diff --git a/src/llmtuner/hparams/finetuning_args.py b/src/llmtuner/hparams/finetuning_args.py
index 4e0a8122..ca304761 100644
--- a/src/llmtuner/hparams/finetuning_args.py
+++ b/src/llmtuner/hparams/finetuning_args.py
@@ -158,9 +158,14 @@ class FinetuningArguments(FreezeArguments, LoraArguments, RLHFArguments):
         self.additional_target = split_arg(self.additional_target)
         self.ref_model_checkpoint = split_arg(self.ref_model_checkpoint)
         self.reward_model_checkpoint = split_arg(self.reward_model_checkpoint)
+
         assert self.finetuning_type in ["lora", "freeze", "full"], "Invalid fine-tuning method."
         assert self.ref_model_quantization_bit in [None, 8, 4], "We only accept 4-bit or 8-bit quantization."
         assert self.reward_model_quantization_bit in [None, 8, 4], "We only accept 4-bit or 8-bit quantization."
+
+        if self.stage == "ppo" and self.reward_model is None:
+            raise ValueError("Reward model is necessary for PPO training.")
+
         if self.reward_model_type == "lora" and self.finetuning_type != "lora":
             raise ValueError("Lora reward model only supports lora training.")
 
@@ -175,4 +180,5 @@ class FinetuningArguments(FreezeArguments, LoraArguments, RLHFArguments):
         r"""Creates an instance from the content of `json_path`."""
         with open(json_path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
             text = f.read()
+
         return cls(**json.loads(text))
diff --git a/src/llmtuner/model/parser.py b/src/llmtuner/model/parser.py
index 64f48e17..051978b8 100644
--- a/src/llmtuner/model/parser.py
+++ b/src/llmtuner/model/parser.py
@@ -95,9 +95,6 @@ def get_train_args(args: Optional[Dict[str, Any]] = None) -> _TRAIN_CLS:
             if not dataset_attr.ranking:
                 raise ValueError("Please use ranked datasets for reward modeling or DPO training.")
 
-    if finetuning_args.stage == "ppo" and model_args.reward_model is None:
-        raise ValueError("Reward model is necessary for PPO training.")
-
     if finetuning_args.stage == "ppo" and model_args.shift_attn:
         raise ValueError("PPO training is incompatible with S^2-Attn.")
 
diff --git a/src/llmtuner/train/utils.py b/src/llmtuner/train/utils.py
index 70307b18..807c44b5 100644
--- a/src/llmtuner/train/utils.py
+++ b/src/llmtuner/train/utils.py
@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ def create_reward_model(
         for name, param in model.named_parameters(): # https://github.com/huggingface/peft/issues/1090
             if "default" in name:
                 param.data = param.data.to(torch.float32) # trainable params should in fp32
-        vhead_params = load_valuehead_params(model_args.checkpoint_dir[-1], model_args)
+        vhead_params = load_valuehead_params(finetuning_args.reward_model, model_args)
         assert vhead_params is not None, "Reward model is not correctly loaded."
         model.register_buffer("reward_head_weight", vhead_params["v_head.summary.weight"], persistent=False)
         model.register_buffer("reward_head_bias", vhead_params["v_head.summary.bias"], persistent=False)