Tear-Down: Nitro+ OC Sapphire RX 5700 XT - Thermal Design & Assembly
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Date: 2020-05-06
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Comments and reviews: 10
Aquila
It's only nine months since I replaced my 2500k with a 2700X and 1050ti with a Nitro RX590, so I will hold off on this card until they come down in price (unless something better for the money comes out in the meantime. My 2700x is damaged, so I just replaced it with a 3700X. I am really impressed with it. Low TDP, good price and plenty or horsepower. I play an indie space game called X4 Foundations that has performances issue as the game goes along. Once lots of ships and space stations get built the map mode and 3D first person view get bogged down to really low FPS. In my mega space factory complex I was getting 12 FPS in map mode (CPU bottleneck develops as the game progresses. 60-110 is normal FPS for me when starting the game. I thought I would only get a few percent improvement from the 3700X in those really demanding sectors of X4 space. I am getting up to 100% better FPS and around 30% average. The 2700X is a decent CPU for the money. The 3700X is very decent. Only issue i am having is that the latest B450-F Strix bios is a little finicky trying to boot the computer. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. The memory warning light for the Trident DDR-3200 comes on. Reset and it boots into Windows and everything is as it should be with ram speeds etc. Today I will clear CMOS to see if it sorts it out. AMD are a small company compared to both Intel and Nvidia. Hopefully now they are growing they will invest in hiring people to help improve the software that supports their hardware. Their driver software looks really nice, especially compared to that horrible old Nvidia driver app, but it does not always work well (the worst software I have had over the years has always been Asus motherboard utilities. Bloody awful, but I stick with them because so far an Asus board has never failed on me. Before the Z-68 board I had ten years of motherboards popping capacitors and dying.
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It's only nine months since I replaced my 2500k with a 2700X and 1050ti with a Nitro RX590, so I will hold off on this card until they come down in price (unless something better for the money comes out in the meantime. My 2700x is damaged, so I just replaced it with a 3700X. I am really impressed with it. Low TDP, good price and plenty or horsepower. I play an indie space game called X4 Foundations that has performances issue as the game goes along. Once lots of ships and space stations get built the map mode and 3D first person view get bogged down to really low FPS. In my mega space factory complex I was getting 12 FPS in map mode (CPU bottleneck develops as the game progresses. 60-110 is normal FPS for me when starting the game. I thought I would only get a few percent improvement from the 3700X in those really demanding sectors of X4 space. I am getting up to 100% better FPS and around 30% average. The 2700X is a decent CPU for the money. The 3700X is very decent. Only issue i am having is that the latest B450-F Strix bios is a little finicky trying to boot the computer. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. The memory warning light for the Trident DDR-3200 comes on. Reset and it boots into Windows and everything is as it should be with ram speeds etc. Today I will clear CMOS to see if it sorts it out. AMD are a small company compared to both Intel and Nvidia. Hopefully now they are growing they will invest in hiring people to help improve the software that supports their hardware. Their driver software looks really nice, especially compared to that horrible old Nvidia driver app, but it does not always work well (the worst software I have had over the years has always been Asus motherboard utilities. Bloody awful, but I stick with them because so far an Asus board has never failed on me. Before the Z-68 board I had ten years of motherboards popping capacitors and dying.
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Peter
The replacable fan also makes it a lot easier to get the dust off the card. Remove the three fans and you get much better access to the heatsink while you can easily clean the fans. Unfortunately where I live the retail does pricefixing, you still pay 480 for a simple Sapphire Pulse while you pay 410 for the reference-card. Allegedly the suppliers/distributors put pressure on the retail to keep the prices high and they keep it just that high that it is not less expensive to buy it from Germany and pay an additional 25 transport cost. The Nitro is not really deliverable yet here in Europe but the price seems to be going to be equal to that of the Asus Strix, around 550, a 140 markup compared to the reference-card. :/
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The replacable fan also makes it a lot easier to get the dust off the card. Remove the three fans and you get much better access to the heatsink while you can easily clean the fans. Unfortunately where I live the retail does pricefixing, you still pay 480 for a simple Sapphire Pulse while you pay 410 for the reference-card. Allegedly the suppliers/distributors put pressure on the retail to keep the prices high and they keep it just that high that it is not less expensive to buy it from Germany and pay an additional 25 transport cost. The Nitro is not really deliverable yet here in Europe but the price seems to be going to be equal to that of the Asus Strix, around 550, a 140 markup compared to the reference-card. :/
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Richy
I have a question, so I watched your video of the reference 5700XT. Well, I bought a reference 5700XT at Microcenter for 339. 99 ( 366 after taxes, it was an open box return. The card works good, and the box wasn't missing anything. My question is, should I keep the card? Or will the high temps you talk about really bad? Should I return it and just get a AIB card? Only reason I didn't buy an AIB card there was because they only had the Gold MSI card, and I didn't really like the aesthetics. Plus this card was cheaper than the Non XT model. Anyways before I drag this along, am I missing out on anything?
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I have a question, so I watched your video of the reference 5700XT. Well, I bought a reference 5700XT at Microcenter for 339. 99 ( 366 after taxes, it was an open box return. The card works good, and the box wasn't missing anything. My question is, should I keep the card? Or will the high temps you talk about really bad? Should I return it and just get a AIB card? Only reason I didn't buy an AIB card there was because they only had the Gold MSI card, and I didn't really like the aesthetics. Plus this card was cheaper than the Non XT model. Anyways before I drag this along, am I missing out on anything?
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Mathew
Does anyone know if the card has a proprietary fan pin header for the fans? Interested because I am considering deshrouding this card so my ITX case can fit two Noctua P12 or P14 fans and it would be sweet if I could run them off the card's header to control fan speed rather than relying on the ITX's header. In the video it looked like a 4 pin design, but I wasn't sure if the connector would fit the industry standard PWM/DC 4 pin connector. Thanks.
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Does anyone know if the card has a proprietary fan pin header for the fans? Interested because I am considering deshrouding this card so my ITX case can fit two Noctua P12 or P14 fans and it would be sweet if I could run them off the card's header to control fan speed rather than relying on the ITX's header. In the video it looked like a 4 pin design, but I wasn't sure if the connector would fit the industry standard PWM/DC 4 pin connector. Thanks.
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Martin
MSI Look and learn. this is your competition not cutting corners and actually custom designing a cooler for each model of card. This is what US the consumer expects when we pay 400-500 for a component of our systems. Why MSI would expect anyone to buy their crap when their competition is absolutely killing it on designs is beyond me. maybe if they drop their prices by 50-70 across the board, but not at current price for sure
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MSI Look and learn. this is your competition not cutting corners and actually custom designing a cooler for each model of card. This is what US the consumer expects when we pay 400-500 for a component of our systems. Why MSI would expect anyone to buy their crap when their competition is absolutely killing it on designs is beyond me. maybe if they drop their prices by 50-70 across the board, but not at current price for sure
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Ben
Hey Steve, have you experienced any struggles with the 5700XT drivers? It's been a nightmare for me and I see a lot of others with the same problems online. I can't even get into the settings menu of SOTTR to run the benchmark. As soon as you click graphics it crashes. Forza Horizon 4 crashes instantly. A few other games will stutter, black out and crash. Literally everything I play crashes. I'm gameless Steve, gameless!
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Hey Steve, have you experienced any struggles with the 5700XT drivers? It's been a nightmare for me and I see a lot of others with the same problems online. I can't even get into the settings menu of SOTTR to run the benchmark. As soon as you click graphics it crashes. Forza Horizon 4 crashes instantly. A few other games will stutter, black out and crash. Literally everything I play crashes. I'm gameless Steve, gameless!
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M.
Amazing cooling solution, now what i want is them using fans from noctua, more silent more durable. Sure downside it would cost bit more but currently the fans used on most 400+ gpu are a joke compared to brands i use for my case fans. I would pay more for a gpu with my type of brand fans. And no i dont want watercooling nor a 3rd party air cooler on it; want a custom with good fans. Oh and 120mm fans.
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Amazing cooling solution, now what i want is them using fans from noctua, more silent more durable. Sure downside it would cost bit more but currently the fans used on most 400+ gpu are a joke compared to brands i use for my case fans. I would pay more for a gpu with my type of brand fans. And no i dont want watercooling nor a 3rd party air cooler on it; want a custom with good fans. Oh and 120mm fans.
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Accipiter
I feel like I might wanna make custom water-cooling with cheap components for my Gpu but also looking at it no way without little breaking sides of cooling part. Also it would look so messy without some 3d printed units. If I feel like I buy ek watercooling part. Also It seem like you could also just remove back side and add some abb cooling ram heatsink to improve with thermals.
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I feel like I might wanna make custom water-cooling with cheap components for my Gpu but also looking at it no way without little breaking sides of cooling part. Also it would look so messy without some 3d printed units. If I feel like I buy ek watercooling part. Also It seem like you could also just remove back side and add some abb cooling ram heatsink to improve with thermals.
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Matthew
Bit of additional info re the fans. They are designed to be swapped easily and you can actuallly buy an led fan kit from sapphire to bling it more if you want (similar to a sepcial edition they have) There's even a fan health test in the Trixx app. Love my Nitro+, great performance/noise/heat balance with the option to OC higher if you want to.
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Bit of additional info re the fans. They are designed to be swapped easily and you can actuallly buy an led fan kit from sapphire to bling it more if you want (similar to a sepcial edition they have) There's even a fan health test in the Trixx app. Love my Nitro+, great performance/noise/heat balance with the option to OC higher if you want to.
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VitGerivaz
I'd buy it right now if I could get it for 440, but over here it's 500 ( 547. Oof. Still, if I spot a nice deal on it in black Friday or cyber Monday, I might sell my 580 nitro+ to a friend in need of a decent GPU and use that money to make this one cheaper. Otherwise, I'll just keep the 580 into 2020 and buy when prices are lower.
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I'd buy it right now if I could get it for 440, but over here it's 500 ( 547. Oof. Still, if I spot a nice deal on it in black Friday or cyber Monday, I might sell my 580 nitro+ to a friend in need of a decent GPU and use that money to make this one cheaper. Otherwise, I'll just keep the 580 into 2020 and buy when prices are lower.
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