Sapphire RX 7600 Pulse Tear-Down & Disassembly
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Date: 2023-05-26
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Comments and reviews: 15
FullMetalPanicNL
The card for my first self built PC was a Sapphire HD 4850. Was happy with it. When I upgraded I went for an HD 7850 and went with Sapphire again. That card was a legend, really good. Still works too. For my second self built I went over to team green. Reviews made it seem the GTX 970 was a fantastic card.....I found the performance pretty disappointing. It was an ASUS Stryx. I sold it and got a second hand GTX 980 ti also by ASUS. That card unfortunately died suddenly for no discernible reason. I was playing Sunset Overdrive, my screen went black and it just....freaking died. I had used it for about a year or two and the previous owner had it for a year.
The market wasn't that great at the time but I went with the RTX 2060 by Gigabyte. Around the performance of my previous card, I went with RTX cause I didn't mind paying for the new tech. In hindsight it was a good choice, DLSS 2 definitely helped push out extra performance. The card is a loud piece of crap but it did pretty well.
Originally I wanted to go for a 3070 or even 3080. But then the dark times happened. I opted to go for a monitor upgrade instead (1440p ultrawide baby).
Looking back at it I feel I dodged a bullet, looking at the lacking RAM on those models. Plus I really hate how Nvidia conducted itself. I really like stuff like DLSS but they simply don't deserve my money.
Since I was going back to AMD going with Sapphire was the obvious choice, pretty much the number 1 in AMD cards as far as I am concerned.
My RX 7900 XT Pulse is really quiet. It's not like sitting next to a freaking blow-dryer anymore.
Though I have to say, it's a good thing the card went down by about 400 bucks or else I wouldn't have gotten it either.
I gotta say I like AMD's software a lot better over the Gforce Experience (stop making me log in for driver updates Nvidia....ffs). And I don't know what it is, some people call me crazy but....I SWEAR the colours look better on AMD cards for some reason.
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The card for my first self built PC was a Sapphire HD 4850. Was happy with it. When I upgraded I went for an HD 7850 and went with Sapphire again. That card was a legend, really good. Still works too. For my second self built I went over to team green. Reviews made it seem the GTX 970 was a fantastic card.....I found the performance pretty disappointing. It was an ASUS Stryx. I sold it and got a second hand GTX 980 ti also by ASUS. That card unfortunately died suddenly for no discernible reason. I was playing Sunset Overdrive, my screen went black and it just....freaking died. I had used it for about a year or two and the previous owner had it for a year.
The market wasn't that great at the time but I went with the RTX 2060 by Gigabyte. Around the performance of my previous card, I went with RTX cause I didn't mind paying for the new tech. In hindsight it was a good choice, DLSS 2 definitely helped push out extra performance. The card is a loud piece of crap but it did pretty well.
Originally I wanted to go for a 3070 or even 3080. But then the dark times happened. I opted to go for a monitor upgrade instead (1440p ultrawide baby).
Looking back at it I feel I dodged a bullet, looking at the lacking RAM on those models. Plus I really hate how Nvidia conducted itself. I really like stuff like DLSS but they simply don't deserve my money.
Since I was going back to AMD going with Sapphire was the obvious choice, pretty much the number 1 in AMD cards as far as I am concerned.
My RX 7900 XT Pulse is really quiet. It's not like sitting next to a freaking blow-dryer anymore.
Though I have to say, it's a good thing the card went down by about 400 bucks or else I wouldn't have gotten it either.
I gotta say I like AMD's software a lot better over the Gforce Experience (stop making me log in for driver updates Nvidia....ffs). And I don't know what it is, some people call me crazy but....I SWEAR the colours look better on AMD cards for some reason.
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Nitewing74
My last 3 GPUs have all been Sapphire and Powercolor cards, Sapphire RX580 (Still bangs for 1080p) 8gb, Powercolor Red Dragon RX580 (moved to a gaming build for the grandkids for 1080p), and currently socketed Sapphire Pulse RX 6700 (Non-XT) that is UV / OC and rips at 1440p for gaming. All 3 cards have been rock solid performers, less expensive than most competitors, and a breeze for maintenance. Building rigs for 20 years, I'll be the first to endorse a Sapphire card. They truly are the eVGA of AMD. Never had to RMA a Sapphire card, but I've repaired dozens of them and by all accounts, I've heard nothing but excellent reviews about their support / RMA processes. Keep up the great work with these teardowns Steve. These are the types of videos that consumers absolutely need to make educated purchasing decisions. Thank you!
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My last 3 GPUs have all been Sapphire and Powercolor cards, Sapphire RX580 (Still bangs for 1080p) 8gb, Powercolor Red Dragon RX580 (moved to a gaming build for the grandkids for 1080p), and currently socketed Sapphire Pulse RX 6700 (Non-XT) that is UV / OC and rips at 1440p for gaming. All 3 cards have been rock solid performers, less expensive than most competitors, and a breeze for maintenance. Building rigs for 20 years, I'll be the first to endorse a Sapphire card. They truly are the eVGA of AMD. Never had to RMA a Sapphire card, but I've repaired dozens of them and by all accounts, I've heard nothing but excellent reviews about their support / RMA processes. Keep up the great work with these teardowns Steve. These are the types of videos that consumers absolutely need to make educated purchasing decisions. Thank you!
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dikbozo
The card tears down pretty much the same as the RX 6600 Pulse. A few differences, like dual heat pipes vs a single long one, a finer fin stack on the 6600, the bar for the VRM pads. The shroud is attached the same. The fans are attached the same. Same fans. Same back plate for the most part, though the 6600 is a smaller card with out the heatsink over hang. The numbers on the 6600 are good over all with low to no noise, temps that never get too hot and the single 8 pin so power draw is exactly what is expected. FPS is pretty much good for all out at 1080p and this card is aimed at that market, but can apparently perform well at slightly reduced settings for 1440p. I don't have a 1440p monitor so IDK.
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The card tears down pretty much the same as the RX 6600 Pulse. A few differences, like dual heat pipes vs a single long one, a finer fin stack on the 6600, the bar for the VRM pads. The shroud is attached the same. The fans are attached the same. Same fans. Same back plate for the most part, though the 6600 is a smaller card with out the heatsink over hang. The numbers on the 6600 are good over all with low to no noise, temps that never get too hot and the single 8 pin so power draw is exactly what is expected. FPS is pretty much good for all out at 1080p and this card is aimed at that market, but can apparently perform well at slightly reduced settings for 1440p. I don't have a 1440p monitor so IDK.
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Joel
This is a really nice design. Simple, but in this case that's really valuable (nothing about this card needs to be complicated). Also, those fuses are REALLY good to see, because they're a sign that Sapphire cares about repairing boards. Like you said, fuses don't prevent failures, but they DO prevent charring expensive ICs, PCB traces, etc when something goes wrong. They're an insurance policy, often omitted to save a few pennies, but their presence means that Sapphire cares about recovering the board if it happens to suffer a fluke power rail excursion (replace the component that failed, replace the fuse, no cooked PCBs, good to go). I'm really happy to see this.
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This is a really nice design. Simple, but in this case that's really valuable (nothing about this card needs to be complicated). Also, those fuses are REALLY good to see, because they're a sign that Sapphire cares about repairing boards. Like you said, fuses don't prevent failures, but they DO prevent charring expensive ICs, PCB traces, etc when something goes wrong. They're an insurance policy, often omitted to save a few pennies, but their presence means that Sapphire cares about recovering the board if it happens to suffer a fluke power rail excursion (replace the component that failed, replace the fuse, no cooked PCBs, good to go). I'm really happy to see this.
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nem
I have a sapphire rx 590. I had a fan that started grinding in a month of ownership. I contacted support, they asked me to send a video. I did. They got back to me in a few hours asking for a shipping address they can send the replacement to. I did not need to send proof of purchase or anything. Those were one of those one screw quick swap fans. They asked me to send back the deffective fan for failure analyze, if I can. Was a nice experience other than it happened in the first place. Over all I am satisfied with the brand. It's been years and the card still serves me well. Sapphire is good in my books.
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I have a sapphire rx 590. I had a fan that started grinding in a month of ownership. I contacted support, they asked me to send a video. I did. They got back to me in a few hours asking for a shipping address they can send the replacement to. I did not need to send proof of purchase or anything. Those were one of those one screw quick swap fans. They asked me to send back the deffective fan for failure analyze, if I can. Was a nice experience other than it happened in the first place. Over all I am satisfied with the brand. It's been years and the card still serves me well. Sapphire is good in my books.
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Fate
Maybe I'm asking too much, but I've felt like all GPU's should have a second VBIOS just in case. I could see an argument that the extra front end cost could save them on a portion of their RMA's when support can tell the customer to flip a switch instead of needing to replace a would be dead card assuming the BIOS corrupted. Plus assuming less cards are trashed that's also less waste, but we know businesses only care about waste when it's for marketing/PR. I agree it looks bad for the card to come with loose screws and some wobble, but I really love the attention to maintenance that this card has.
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Maybe I'm asking too much, but I've felt like all GPU's should have a second VBIOS just in case. I could see an argument that the extra front end cost could save them on a portion of their RMA's when support can tell the customer to flip a switch instead of needing to replace a would be dead card assuming the BIOS corrupted. Plus assuming less cards are trashed that's also less waste, but we know businesses only care about waste when it's for marketing/PR. I agree it looks bad for the card to come with loose screws and some wobble, but I really love the attention to maintenance that this card has.
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LaSqueesha
The ease of disassembly is a good thing. I am not a massive fan of the mounting system on the inside of the shroud though. 4 plastic posts with threaded brass inserts is not exactly a robust mounting solution. No wonder it has so much play, it is probably just the plastic posts flexing. Good from a simplicity / ease of use perspective, but it really needs at least one screw going through from the I/O plate (which should have been factored into the design along with a more suitable I/O plate). It would give the shroud so much more rigidity.
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The ease of disassembly is a good thing. I am not a massive fan of the mounting system on the inside of the shroud though. 4 plastic posts with threaded brass inserts is not exactly a robust mounting solution. No wonder it has so much play, it is probably just the plastic posts flexing. Good from a simplicity / ease of use perspective, but it really needs at least one screw going through from the I/O plate (which should have been factored into the design along with a more suitable I/O plate). It would give the shroud so much more rigidity.
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Arudanel
Knowing Sapphire, I suspect the PCB spots are for the 7600xt model which will be 100 bucks or so more with RGB and V-Bios. Probably aimed at higher end 1080p gamers or something. I've yet to have a Sapphire card fail in over a decade now. I always thought of them as the Toyota Corolla of GPUs. Nothing fancy, but the suckers just keep going forever. All of the cards I bought are still going in relatives PCs who just need to do email and stuff, since there's no point in throwing them into E-Waste buckets if they still run great.
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Knowing Sapphire, I suspect the PCB spots are for the 7600xt model which will be 100 bucks or so more with RGB and V-Bios. Probably aimed at higher end 1080p gamers or something. I've yet to have a Sapphire card fail in over a decade now. I always thought of them as the Toyota Corolla of GPUs. Nothing fancy, but the suckers just keep going forever. All of the cards I bought are still going in relatives PCs who just need to do email and stuff, since there's no point in throwing them into E-Waste buckets if they still run great.
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Maras
(Electronic) products in EU will slowly shift towards a better possibility to repair them, instead throwing them away. Goal is to reduce the waste. At least it was planned to set up laws in the (near) future. All smartphones need to have interchangable battery packs again, 1 port for charging and so on... Maybe some companies already try to fiddle around with that direction, because honestly, im surprised about this setup and how easy you can remove the parts...
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(Electronic) products in EU will slowly shift towards a better possibility to repair them, instead throwing them away. Goal is to reduce the waste. At least it was planned to set up laws in the (near) future. All smartphones need to have interchangable battery packs again, 1 port for charging and so on... Maybe some companies already try to fiddle around with that direction, because honestly, im surprised about this setup and how easy you can remove the parts...
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Dan
That having the shroud and fan separate from the heatsink, and the flexibility of the mounting of the shroud, is a SMART move. I really like that part of this design.
Oh, and that empty controller and two headers Steve comments on are probably for the Nitro+ version of the card, which they like to add an RGB controller and external header. I have an RX 6600XT Nitro+ card, and it has both of those while the Pulse version does not, and costs a little less.
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That having the shroud and fan separate from the heatsink, and the flexibility of the mounting of the shroud, is a SMART move. I really like that part of this design.
Oh, and that empty controller and two headers Steve comments on are probably for the Nitro+ version of the card, which they like to add an RGB controller and external header. I have an RX 6600XT Nitro+ card, and it has both of those while the Pulse version does not, and costs a little less.
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Alexander
PCB and cooling looks inferior to reference, but serviceability is definitely up. I would go for better cooling, but can't be sure this card is actually worse without seeing the temp numbers.
Also wonder, how we got from being thankful for decent reference cards to moaning about reference cards being inferior to AIB ones. (I am all for AIB competition, this stimulates evolution. For me, NVidia (Apple) way means hard stop for their products.)
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PCB and cooling looks inferior to reference, but serviceability is definitely up. I would go for better cooling, but can't be sure this card is actually worse without seeing the temp numbers.
Also wonder, how we got from being thankful for decent reference cards to moaning about reference cards being inferior to AIB ones. (I am all for AIB competition, this stimulates evolution. For me, NVidia (Apple) way means hard stop for their products.)
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Donovan
Sapphire have been pretty good, so of course, I am personally not too worried about loosey heatsink on the video cards, since I decided to just water cool them from now on, as GPUs are already of massive superscalar cluster type nowadays, with out-of-order execution capabilities gradually added (which adds to heat output), so it makes sense to me to cool it very well from the beginning, otherwise I can just fix the heatsink issue.
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Sapphire have been pretty good, so of course, I am personally not too worried about loosey heatsink on the video cards, since I decided to just water cool them from now on, as GPUs are already of massive superscalar cluster type nowadays, with out-of-order execution capabilities gradually added (which adds to heat output), so it makes sense to me to cool it very well from the beginning, otherwise I can just fix the heatsink issue.
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Zira_Fluff
Great review. I'd buy this 7600 over the others because of serviceability features for the shroud and fan - it's the small things that matter between the various 7600s.
My use case for the 7600 would be for light gaming and AV1 encode/decode. I don't know if AMD's AV1 encode/decode on 7xxx series is any good or not (more research required). Would love to see GN do series on 264/265/AV1/VP9 GPU encoding/decoding
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Great review. I'd buy this 7600 over the others because of serviceability features for the shroud and fan - it's the small things that matter between the various 7600s.
My use case for the 7600 would be for light gaming and AV1 encode/decode. I don't know if AMD's AV1 encode/decode on 7xxx series is any good or not (more research required). Would love to see GN do series on 264/265/AV1/VP9 GPU encoding/decoding
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Joshua
The unpopulated parts seem to me to be an RGB controller, RGB switch, and RGB header, and a dual-BIOS switch and second BIOS chip.
There's also some unpopulated VRMs, at least one is going to power the above RGB system.
The header under the unpopulated controller is debug or programming. I see another spot on the back of the board. Likely an RGB header for a decorative plate that covers the flow through region.
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The unpopulated parts seem to me to be an RGB controller, RGB switch, and RGB header, and a dual-BIOS switch and second BIOS chip.
There's also some unpopulated VRMs, at least one is going to power the above RGB system.
The header under the unpopulated controller is debug or programming. I see another spot on the back of the board. Likely an RGB header for a decorative plate that covers the flow through region.
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Caparroz
IIRC, I menage to deshroud my Asus Tuf 3090 without taking it apart just by removing the six very tiny screws, three on each side. I bought it used from a miner when the crash happened and it was nasty. I only disassembled it once to clean it and install both front and back water blocks so I'm not 100% sure on the shroud disassemble but I didn't need to remove the IO plate even once.
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IIRC, I menage to deshroud my Asus Tuf 3090 without taking it apart just by removing the six very tiny screws, three on each side. I bought it used from a miner when the crash happened and it was nasty. I only disassembled it once to clean it and install both front and back water blocks so I'm not 100% sure on the shroud disassemble but I didn't need to remove the IO plate even once.
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