com/EVGA-GeForce-RTX-3090-FTW3-XOC-BIOS-BETA-m3124192.aspx
Raising the power limit back to 500 watts is going to help with a card causing 15 amp circuit breakers to trip and random crashes in games?  I'll try it but it likely won't help.

 
Interesting that support gave you that advice.  I just switched to that BIOS as a test because I just had my first black screen/fans stuck on max crash that required a hard reboot to recover from that seems to be a precursor to the red light of death a few days ago, and so far I haven't had a repeat of that.  (Never had the card trip my breaker, though.)
 
Power draw in benches and games so far seems to be noticeably more regular and less spiky with it on my Taiwan 3090 FTW3 Ultra with the power limit at 100%.  I'm going off the assumption that a lot of these problems are caused by something wrong in the standard firmware, and crossing my fingers that the flaw isn't in the XOC BIOS -- wonder if eVGA's investigating the same line of thinking.
 
If you try the XOC BIOS on your card, I'd love to know if your card stops tripping the breaker or blackscreen/max fan crashing too, and if your card's power draw looks more sane, especially what GPUZ spots it pulling on the PCIE Slot.

bavor

Shoklen
Just a random thought, have you tried GPU-Z? Under sensors it lists the boards power draw in realtime.

Every time I've used GPU-Z on this card its shown 400-440 with the normal BIOS and 430-460+ with the XOC BIOS.
 
I had it the card shut off on me twice recently while playing games.  Both monitors go black and the fans on the card go to 100%.  I'm pretty sure this is my second defective 3090 now.  0 for 2 with properly functioning cards so far.

I've had this happen many times in games when cut scenes are about to happen or a transition of some type. Problem is that when the fans blaze way up one of them is clipping something and makes a pretty bad grinding sound. Only does it on high RPMs, but ugh...this is what we get for $1800...? And note that this is on stock BIOS with NO OC at all, with reinstalled Windows and fresh Nvidia drivers. The whole 3000 series experience leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I plan on seeing if a new driver release from Nvidia will help smooth things out, but at this point I am very glad I got mine from Walmart, so I can just return it if I need to.

It happened twice more tonight.  Playing a game and all of a sudden the monitor turns black and the fans on the card spin up to full speed.

I’ve had this same issue as well. I haven’t had an issue with a full crash and fans spinning up since I switched from an 850 GA to an 850 G+, but my card will down clock significantly even just playing a game with no overclock. Last night it went down to 210 MHz for no reason. Temps were fine, maybe around 60, probably less. after a restart the card went back up to the normal 1800 MHz, then as soon as I went back to play Cold War, dropped me down to mid 1400s. I’m using the XOC bios, but I have also had the same issue with the normal bios as well.

I spoke with support and they suggested starting the RMA process and also trying the card in another PC again.  

PennywiserthanU
Hi, same issue.. Screen goes black. It just went black again when I tried exiting out of BO CW. FTW3 Ultra 3090. $3250AUD for this? 

I did the troubleshooting support suggested and in the end received a new RTX 3090 through the RMA process.