Poll: ASUS STRIX AMD VEGA 64, under £450, interested?

[Gibbo]

Hi there


It is quite obvious deals are few and far between, seems stock is been eaten up and board partners are simply unwilling to do crazy deals as we've seen on past generations years ago.

So its a case of we have to take what seems reasonable.

As the Powercolor Devil VEGA 64 at £449 was such a big hit and is now nearly sold out, around 30 units left.

If I could get the Asus Strix OC Vega 64 at under £450 would this be of interest to those who have been hoping a great deal would appear?

When you combine the FREESYNC factor and AMD's game bundle I think personally this could be a good deal, but are people interested?

 

[Gibbo]

It should be cheaper than the powercolor or the sapphire, these Asus cards are pretty poor, in cooling and the bios setup. Asus relying on their brand name but skimping on the finer details.

No they are not!
Strix beats the Sapphire for cooling and is on parr with the Devil.
Asus also has a 3yr advanced warranty through OcUK.

 

[Gibbo]

Yeah i believe so also.

However I do not know anyone other than @Boomstick777 having one to try some of the undervolting and overclocking settings posted few weeks backs. Because if it is the cooler then there are plenty of waterblocks for the Strix to pull the performance out of the chip

And personally I could grab one if thats the case for my upcoming AMD threadripper machine. So I wont have to keep the FuryX on my intel system.
Assuming it goes for £450ish.

One thing I note from that video review, the temps of the Strix are no higher than other coolers, but they have it running 200MHz slower, almost like they downclocked?
In their review the boost is around 1400MHz, yet the actual boost clock on the Strix is 1590MHz.

Maybe @Boomstick777 can comment in this thread on the boost clocks his card runs at and temps because that reviews seems very suspect in trying to show the Asus performing badly, yet what can be seen is its not running hot but running way below its advertised speeds.

 

[Gibbo]

Yeah, that is why asked boomstick777 to try the settings posted few days back, to see how it actually performs with downvolting and overclocking to 1600.
It could be buggy bios, and the issue the Strixx doesn't perform as it should, without going to Wattman

Wattman is good, I like it anyway, not into aftermarket OC tools, so I like the Wattman.

 

[Gibbo]

When will this pricing on the Strix be available @Gibbo ?

Still working on it.

 

[Gibbo]

Will you have to order in new stock or will it apply to current?

We have 10-12pc left in stock, if we do a deal for fresh stock, the remainder will just be sold at a loss as the average price with new stock will still make money.

 

[Gibbo]

Gibbo this is what I mean by the way the p-states and the bios is configured, out the box they run way below the nitro and red devil v64.
There's also reviews showing how bad the heatsoak is from the power regulation and pcb temps. I have also seen a few posts with unhappy users and high temps on tis forum.

We need @Boomstick777 to comment as maybe it was earlier batches, all I know is we've sold a lot of these recently from previous free headset deal with them and not had any unexpected returns and the cooler in general keeps the card cool.

 

[Gibbo]

Any chance of a deal on the 56 as well as was hoping to not have to replace my PSU so soon? Tempted by the red dragon but struggling to justify the cost against a 2 year warranty.

Afraid not sorry, Powercolor at £399 is pretty much as good as it gets there, 56's are pretty scarce.

 

[Gibbo]

Gigabyte at 440 eh.

I believe that was also the one with questionable cooling for such a high power card.

You know what I can't find anything so maybe it wasn't that one.

Gigabyte does have weakest cooler, but is better than reference and adequate for the card, not ideal for those overclocking or running several in one system.

 

[Gibbo]

Hi there

We have done some internal testing.

The VRM has insufficient cooling and as such we have been able to mirror the results found in reviews where the card can only match a reference card as the GPU clock throttles down, due to GPU VRM getting hot.

As such we are unsure if customers would still be interested, yes its a great card, it is super quiet and its not an issue reliability wise but the car will only hit its boost clock rating for like 60s maximum.
So right now we have the deal put on hold, unless people are still keen.

We are also seeing if we can offer a solution to the VRM cooling, so now have the card apart.


This is what really sets us apart from any other reseller.
We are still tempted by the deal as reference performance is still fantastic and of course the Strix even at 100% fan speed is nearly silent and it has the nice RGB, backplate and of course FREE games.

Problem is we were wanting to sell like 1000 units, but with this issue this may now be more difficult.

 

[Gibbo]

What would happen to the warranty if I were to add a water block?

We are looking into this option, problem is EK probably don't have that many blocks in stock for this card.

 

[Gibbo]

Are we talking about this card?

Yes, currently £579 on OcUK and 9 left in stock.
Was looking to do them under £450 delivered with games.

 

[Gibbo]

May not be the best cooled VRM's but that music reactive RGB lighting makes up for it xD

This card is sexy.

No complaints, were extensively testing one, its an epic card, just a shame it cannot maintain its 1590 boost clock. Aesthetically and noise wise it is fantastic!

 

[Gibbo]

Somebody on reddit fixed the Strix Vega 64's high VRM temperatures just by replacing the thermal pad with a thicker one. It seems to be a case of poor contact causing the troubles, rather than the cooler being inadequate. Simply swapping that out shaved over thirty degrees off the VRM temperature.

This is correct!

Do you know which pad they used, we tried an EK one, but it was thinner so had no effect.
It seems they just use the 1080 cooler, then use a pad not thick enough to cool the VRM effectively.

If you know the pad, we can see if we stock it, give that a try, but we tried EK earlier, with no success.

 

[Gibbo]

Hey Gibbo, apparently they fixed it with this you have in stock - 1 left! >> https://www.overclockers.co.uk/thermal-grizzly-minus-pad-8-20x-120x-2-0-mm-th-019-tg.html

Did they double stack?
That is 2mm, Asus is 3mm.

 

[Gibbo]

See the info below, according to this link with the apparent fix >> https://imgur.com/gallery/GZJnFY2


I used a 120x20x2mm strip of Thermal Grizzly "Minus Pad 8". I left each 20mm wide, which extends coverage to contact more of the retention plate for the small strip, and widens the coverage to cover the FETs I talked about before. Notice there is even a nice wide area built under the heatsink to accomodate this width -- I drew the rough size of the previous grey stock pad under it.



Nice coverage of the FETs to the left now.



Back to the main VRM bank! Here I used a 120x20x3mm strip of Thermal Grizzly "Minus Pad 8". I strongly recommend a 3mm pad here (as ridiculously thick as that is, it is required to make good contact). Notice the 20mm width fills the base plate perfectly now. Remove tape cover before assembly!

OK were gonna try this, got them in stock.

 

[Gibbo]

Can you confirm Gibbo that ASUS are ok with us removing the cooler to carry out this 'upgrade'?

Useful thread this, card is still fantastic.

Shame it doesn't appear that EK make a pre-filled MLC block for it, would have been perfect.

We will ask that question if we find a solution.

Why don't you use the stock one AND the EK one and see what that does?

It sounds botchy but realistically as their heat transfer is conduction based then combined they would have the same properties as one thicker pad, albeit with the thermal transfer properties of the weaker of the two (which is going to be an ultra negligible difference between quality pads anyway)



If you are the only retailer on the planet selling Strix 64s with the design flaw fixed AND £100+ off then shifting 1000 units isn't going to be an issue

We tried that, made the card run odd.

We won't fix the flaw, but we will get permission for owners to do it themselves, our time is money and you can't have £100 off and our guys spending time pulling cards apart and us not charge for that time, plus at this time of year unfortunately our SI department is too busy to pull apart 1000 graphics cards.

If we find the solution, we are happy to share, gain permission from Asus to allow end users to implement themselves without voiding warranty.

 

[Gibbo]

That isn't really on Asus, the vrm's are but none of the Vega's hit the advertised clocks out of the box, I've had 4 different Vega's including the overengineered Nitro + Limited Edition (3x8pin) and they've all been the same so it's more on AMD than anyone as they shouldn't of been giving stock clock speeds they can't achieve in the first place, and the decision to do that would have been down to Raj Koduri as the then head of RTG.

True but in fairness our AMD reference card here boost at 1570MHz and generally holds that speed, which I believe is above their advertised boost clock.
The Asus is advertised at 1590Mhz which it does hit for a few seconds, after thirty minutes or so of gaming and benchmarks in a closed case the boost clock is hovering around 1400MHz to keep temperatures under control.

The main advantage of the Asus its one of the quietest we have ever tested.

 

[Gibbo]

I tended to just whack the fans up and put up with the noise!

The Asus fans at 100% are quiet and the VRM still gets hot.

 

[Gibbo]

@Gibbo,

I'm happy to test this out if you wanna send me one of them strip things xD

Is this the one I need? https://www.overclockers.co.uk/thermal-grizzly-minus-pad-8-20x-120x-3.0mm-th-029-tg.html

We've tested it, the VRM temp has reduced, the card held around 1570-1590MHz for a solid 30 minutes roughly before it started to throttle back, so it helps but due to the Asus fans been so quiet, eventually the card heat soaks, as even 100% fan speed they are still quiet.

I think it is quite simple if you want best performance, you buy Nitro or Devil.
If you want silence, reference levels of performance and good looks with good warranty you buy Asus.