The RX Vega 64 Owners Thread

ShortWarning · 14 May 2020 at 11:34

MCFC_ANDY said:
I know there were some complaints about fan noise on the 64's there weren't quietest cards for sure., my nitro is tolerable,Though have a slight jet engine noise to it at full overclock at 100% fans

Is there anything I can do other than going down the custom loop route (if the reapplying paste doesn’t work).

It’s funny. I’ve had the card for years but have just started using speakers instead of a headset and it’s really started bothering me.

MCFC_ANDY · 14 May 2020 at 11:47

What's your temps when at full tilt? If not that high could always slow the fans a little, new paste could help cool card a little I guess. Have to clean heatsink and fans of dirt/dust as that will have a impact

Steampunk · 14 May 2020 at 11:59

ShortWarning said:
Is there anything I can do other than going down the custom loop route (if the reapplying paste doesn’t work).

It’s funny. I’ve had the card for years but have just started using speakers instead of a headset and it’s really started bothering me.

Enable zero fan, use the Chill feature to limit the card to your monitor's refresh rate, ensure good airflow in your case.

SonicSW20 · 14 May 2020 at 12:05

ShortWarning said:
Is there anything I can do other than going down the custom loop route (if the reapplying paste doesn’t work).

Fair warning on repasting Vega - mounting pressure is critical, and the package itself is very delicate. Only clean TIM of the tops of the 3 dies, do not try to clean out TIM that's between the dies (if your card is the unmolded type) as you can easily irreparably damage the card. It took 3 or 4 attempts to get my Vega 56 right after repasting it. You also need to use a generous amount of TIM, as on some cards the HBM sits very slightly lower than the GPU die. Using a thick TIM helps here too.

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/amd-vega-package-problem,35281.html

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3126-vega-gpu-mounting-pressure-variance-quality-control

Poneros · 14 May 2020 at 12:08

ShortWarning said:
For the longest amount of time my PC has sounded like it's about to take off. I thought it was a faulty CPU cooler but it's actually the Red Devil Vega 64 fans. They're cranking up to 3500rpm!!! Any suggestions? I'm going to reapply thermal paste but I'm not sure it's going to make that much difference.

Within seconds of shutting a game (I'm only playing classic wow and ffxiv at the mo so nothing crazy taxing) the fans slow right down even though the temp is still hight. Max it gets to is about 70-75 degrees when fans are at full speed.

What's the top temp they're safe to run at?

That's absolutely not normal:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/powercolor-red-devil-rx-vega-64-8gb,5517-7.html
"Fan RPM, Closed Case, Maximum 2561 RPM (Peak)
Fan RPM, Closed Case, Average 1617 RPM (Warmed up)"

Probably bad thermal paste & lack of mounting pressure, but as above be careful because the die is fragile and can crack.

ShortWarning · 14 May 2020 at 12:08

SonicSW20 said:
Fair warning on repasting Vega - mounting pressure is critical, and the package itself is very delicate. Only clean TIM of the tops of the 3 dies, do not try to clean out TIM that's between the dies (if your card is the unmolded type) as you can easily irreparably damage the card. It took 3 or 4 attempts to get my Vega 56 right after repasting it. You also need to use a generous amount of TIM, as on some cards the HBM sits very slightly lower than the GPU die. Using a thick TIM helps here too.

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/amd-vega-package-problem,35281.html

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3126-vega-gpu-mounting-pressure-variance-quality-control

Is there any guide for power color red devil's? I had a google and couldn't find any.

SonicSW20 · 14 May 2020 at 12:12

ShortWarning said:
Is there any guide for power color red devil's? I had a google and couldn't find any.

I've not seen many vendor specific ones other than a few posts on Reddit that lack detail.

I found the method listed here worked well for the critical mounting of the block to the GPU: - https://www.igorslab.media/amd-rade...d-das-richtige-auftragen-von-waermeleitpaste/ - as the dies are the same and the mounting systems are mostly the same this should track for any card.

Take note of how tight screws feel when removing. My back plate screws barely had to be touched to come loose, and it seems that is intentional as over-tightening the back plate will slightly bend the PCB, which will affect your contact at the die.

MCFC_ANDY · 14 May 2020 at 12:14

Poneros said:
That's absolutely not normal:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/powercolor-red-devil-rx-vega-64-8gb,5517-7.html
"Fan RPM, Closed Case, Maximum 2561 RPM (Peak)
Fan RPM, Closed Case, Average 1617 RPM (Warmed up)"

Probably bad thermal paste & lack of mounting pressure, but as above be careful because the die is fragile and can crack.

Wow that red devil can suck the juice @ over 280w.

ShortWarning · 14 May 2020 at 12:17

SonicSW20 said:
I've not seen many vendor specific ones other than a few posts on Reddit that lack detail.

I found the method listed here worked well for the critical mounting of the block to the GPU: - https://www.igorslab.media/amd-rade...d-das-richtige-auftragen-von-waermeleitpaste/ - as the dies are the same and the mounting systems are mostly the same this should track for any card.

Take note of how tight screws feel when removing. My back plate screws barely had to be touched to come loose, and it seems that is intentional as over-tightening the back plate will slightly bend the PCB, which will affect your contact at the die.

I'll have to have a think as to whether it's worth it. The fans are really bugging me though!

SonicSW20 · 14 May 2020 at 12:19

ShortWarning said:
I'll have to have a think as to whether it's worth it. The fans are really bugging me though!

It did help with temps on my Vega 56. They weren't out of control, but as its out of warranty and IMO the 5700's are not enough of a performance increase to be worth it, I thought I'd flash a V64 BIOS on it and wanted to make sure that the card was as good as it could be thermally. I replaced the pads too on the VRM's. It did make a difference, but if I didn't flash the card I wouldn't have bothered.

ShortWarning · 14 May 2020 at 12:25

SonicSW20 said:
It did help with temps on my Vega 56. They weren't out of control, but as its out of warranty and IMO the 5700's are not enough of a performance increase to be worth it, I thought I'd flash a V64 BIOS on it and wanted to make sure that the card was as good as it could be thermally. I replaced the pads too on the VRM's. It did make a difference, but if I didn't flash the card I wouldn't have bothered.

The thing is, the temps don't seem to be out of control really. I'll monitor them properly when I play tonight. It's just those damn fans. The curve max's at 70 degrees in the radeon software which it's always going to get to. I did try lowering the max fan speed and the temps went up to closer to 80 but I was getting microstutters (which seemed weird as I wasn't hitting the throttle limit).

SonicSW20 · 14 May 2020 at 12:28

ShortWarning said:
The thing is, the temps don't seem to be out of control really. I'll monitor them properly when I play tonight. It's just those damn fans. The curve max's at 70 degrees in the radeon software which it's always going to get to. I did try lowering the max fan speed and the temps went up to closer to 80 but I was getting microstutters (which seemed weird as I wasn't hitting the throttle limit).

Check with HWInfo64 or GPU-Z, while your core temp may be in check your HBM temps or hot spot temps could be too high. This would be in line with the stutters you experience when reducing fan speed as Vega will throttle heavily if hot spot gets too high (105C I think?) - if you monitor power consumption and clocks you'll probably see power drop to the low 100's briefly and clocks drop at the same time.

ShortWarning · 14 May 2020 at 12:30

SonicSW20 said:
Check with HWInfo64 or GPU-Z, while your core temp may be in check your HBM temps or hot spot temps could be too high. This would be in line with the stutters you experience when reducing fan speed as Vega will throttle heavily if hot spot gets too high (105C I think?) - if you monitor power consumption and clocks you'll probably see power drop to the low 100's briefly and clocks drop at the same time.

Thanks for the info. I'll check tonight with HWinfo64.

Gerard · 14 May 2020 at 13:41

Poneros said:
@Gerard yeah the arrangement seems inefficient. I'd test with GPU slotted in normally or maybe even get rid of the top-right fan since that's going to lead more to a vortex scenario so airflow will be negatively affected. What fans are those? I'd definitely do a bunch of tests tho. 83c & 1500 mhz is very very bad imo, unless you didn't do the Strix mod for VRMs.

Corsair light loop fans I think they're called. Theres a plate at the top right of the case stopping air circulating back into the case. And that's with the new vrm pad installed. Going to have to shift the rad to the top of the case to see what difference that makes.

ShortWarning · 14 May 2020 at 20:06

Set the fans to run at 2800 (which is still pretty loud) and ran FFXIV for a hour or so, temps settled around:

GPU - 75
HBM - 82
Hot spot - 97

Do they seem okay?

SonicSW20 · 14 May 2020 at 21:10

They are all within an acceptable range. Is the card running 100% stock or have you changed any settings?

Was performance stable during this test?

MCFC_ANDY · 14 May 2020 at 22:16

ShortWarning said:
Set the fans to run at 2800 (which is still pretty loud) and ran FFXIV for a hour or so, temps settled around:

GPU - 75
HBM - 82
Hot spot - 97

Do they seem okay?

thats warm compared to my nitro with slight overclock to 1670mhz fans at 90%, my hot spot was only 68 degrees, thats putting full load on at 4k gaming

subbytna · 14 May 2020 at 22:49

subbytna said:
Ok so I took 20-30 mins to replace the thermalpad and paste on the Strix 64 that I bought.

Before hand I ran Superposition benchmark to get the card nice and heated up for a temperature reading. Scored 4422 on the 1080 Extreme setting benchmark. Card was on stock settings with no power limit increase.

This was the hot spot temp BEFORE the change....110 degrees!!!

Ok so here's the stuff I needed - Thermal Grizzly 3mm pad and some thermal paste, again from Thermal Grizzly. Here are the 6 screws that I need to remove to get at the chip and pad. 4 pressure mounted screws and 2 screws tot he side that hold the backplate on

Removing the pressure screws took a REALLY small screwdriver but I had one to hand. Here is the pressure plate off

All that was left was to take the 2 side screws off and I could get started

I didn't even have to take the cables out, the cooler came off very easily and was able to sit it down beside the PCB. Very simple to remove the cooler.

You can see the REALLY poor contact on the flimsy yellow pad. This was really bad. Hardly ANY contact at all, plus a fairly poor amount of thermal paste on the cooler plate.

Here's the amount of TIM left on the CPU. Sparse. You can see parts of the right hand side of the chip are clean, showing there was little if any contact with the thermal paste.

A quick clean with a few ear buds and some iso alcohol and it's shiney shiney

CPU cleaned and ready to go too

The Grizzly paste comes with a black spreader, a bit like one of the ice cream "spoons" you get from the ice cream van. Spatula...that was the word I was looking for.

I peeled the old thermal pad off. It was flimsy and tore easily. On with the new 3mm thick one. Much better

With the thermal pad on and the new thermal paste applied, it was a simple reversal of the screws and 60 seconds later everything was back in place. You can see the thermal pad through the side of the cooler. I let a little hang off so that if I need to replace it again, it'll peel off easily.

Ran the same benchmark again with the new paste and pad. Scored 4654 - Although I did increase the power limit slider fully to the 50% to give the card more juice if it wanted. The main thing is that the hot spot reduced by 25 degrees....TWENTY FIVE Other temps were slightly higher due to the card running much faster with the additional power the 50% limit gave it.

Took about 30 mins all in, if that.

@Gerard Did you do the Strix mod to replace the thermal pads? I had my temps reduce by 25 degrees! see my quick mod result above.

LtMatt · 14 May 2020 at 23:07

subbytna said:
@Gerard Did you do the Strix mod to replace the thermal pads? I had my temps reduce by 25 degrees! see my quick mod result above.

Cracking result that, well done.

SonicSW20 · 14 May 2020 at 23:52

Nice result. Did the same with my old 390X Strix and the difference was ridiculous. No idea what Asus are doing, must be cheaping out on the assembly / pads.