Tearing Down Sapphire's RX 9070 XT Pulse: Thermals, Fan Response, & Noise
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Date: 2025-03-21
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Comments and reviews: 20
gamersnexus
When a heat source saturetes a piece of metal so much that it no longer ads as heatsink especially like a backplate due to it being flat, has no good way of be a heatsink past a certain load, even with that amount of mass. This would benefit the the GPU if it was on desktop on idle and IF there was a decent amount of airflow above the backplate but past like 10 watts of heat on it or so, if you are not dissipating it fast enough, it instead becomes a heat batter, that, if it was connected with pads on the back would instead impede heat transfer even more making the situation even worse because a bottleneck of a medium would be in between.
I'd rather have a proper implementation but for people who have cards like this, you should know this, just touch your back plate while you are gaming for 15 minutes or so, if it's too hot to the touch for a few seconds you will understand my point, this is why companies don't bother with stuff like that it helps with products designed lifespan (which is, let's be frank about it, a bit above their warranty period).
Now, if you wanted to use the backplate as a heatsink, you would need a fin stack of some specific size (of fins and density) and a fan above it (even just a fan above the backplate can have significant positive effect towards the longevity of the card, remember designs like this dumb around 65% of the heat produced back to the GPU itself), directing the heat towards your back exhaust fan.
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When a heat source saturetes a piece of metal so much that it no longer ads as heatsink especially like a backplate due to it being flat, has no good way of be a heatsink past a certain load, even with that amount of mass. This would benefit the the GPU if it was on desktop on idle and IF there was a decent amount of airflow above the backplate but past like 10 watts of heat on it or so, if you are not dissipating it fast enough, it instead becomes a heat batter, that, if it was connected with pads on the back would instead impede heat transfer even more making the situation even worse because a bottleneck of a medium would be in between.
I'd rather have a proper implementation but for people who have cards like this, you should know this, just touch your back plate while you are gaming for 15 minutes or so, if it's too hot to the touch for a few seconds you will understand my point, this is why companies don't bother with stuff like that it helps with products designed lifespan (which is, let's be frank about it, a bit above their warranty period).
Now, if you wanted to use the backplate as a heatsink, you would need a fin stack of some specific size (of fins and density) and a fan above it (even just a fan above the backplate can have significant positive effect towards the longevity of the card, remember designs like this dumb around 65% of the heat produced back to the GPU itself), directing the heat towards your back exhaust fan.
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AVol_0
The GPU/hotspot difference issue is an old and common problem with AMD cards. I'm surprised that it still exists, and that you didn't bring more attention to it. I don't know if it's a sapphire exclusive thing or if it does include other manufacturers, but I immediately noticed it when I got my 6700xt. So, I was afraid that there was some kind of issue with my specific unit, and started looking more into the problem. It turned out that I wasn't alone and that many other people experienced such high hotspot temperatures. Some situations were so bad - the hotspot temperatures were reaching more than 100C. For me - the hotspot temp doesn't seem to reach 100C, but in under very heavy loads it can go up to 90-95C. From what I got, and now confirmed by this video, the issue is in fact related to uneven pressure distribution. Such high temperatures, especially above 100C, can lead to faster chip degradation. Of course, having this issue leads to some people undervoting their cards to get these temps under control or reassembling their cards entirely. I, for example, have simply set up a custom fan curve, to try and keep the temps under 90C, since my situation isn't as bad. I've never seen this issue getting attention from anyone besides us, the card owners, so it would be nice if you could cover it in more detail, especially considering the new gen cards bringing more attention towards AMD GPUs.
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The GPU/hotspot difference issue is an old and common problem with AMD cards. I'm surprised that it still exists, and that you didn't bring more attention to it. I don't know if it's a sapphire exclusive thing or if it does include other manufacturers, but I immediately noticed it when I got my 6700xt. So, I was afraid that there was some kind of issue with my specific unit, and started looking more into the problem. It turned out that I wasn't alone and that many other people experienced such high hotspot temperatures. Some situations were so bad - the hotspot temperatures were reaching more than 100C. For me - the hotspot temp doesn't seem to reach 100C, but in under very heavy loads it can go up to 90-95C. From what I got, and now confirmed by this video, the issue is in fact related to uneven pressure distribution. Such high temperatures, especially above 100C, can lead to faster chip degradation. Of course, having this issue leads to some people undervoting their cards to get these temps under control or reassembling their cards entirely. I, for example, have simply set up a custom fan curve, to try and keep the temps under 90C, since my situation isn't as bad. I've never seen this issue getting attention from anyone besides us, the card owners, so it would be nice if you could cover it in more detail, especially considering the new gen cards bringing more attention towards AMD GPUs.
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adamkozany9826
Recived my 9070 xt pulse today,. Manged to bought one relative close to MSRP, for current EU pricing at least.... Have the little bend on the cooler, same as you guys (no foam with my card). Also two fins are bowed, it is just cosmetic and thery bowned on the side facing mother board, but still it is not someting you expect on 600 dolars card. I'm replacing my old 2070 super gaming x trio (so in a world where names are not arbitrary, the same class), which cost me noticably less back then. Bought it in December 2019. The build quality of the Trio is on completely different level. By te looks and feel, Pulse looks like a poor causin in comparison. It is a shame how the pricing crept up over couple of years.
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Recived my 9070 xt pulse today,. Manged to bought one relative close to MSRP, for current EU pricing at least.... Have the little bend on the cooler, same as you guys (no foam with my card). Also two fins are bowed, it is just cosmetic and thery bowned on the side facing mother board, but still it is not someting you expect on 600 dolars card. I'm replacing my old 2070 super gaming x trio (so in a world where names are not arbitrary, the same class), which cost me noticably less back then. Bought it in December 2019. The build quality of the Trio is on completely different level. By te looks and feel, Pulse looks like a poor causin in comparison. It is a shame how the pricing crept up over couple of years.
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miccellomann
The power Color red Devil 9070xt has the same Fan behavior as the pulse. VRAM was hitting 90 degrees on the red devil as well, even Roman Hartung mentioned it, hot spot was 87 degrees with fans spinning at 1100rmp while the gpu temp was 60 degrees.
Adjusting the fan speed in the Radeon software so that it ramps up to 1500 rpm, hotspot went down to 80 degrees and vram as well.
Seems that amd advices the Board partners to make their fan curves too conservative. There need to be vbios updates for power color cards as well.
Xfx seems to handle it differently looking at the reviews. The Asus tuf Model as well. A bit louder, but much cooler.
And even with 1500 to 1600 rpm, the red devil is still quiet.
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The power Color red Devil 9070xt has the same Fan behavior as the pulse. VRAM was hitting 90 degrees on the red devil as well, even Roman Hartung mentioned it, hot spot was 87 degrees with fans spinning at 1100rmp while the gpu temp was 60 degrees.
Adjusting the fan speed in the Radeon software so that it ramps up to 1500 rpm, hotspot went down to 80 degrees and vram as well.
Seems that amd advices the Board partners to make their fan curves too conservative. There need to be vbios updates for power color cards as well.
Xfx seems to handle it differently looking at the reviews. The Asus tuf Model as well. A bit louder, but much cooler.
And even with 1500 to 1600 rpm, the red devil is still quiet.
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leeloodog
If anyone is curious i have the reaper, and ran a 15minute stress test, in my w100 case, and having lots of cooling the memory never got over 72c, and the gpu was around 50-60c max. I also got the pulse so i'll test that too. I'm not going to take mine apart yet, because of teh warranty situation/hassle, but will in two years. I was a little worried about this because I don't love the 90's on vram. I also set my curve to not use zero. i use msi afterburner, because i find it does a better job with fan curve between reboots.
TLDR, it's not a huge issue it runs fine stays cool if you set it up for success.
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If anyone is curious i have the reaper, and ran a 15minute stress test, in my w100 case, and having lots of cooling the memory never got over 72c, and the gpu was around 50-60c max. I also got the pulse so i'll test that too. I'm not going to take mine apart yet, because of teh warranty situation/hassle, but will in two years. I was a little worried about this because I don't love the 90's on vram. I also set my curve to not use zero. i use msi afterburner, because i find it does a better job with fan curve between reboots.
TLDR, it's not a huge issue it runs fine stays cool if you set it up for success.
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gamersnexus
Eye surgeon here: it depends on which lead of the EKG we’re looking at .
For most, we look at lead II, and that EKG reading on the GPU ain’t good. P waves are inverted With a wide QRS and inverted T waves.
If this lead the patient is in distress or non-responsive, start a code blue and check the leads of the EKG.
If the patient is alert, oriented, and responsive call cardiology stat and also check the leads and set up a 12-lead EKG.
Disclosure: as an American board certified eye surgeon, I don’t do any body medicine anymore, so still call cardiology asap.
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Eye surgeon here: it depends on which lead of the EKG we’re looking at .
For most, we look at lead II, and that EKG reading on the GPU ain’t good. P waves are inverted With a wide QRS and inverted T waves.
If this lead the patient is in distress or non-responsive, start a code blue and check the leads of the EKG.
If the patient is alert, oriented, and responsive call cardiology stat and also check the leads and set up a 12-lead EKG.
Disclosure: as an American board certified eye surgeon, I don’t do any body medicine anymore, so still call cardiology asap.
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mechlost
High memory temperatures continue to be my biggest frustration with AMD, the 7900xtx had this same problem...and it looks like this generation unfortunately continues with this... make 85c hotspot MAX for MEMORY and GPU...please get the message AMD....this behavior is not exclusive to this card based on benchmarks...and it gets worse with the high power models. The extra heat could potentially damage other components in the case...like memory sticks sitting above the GPU running EXPO or XMP...which by the way have a 95C max operating temperature too.
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High memory temperatures continue to be my biggest frustration with AMD, the 7900xtx had this same problem...and it looks like this generation unfortunately continues with this... make 85c hotspot MAX for MEMORY and GPU...please get the message AMD....this behavior is not exclusive to this card based on benchmarks...and it gets worse with the high power models. The extra heat could potentially damage other components in the case...like memory sticks sitting above the GPU running EXPO or XMP...which by the way have a 95C max operating temperature too.
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calebme
My Sapphire NITRO AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU had excessive coil whine with anything beyond 100 fps. It was so loud and annoying, that I decided to return it. I could hear it even change pitch and tone while rotating the camera in games. Hope this is something y'all cover in the future and help us push the manufacturers to care about. For all the wild marketing they put out there with these cards, it'd be an easy win. Would love to see a bullet point like ULTRA COIL COMPRESSOR FOR QUITE PERFORMANCE or whatever.
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My Sapphire NITRO AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU had excessive coil whine with anything beyond 100 fps. It was so loud and annoying, that I decided to return it. I could hear it even change pitch and tone while rotating the camera in games. Hope this is something y'all cover in the future and help us push the manufacturers to care about. For all the wild marketing they put out there with these cards, it'd be an easy win. Would love to see a bullet point like ULTRA COIL COMPRESSOR FOR QUITE PERFORMANCE or whatever.
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krakenunbound
What I would love to see when you do these tear-downs is if you identify something that didn't do amazing, if there is a diy way to remedy it or improve it, if you could do that and show us what you did. Leaving your videos I get the impression that there are crappy cards sitting around in boxes because of something simple that you could probably improve with minimal effort. If you improved the card, signed it , put a GN sticker on it, and then put it up on your store, I am sure people would buy it.
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What I would love to see when you do these tear-downs is if you identify something that didn't do amazing, if there is a diy way to remedy it or improve it, if you could do that and show us what you did. Leaving your videos I get the impression that there are crappy cards sitting around in boxes because of something simple that you could probably improve with minimal effort. If you improved the card, signed it , put a GN sticker on it, and then put it up on your store, I am sure people would buy it.
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iordachenicolaev
I had a lot of black screens with my 9070 xt sapphire nitro. I am returning it. I checked forums and the problem seems to be present on the old 7900xtx. The problem goes like this: I start cs2 and when there are screen transitions the monitor turns off. But wait there's more: I receive damage and the screen goes off but not all the time. Battlefield 1 is much more random. In BF1 I get black screens sometimes when the screen transitions but also long black screens when I'm in game.
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I had a lot of black screens with my 9070 xt sapphire nitro. I am returning it. I checked forums and the problem seems to be present on the old 7900xtx. The problem goes like this: I start cs2 and when there are screen transitions the monitor turns off. But wait there's more: I receive damage and the screen goes off but not all the time. Battlefield 1 is much more random. In BF1 I get black screens sometimes when the screen transitions but also long black screens when I'm in game.
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Aotearas
I'm quite eager to see how well one can tweak the performance on these 9070 GPUs. I was beaten to it in the initial scramble at launch so I couldn't get one before they all sold out within a minute but I'm still in the market to buy a RX 9070 XT and I've heard some nice things about undervolting these GPUs for seemingly noticable performance gains whilst lowering power consumption and thermals which sounds absolutely splendid.
Would love to see you explore that a bit.
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I'm quite eager to see how well one can tweak the performance on these 9070 GPUs. I was beaten to it in the initial scramble at launch so I couldn't get one before they all sold out within a minute but I'm still in the market to buy a RX 9070 XT and I've heard some nice things about undervolting these GPUs for seemingly noticable performance gains whilst lowering power consumption and thermals which sounds absolutely splendid.
Would love to see you explore that a bit.
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brandonunger1689
Sapphire really IS the EVGA for AMD cards. My Sapphire TOXIC 6950 XT is a masterpiece. There aren't really any differences between 6950 XT and the 7900 XTX; I actually scored higher on benchmarks with the 6950 XT vs. 7900 XTX, but that is probably due to the TOXIC being water-cooled and comes out of the box overclocked. I'm going to hold out for next big AMD GPU and high-end Sapphire build. Maybe we will see a TOXIC 9950 XT in 2yrs or less.
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Sapphire really IS the EVGA for AMD cards. My Sapphire TOXIC 6950 XT is a masterpiece. There aren't really any differences between 6950 XT and the 7900 XTX; I actually scored higher on benchmarks with the 6950 XT vs. 7900 XTX, but that is probably due to the TOXIC being water-cooled and comes out of the box overclocked. I'm going to hold out for next big AMD GPU and high-end Sapphire build. Maybe we will see a TOXIC 9950 XT in 2yrs or less.
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HDJess
The higher delta between GPU and Hotspot temps could easily be due to the stretched rectangular shape of the die, which could be hotter on one end and cooler on the other, depending on workload. I would bet Nvidia is having the same issue with their 50 series, thus the removal of Hotspot temp monitoring for customers, so they don't panic. Basically, as the dies get bigger, higher deltas can be observed, especially combined with higher transistor density.
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The higher delta between GPU and Hotspot temps could easily be due to the stretched rectangular shape of the die, which could be hotter on one end and cooler on the other, depending on workload. I would bet Nvidia is having the same issue with their 50 series, thus the removal of Hotspot temp monitoring for customers, so they don't panic. Basically, as the dies get bigger, higher deltas can be observed, especially combined with higher transistor density.
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parkegoodall6156
Considering us consumers take apart our own Pulse card, would it help with the memory temps if we did like you said the manufacturer should have done and put thermal pads on the back of the memory modules to the metal back plate Or is there no room for aftermarket pads Ive already used Adrenaline to change fan speeds for constant and higher flow, just want to have my card last a much longer time if i could help it.
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Considering us consumers take apart our own Pulse card, would it help with the memory temps if we did like you said the manufacturer should have done and put thermal pads on the back of the memory modules to the metal back plate Or is there no room for aftermarket pads Ive already used Adrenaline to change fan speeds for constant and higher flow, just want to have my card last a much longer time if i could help it.
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arphinionb
At 17:45 regarding no additional pads to pull heat away from the backplate; can users install additional pads on their own Is that a thing And in regards to the fin plates being slightly bent because of QC, anyone else that's bought this find this to be an issue as well or was it a one off fluke that GM just so happened to acquire (of all the luck) And could it be bent back to straighten it out Safely
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At 17:45 regarding no additional pads to pull heat away from the backplate; can users install additional pads on their own Is that a thing And in regards to the fin plates being slightly bent because of QC, anyone else that's bought this find this to be an issue as well or was it a one off fluke that GM just so happened to acquire (of all the luck) And could it be bent back to straighten it out Safely
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mr.unknown4589
about memory temps on this card ... looks like inadequate pad thickness for vram = low pressure to heatsink = 90c ... i've disassembled / re-pasted / changed pads on dozen on cards past week (3080, 3090, 5700xt, 6800/6800xt, 6900xt) ... all pads showed signs of high pressure ... also - those two small black pads below gpu may be the suspects for uneven ptm7950 spread across gpu
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about memory temps on this card ... looks like inadequate pad thickness for vram = low pressure to heatsink = 90c ... i've disassembled / re-pasted / changed pads on dozen on cards past week (3080, 3090, 5700xt, 6800/6800xt, 6900xt) ... all pads showed signs of high pressure ... also - those two small black pads below gpu may be the suspects for uneven ptm7950 spread across gpu
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BeastofBourdon
Is the more rectangular shape of the die to maybe give more area for pcie lanes or something along those lines I don't know much about the specifics but have heard mention that dies size has a lot to do with restrictions on memory bus width and pcie lanes, so could the longer die layout be to combat that without having to go with a much larger overall surface area for the die
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Is the more rectangular shape of the die to maybe give more area for pcie lanes or something along those lines I don't know much about the specifics but have heard mention that dies size has a lot to do with restrictions on memory bus width and pcie lanes, so could the longer die layout be to combat that without having to go with a much larger overall surface area for the die
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jawnTem
Lol! Him tossing boxes off his table reminded me of a mechanic that was working on my car once. He was removing parts from the hood area and tossing them over his shoulder. With each part, he'd say, we don't need this . I got really worried.
Here's another funny, when you get your card, look for benty parts! On a side note; the PC Board seems larger than the one on the 5090
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Lol! Him tossing boxes off his table reminded me of a mechanic that was working on my car once. He was removing parts from the hood area and tossing them over his shoulder. With each part, he'd say, we don't need this . I got really worried.
Here's another funny, when you get your card, look for benty parts! On a side note; the PC Board seems larger than the one on the 5090
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klem233
Steve, you mentioned tearing down the Red Devil in a future video- PLEASE be careful! The Hellstone forged in the fires of the underworld may summon Hell Hounds upon contact, which have 50 ft speeds in a single turn AND Fire Breath in a 15- foot area. You may need to respec to something ranged in order to take apart that card safely. Be careful out there.
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Steve, you mentioned tearing down the Red Devil in a future video- PLEASE be careful! The Hellstone forged in the fires of the underworld may summon Hell Hounds upon contact, which have 50 ft speeds in a single turn AND Fire Breath in a 15- foot area. You may need to respec to something ranged in order to take apart that card safely. Be careful out there.
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gigaherz_
At this point in time, there are TWO online stores in Spain that are selling RX 9070 XT, as per the listing of pcpartpicker. One is just under 900 euros (asrock steel legend), the other is over 1400 (asus prime oc). None of the other brands and models are available, at all, anywhere. There's just no stock, even at scalper prices.
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At this point in time, there are TWO online stores in Spain that are selling RX 9070 XT, as per the listing of pcpartpicker. One is just under 900 euros (asrock steel legend), the other is over 1400 (asus prime oc). None of the other brands and models are available, at all, anywhere. There's just no stock, even at scalper prices.
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