Water Cooling my RX 480 and holding on.

[guskline]

Until just prior to Computex, I was running 2 reference RX 480s in CF in my Ryzen 1800X rig below. I had built the rig with custom water cooling in mind with a moderately priced Thermaltake V51 case, 2 slim 360 rads, an EK AM4 EVO block for the cpu and a new EK D5 140 pump/res (great pump res combo). My gpus stayed aircooled because I was looking to go to a single Vega gpu and then water cool it and add it to the loop.

I decided to sell one of my RX 480s last month, expecting Vega to launch sooner than it now appears to be. I got a decent price but didn't quite "capture" the new bitcoin wave of hysteria.

Then reality set in. Vega looks like it will be sometime in late August, September or who knows. EK will probably delay releasing a water block due to limited supply.

I held off on adding blocks to both RX 480s due to cost but PC Performance just had a one day sale on a "scratch and dent" EK RX480 water block for @$87 so I jumped at it.

I figure I'll add the block, slightly overclock the reference card (Jays2cents OC'd a reference water cooled RX480 to 1466 but I'd be happy with 1400 and quiet) and ride out the next few months until the nuttiness calms down.

I'll keep posters up to date when I receive the block and install it in the loop.

I agree with Jay that price performance on cost is hard to justify but I have a Freesync monitor so I want to stay AMD and until Vega pops I have nowhere to go.

Keep you posted.

 

[ddogg]

Yeah I agree with Jay that it generally makes no sense watercooling midrange cards. However, watercooling is really cool, pun intended Really sucks you have a freesync monitor as you are locked with AMD and VEGA being all but DOA at this point.

 

[Face2Face]

Quick, return the waterblock and sell the RX 480. If you don't mine, you might as well sell your card for as much as you can. When mining profitability comes to a halt, used and worn Polaris/Hawaii cards will flood the used market and sell for cheap. Save the money for upcoming Vega. It's in your third system, so you shouldn't miss it

 

[Guru]

Vega is actually technically coming the end of June, realistically with availability mid July. So still quite ways off, but its not that long overall in terms of when it was supposed to arrive, which was supposed to be early Q2 2017 mid April.

 

[Valantar]

Vega is actually technically coming the end of June, realistically with availability mid July. So still quite ways off, but its not that long overall in terms of when it was supposed to arrive, which was supposed to be early Q2 2017 mid April.

The Frontier Edition, which is a Pro or Semi-Pro level card, is arriving then. RX Vega won't be here until August, at the earliest. So unless the op wants to spend more than $1000 for a semi-pro card with unfinished RX drivers (which will soon after be matched/superseded by RX Vega for far less), Vega isn't getting here for a few months yet.

Still, I don't think Vega is "DOA" as @ddogg says. We still barely know anything at all about how it performs, power efficiency, prices, process yields, cut-down SKUs, and so on. They might hit it out of the park, or it might be yet another strike. Who knows?

OP: I'm inclined to agree with Face2Face. Unless the two other rigs are constantly in use by other people, sell the GPU, cash in, and wait for Vega. If miners are screwing over gamers once again, us gamers might as well cash in on it. For all you know, they might stop you from getting a Vega card until a Ethereum ASICs show up. You could just move the GPU from one of the other rigs if you want to play with Ryzen. Of course swapping GPUs in fully watercooled systems isn't child's play, but at least it's doable, and the 6700K has an iGPU if you need to have it usable.

 

[ddogg]

Vega might be good but their demo at Computex was not encouraging where they supposedly had 2 Vegas running Prey with no fps counter and it being extremely choppy while a single 1080/1080Ti can easily achieve 4k/60+. The release date is also unknown at this point, it could come in August or September or next year for all we know. Since it uses HBM2, it is likely also going to come in extremely limited quantities where you would need to stalk retailers like Newegg or Amazon on release date if you want to get any chance of picking one up.
I hope it's as good as AMD touts it to be but I'm not sure if waiting might be the right call.

 

[Valantar]

Vega might be good but their demo at Computex was not encouraging where they supposedly had 2 Vegas running Prey with no fps counter and it being extremely choppy while a single 1080/1080Ti can easily achieve 4k/60+. The release date is also unknown at this point, it could come in August or September or next year for all we know. Since it uses HBM2, it is likely also going to come in extremely limited quantities where you would need to stalk retailers like Newegg or Amazon on release date if you want to get any chance of picking one up.
I hope it's as good as AMD touts it to be but I'm not sure if waiting might be the right call.

The Computex demo has so many unknown variables that the only thing you can say based on it with some degree of certainty is that Vega in CF can run Prey. Unknown: whether the demo was live or prerecorded, whether it was displayed on a 60Hz or 30Hz projector, the actual refresh rate the game was played at (not on the projector, but whatever monitor it was played on), whether the projector was run through some kind of HDMI splitter or some such that messed with refresh rates (frame skipping to reach 30Hz, for example)... and so on and so on. Which is okay, as the demo was meant to showcase the I/O capabilities of the Threadripper platform, not to show off Vega's performance. Of course, it's really annoying that they didn't show us anything more concrete about Vega's gaming performance. But it seems AMD is realizing that the real money is in compute, and that that market is their best bet if they ever want to grow their GPU division. It seems that gamers in coming years will have to accept their beloved GPUs are now happy byproducts of much higher margin SKUs. Which, again, is okay, as long as it means continued innovation and development despite massive increases in complexity and R&D costs.

 

[guskline]

I want to stay all AMD so the RX 480 stays. At least until Vega becomes available.

 

[wilds]

Vega will be in high demand regardless if it is "DOA" as many claim. If you want to get a decent price on Vega early it will have to be a day 1 frontier edition. Watercooling absolutely recommended.

Will there be the watercooling version available right away? Not sure.

I do agree with selling the RX 480 though due to the awesome resale value it has. I am using my old R9 290 Tri X in my non gaming secondary build and I am extremely tempted to sell it as well. It won't get better in value than right now.

Can a cheaper AMD card tide you over?

It is an extremely bad time to be buying AMD GPU's but an amazing time to be selling them. Nvidia cards of similar performance tiers are worth like dirt in comparison /s

 

[Bacon1]

Really sucks you have a freesync monitor as you are locked with AMD

He is only locked with AMD because Nvidia won't bother to support an open standard and support Adaptive-Sync monitors so they can sell you a gsync module to do the exact same thing.

OP: I wouldn't bother WCing a 480 unless you can re-use that block with the next GPU you buy.

 

[guskline]

Just put the EK Acetal/Copper block on the RX 480. It's a keeper. Was able to OC to 1400. Keeping it at 1380.

 

[guskline]

Actually 1400 core, 2200 memory runs great in games. I'm using MSI Afterburner so I keep it stock until I need to game. Get a few more fps. Runs very cool with the full EK block.

 

[guskline]

Using MSI afterburner I was able to run the core at 1460 and memory at 2200 and run Superposition benchmark. No crash.

 

[VirtualLarry]

How hot can an RX 470 4GB (XFX model, dual hard-swap fans) get? Mine is getting to 69-70C max, while crunching distributed computing, and I'm getting "red flashes", where the whole desktop, where it's normally blue, flashes a red shade instead.

Is this some sort of error, do I have a defective card? Or is it an intentional warning, like the VRMs are overheating or throttling, and it needs to cool them off?

I had been using the newest auto-installed Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Creator's Update drivers, then I installed the newest ReLive 17.6.1 June 6 or so drivers. It does it with either set of drivers.

"non-whql-win10-64bit-radeon-software-crimson-relive-17.6.1-june6"

Note also, that sometimes it's more than just a brief flash, and the whole desktop becomes temporarily unresponsive during "Red flash mode". I was also getting screen black-outs as it got more severe.

Clocks are 1226/1750, Power usage is 83W max, Fan is 1730RPM, Temps are 69C current, 70C max.

 

[guskline]

VirtualLarry, what are the specs of the rest of the machine? Do you have the fans maxed when running full out? Since my RX 480 is fully under water (both core and memory) it's hard for me to tell what your problem is. Do you have software to measure the VRM temp?

I use Aida64 and now even when stressing my gpu to max core is at most 42-43C and VRM is at most 61C

Your temps seem moderate so I wonder if the VRMs are overheating? Did you check the thermal pads?

 

[guskline]

Still rocking with the water cooled RX480. I'm content to wait on a Big Vega I can water cool IF EK makes a block for it. I figure @ 3 to 4 months.

 

[nathanddrews]

Still rocking with the water cooled RX480. I'm content to wait on a Big Vega I can water cool IF EK makes a block for it. I figure @ 3 to 4 months.

Vega FE comes with a water cooled version, so perhaps we'll see a water cooled retail RX Vega when it launches...

 

[stk91]

I've got a couple of Arctic AIO watercooled RX480s. I run them pretty much full blast (lot of 3D work) and the watercooling has been a godsend. I can push them harder and quieter. Don't have specific numbers to hand but of the top of my head I'm reducing by something like 30C.

 

[guskline]

Vega FE comes with a water cooled version, so perhaps we'll see a water cooled retail RX Vega when it launches...

I would rather add an EK full water block than be saddled with AMD's water cooled AIO that you have to mount.

 

[wilds]

I would rather add an EK full water block than be saddled with AMD's water cooled AIO that you have to mount.

Yeah, not to mention a lot of extra money as well...