The guard's first response to an overcurrent pin is now a reversible GPU slowdown instead of a shutdown. It locks the graphics clock to the card's floor and drops the power limit to the card's minimum through NVML, then restores both exactly once the fault clears. Shutdown remains as the escalation if limiting does not bring the current down, and fires immediately at catastrophic levels.
Measured on hardware (Alan Wake 2, roughly 500 W, about 7 A on the busiest pin): clock at the floor 1 second after engage, worst pin under 2 A inside 4 seconds, settled at 0.86 A. On release the game went straight back to full clocks and the power limit returned to exactly its prior value.
What's new
- Severity tiers: 9.5 A / 15 s limits the GPU, then shuts down if the pin stays hot after a grace window; 13 A / 3 s responds without waiting the full window; 16 A on two consecutive samples shuts down immediately
- Response mode in the tray menu: Tiered (default) or Shutdown only, switchable at runtime. The tier timings apply in both modes, and Shutdown only never touches the NVIDIA management API
- Fully reversible: your exact power limit is captured and restored, so custom limits survive; a marker file restores the card on the next start even if the guard is killed while limiting
- Runs shutdown-only automatically when not elevated, and says so in the tray tooltip instead of silently weakening
- Crosscheck logging is now one hourly summary plus an immediate warning on real disagreement, instead of a line per minute
- Version shown at the top of the tray menu and in the startup log line
- The installer now stops a running guard before re-registering the task, so an in-place upgrade actually takes effect
Upgrading from v1.0.x
git pull (or extract this release over your existing folder), then re-run install.bat as administrator. Your config.ini, logs and venv are preserved. Details in the README's Upgrading section.
Credit
The tiered design came out of the r/nvidia launch thread, in particular u/tomz17's suggestion to drop the power limit through the management API as the first response.
Requires an ASUS ROG Astral 5080/5090 (the cards with per-pin sensors), Windows, Python 3.10+. All I2C access remains read-only.