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The RX Vega 56 Owners Thread

subbytna said:
Any 56 owners getting the atikmdag.sys error message at all? A build I did for a customer is giving this error message a lot (games crashing). I'm thinking it's the GPU and not the rest of his system. Anyone?
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I used to have this with an older card.
My advice is. Go into safe mode for windows, use DDU driver uninstaller.
Download ATIflash and flash the cards bios to a different 56 bios (to be extra safe, after restart find the original manufacturers bios and then reflash that)
Worked on my 7970, hope it works for your friend
 
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Illuminist said:
I used to have this with an older card.
My advice is. Go into safe mode for windows, use DDU driver uninstaller.
Download ATIflash and flash the cards bios to a different 56 bios (to be extra safe, after restart find the original manufacturers bios and then reflash that)
Worked on my 7970, hope it works for your friend
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, I've decided to start a thread to put the feelers out to more people. I'll give that a crack too
 
Nope nope nope and nope... something seriously wrong with this cooler or me. I have refit it like 10 times and its no good. Hotspot temps under any load shooting for the moon at over 100 degrees, the pump is giving readings but sounds like there is a load of air stuck in it, the screw for the io cover fails the backplate if you try and refit the io cover, ive tried relatively lose fit like the manual says, medium fit, pretty damn tight fit and finally the he man special but nothing produces results all that different. Perhaps its me but anything that should be relatively simple but ends up this difficult just isn't for me. The best I managed from it was idle of mid 40's, I thought i was getting somewhere so decided on one last go. Put it all back together and boom 70 degrees idle temps.

I'm done, stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Time to move on.. Back to the stock cooler for now with idle temps back at 30 degrees. Gotta say the build quality of vega is clearly pretty good as back in the days even before the ATi 9700pro I killed cards with far less abuse than it felt like I was giving my vega on my he man effort at fitting that cooler.

So this leads me nicely into my next question... anybody fancy telling me what I am gonna need for a full hardline custom loop? Rig is a TR4 Threadripper 1950x with the Vega 56. I want the solid looking tubes, fittings, pump and res that will fit in my little Corsair RX460 case. Time has come to dump the AIO's and move on to something I might actually like.
 
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Doh... gotta stop doing this quote instead of edit. Ahh well may as well leave you with some pics from my adventure:

What it looked like before it went in:


Some Vega:


What it looked like in there:


What it looks like now:


What this cat thought about the whole thing:


That last picture btw was taken seconds after I took the one above it. walked into the next room and there she was. Different cat this time but you can't fault that pose.

Close inspection of all of this at the end suggests that my card isn't making good contact with the aio towards the bottom left of that die shot as well as where the two chips are towards the top right of the die, I think they are VRM's. Well they didn't appear to be making good contact with the cooler either. I know I didn't make a mistake with the thermal pads and went over the instructions time and time again. I'm clearly not cut out for fitting this thing.
 
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Vince said:
Nope nope nope and nope... something seriously wrong with this cooler or me. I have refit it like 10 times and its no good. Hotspot temps under any load shooting for the moon at over 100 degrees, the pump is giving readings but sounds like there is a load of air stuck in it.
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I gave up after 2 tries, 2nd time i checked to make sure it had contact with the core. Just in Windows temps fluctuated a lot, doing a quick test twice was enough to kill the GPU. So don't expect auto shutdown to save your card if it ever goes above the temp limit even for just a short period.

Air seems to be an issue with these things, if it's not that then I'm not sure.. We shouldn't have to buy any reservoir to fiddle around getting air out, it's supposed to be a cooler that you just connect 2 hoses and be done with it.

Seems like it's more trouble than the worth of it tbh, i might just end up getting a decent air cooled card next time. Never had an issue when i used to water cool the CPU, but the GPU has made me feel like not wanting to do it again.
 
Perfect_Chaos said:
I gave up after 2 tries, 2nd time i checked to make sure it had contact with the core. Just in Windows temps fluctuated a lot, doing a quick test twice was enough to kill the GPU. So don't expect auto shutdown to save your card if it ever goes above the temp limit even for just a short period.

Air seems to be an issue with these things, if it's not that then I'm not sure.. We shouldn't have to buy any reservoir to fiddle around getting air out, it's supposed to be a cooler that you just connect 2 hoses and be done with it.

Seems like it's more trouble than the worth of it tbh, i might just end up getting a decent air cooled card next time. Never had an issue when i used to water cool the CPU, but the GPU has made me feel like not wanting to do it again.
Click to expand...

Plug and play this cooler is not. If I charged my time i would be almost 4 figures into this cooler and for that money you might as well just get a block and be done with it. I would send it back but I am not sure I can even be bothered with that now, instead I may have to put it in a corner somewhere and pretend it never happened. I have lost interest in the wolf, nice idea, lousy execution. It was fun while it lasted, well kinda, but now i know a few things which I will pass onto you good folk here.

1) You could put all the famous engineers in a room together with this cooler and instructions for a year and I suggest the fellas would still walk out scratching their heads. If you put Tesla in a room with it before the cold war red alert 2 would be a very different game.

2) The hot spot is very real and aptly named but also a total mystery.

3) I shouldn't have to cut half a million heat pads myself, alphacool should pre apply them in a sensible manner to the block with a more sensible way of centering the cooler over the card. The current way of offer it up and hope is clearly no good for a numpty like me and other ham fisted blokes like myself.

I am sure there are more lessons here. Later tonight I'll take a shot of some of the instruction translations. Perhaps you guys will be able to translate the already translated :D

I am not doing all that well recently with hardware, I now have an x399 Taichi, this eiswolf and 2x brand new 525gb m.2 drives that I cant really use in my build. That's way more hardware than I wanted sitting there doing bugger all :( I need to stop ordering hardware and order myself a life.
 
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Sounds like it's just a crap cooler, even with having to template and re-drill the G10 bracket and base plate the mod only took a couple hours end to end for me. I'm a mechanic by trade but still, I was being careful and drinking beer LOL.

Don't blame yourself, a product like that ought to be a no brainer.
 
Geck0 said:
Sounds like it's just a crap cooler, even with having to template and re-drill the G10 bracket and base plate the mod only took a couple hours end to end for me. I'm a mechanic by trade but still, I was being careful and drinking beer LOL.

Don't blame yourself, a product like that ought to be a no brainer.
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Exactly my thoughts. Its probably been 15 years or more since I did any water cooling and looking at the Overclockers site I am massively confused as to what I need and what I don't. I think the thing to do here is post in the water cooling section for help. Depending on cost im just going to buy it all today and be done with it. Hardline custom loop is the future.

Im thinking along these lines...

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £392.41
(includes shipping: £10.50)



​

Problem I have is I have no idea on all the fittings I will need or what would even fit. It's not obvious at all :(
 
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £66.76
(includes shipping: £9.90)




easiest option would be soft tubing, then you just need some distilled water from a local hardware store. Depending on the spacing in the case you may need some angled fittings (EK 45 or 90) and you may need a mount for the pump unless you have holes in the case that accept the mountings it has. I got a EK fan mount for my D5 res/pump combo.

Probably need more than 1 meter of tubing, i forgot to change it.
​
 
Overlag said:
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £66.76
(includes shipping: £9.90)




easiest option would be soft tubing, then you just need some distilled water from a local hardware store. Depending on the spacing in the case you may need some angled fittings (EK 45 or 90) and you may need a mount for the pump unless you have holes in the case that accept the mountings it has. I got a EK fan mount for my D5 res/pump combo.

Probably need more than 1 meter of tubing, i forgot to change it.
​
Click to expand...

Cheers for this but think I am properly set on that hard stuff for no other reason than how it looks. I have had soft tube systems before so fancy something a bit different, this is clearly where it all goes wrong isn't it... I am a sucker for biting off more than I can chew! :)
 
Vince said:
Cheers for this but think I am properly set on that hard stuff for no other reason than how it looks. I have had soft tube systems before so fancy something a bit different, this is clearly where it all goes wrong isn't it... I am a sucker for biting off more than I can chew! :)
Click to expand...
I feel your pain, I often look at some of the nice watercooled setups with envy but I just know I would make a pigs ear out of it and leak everywhere and blow up my pc
 
Vince said:
Doh... gotta stop doing this quote instead of edit. Ahh well may as well leave you with some pics from my adventure:

What it looked like before it went in:


Some Vega:


What it looked like in there:


What it looks like now:


What this cat thought about the whole thing:


That last picture btw was taken seconds after I took the one above it. walked into the next room and there she was. Different cat this time but you can't fault that pose.

Close inspection of all of this at the end suggests that my card isn't making good contact with the aio towards the bottom left of that die shot as well as where the two chips are towards the top right of the die, I think they are VRM's. Well they didn't appear to be making good contact with the cooler either. I know I didn't make a mistake with the thermal pads and went over the instructions time and time again. I'm clearly not cut out for fitting this thing.
Click to expand...

Thank you for letting us know about all this Vince, you are a warrior for trying.
That is a super sexy die picture though, and if you fancy selling the eiswolf so i can destroy my time and vega I would gladly purchase it from you.
Also wouldn't it just be better to buy another vega 56 at that price of all the water cooling?
 
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