PCB Breakdown: Sapphire R9 390 Nitro [Actually Hardcore Overclocking]
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- Опубликовано: 27 окт 2024
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Wow, this hurt me to my soul, because this is my card! :D I always appreciate your objective reviews. You got a like from me.
my Sapphire R9 390 Black Screened after 3 years, i wonder if yours is still running?
green is a beautiful color, but I will still thumbs up your admirable thoroughness at explaining this card's capabilities.
Not sure if you saw my comment regarding the .95v from a few days ago, but in any case, thank you so much for addressing it here! Much better to explain it so everyone can learn vs. responding to each individual person over and over...
It's sad that Sapphire's quality standards are going down recently, the Vapor-X cards (which i still have one in my pc atm) were amazing.
P.S. can't wait for your ryzen overclocking livestream ;)
4 years later, I fixed a blown 390, with a phase removed and a fuse replaced with a scraped resistor. Seems that I must set a strict power limit…
A follow up with a 390 PCS+ would be amazing.
we need more pcb breakdowns,thx:)))
The thing why they probably went with cheaper VRMS is:
1) The VRMs are very well cooled and I havent seen them go over 90°C (sensor read). What are they rated at at lower temps btw?
2) The cooler on these are ridiculous and probably very expensive, and the only way to keep the card quiet at a competitive price
But for overclocking this is kinda the bare minimum, I agree.
Good vid as always :)
IR power stages don't come with ratings for less than 125C.
Hello posting in 2019 for this video. I just replaced a Sapphire R9 390X tri-X card with a new card. What I found with my 390x was that after doing a bit of modding to the bios and flashing that into my card I could hit 1255MHz core and about 1850MHz memory. For daily use I clocked my card at 1236MHz core 1.21 volts with +50 power limit for memory I ran it at 1800MHz & +13 for the AUX voltage. As for temps the card ran at it ran around 50c-65c on gaming loads. It ran like this since new until about 2 weeks ago so a rather long time.
So by your standards this card probably should have blown up in the first 2 weeks of me owning the Sapphire TRI-X card. Maybe I was not pushing the VRM to it's limits because of the voltage only being 1.21v but my memory was getting pushed up form 1500MHz to 1800MHz daily use. I was surprised you found the card to not be up to Sapphires standards being that they spent so much money on the highly rated TRI-X cooler system for this card I would have thought the card itself would be of the same standard. I think if I would have watched your video a few years ago I might have been a bit more worried about the cards life span and probably lowered the core and memory speeds down a bit.
Then again being I was only using 1.21v to get my 1236MHz core and for benching at 1255MHz it was raised to 1.22v I probably was in the safe zone for the VRM's and of coarse my temps were pretty low as well for daily use. Great video but I am a bit disappointed with Sapphire and the direction they took these cards for build quality. Oh yea my ASIC quality was also over 90% I think it was like 93% I could be wrong but I know it was just over 90% quality so that would factor in the lower voltage required for my OC I guess.
I just replaced this card with a Vega 56 but flashed it to the 64 bios to get the extra voltage for memory speed increase and better core OC. I have no idea what the ASIC quality is on my Vega card because GPUZ says that is not supported on the Vega chips. I do know I must have a rather great chip though because both the Samsung HBM2 and the core get to some pretty crazy high speeds from even stock Vega 64 clock rates so I am a happy camper and was happy to get better than RTX 2070 performance for half the price.Great video by the way thank you.
Edited:
LAST
I just put thermal paste on the GPU Memory controller mosfet to the VRM. If the memory controller is not cooled the GPU will have a blue band on the windows loading screen and checkered artifacts on the desktop. When 3d acceleration is used the computer will flicker and eventually freeze.
Seems like there is a reason this card didn't get full cover block from EK, but the cooler on it is absolut love, never breaks a sweat.
That's a pleasant surprise. Was silently waiting for this breakdown. Well not that silent though, actually requested this breakdown once. :) Thanks for making these great content. I'm very disappointed by the pcb though.
Ok now I know why my R9 390 stops overclocking at 240A. Thank you :D With a small overclock I am now at a Core Clock of 1075mhz, Vcore of 1.19V, VDDC of 245A, VDDC Power In of 372W and VDDC Power Out of 271W. VRM Temps: 120°C/85°C
FRIST
2nd
Actually Hardcore Overclocking 4RD
14th :
Did you just start grabbing first because i got it once?
Its amusing.
Hey buildzoid. Can you do one for the sapphire r9 380 nitro 4gb Dual-X
Do you know if it'd be okay to replace the ir3553s with ir3550s? So instead of 40amps per you get 60amps per
Gud lord you're a SUPER GURU. Compliments
Damn I just bought this card a week ago xD
Might buy another 390 / 390x and flip my current one. Why Sapphire?! hehe
Cool video. :P
Hi! I have Sapphire Nitro R9 390, after playing o couple of hours its freez in black screen, after dat is stuk by black screen on windows boot state
without driver in safe mode works fine, but after i am installing driver and reboot it is give a black screen
any idea wats with it? voltage stabilizator? memory controller?
Nothing wrong with those VRMs unless you do LN2 and shit. The average enthusiast ain't gonna be maxing them out.
Basically AMD's reference cards has better PCB and components than Powercolor, Sapphire, MSI and Gigabyte? If AMD made a good reference cooling system will kill same custons cards... =/ Am I right Buildzoid?
I'll do the PowerColor and MSI cards too. Not gonna drop hints on the quality in a comment though. I have no idea about Gigabyte.
My coment was based in your videos about Polaris cards.
But when I saw this video make me think about my question involving AMD's reference cards.
I have the Gigabyte 390 if you need a photo of it :)
+Wayne Gowland Do IT!
did you already done a R9 290 ref board breakdown? would interest me after this one
I don't think so. Ref R9 290X and 290 are the same though. Just check the PCB Breakdown playlist.
oOo a 390 video hell yeah!
Is this pcb the same as the Sapphire R9 390X tri-X buildzoid?
Great breakdown, but wow i`m disappointed with Sapphire now.... :(. As an owner of this card who also requested this review i was hoping for better components. But the whole point of "Nitro" series probably is to be cheaper than previous elite series Tri-X and Vapor-X were. So i guess lesser components are "A OK" especially if only for gaming. My friend uses a bunch of these cards in the datacenter where he works and although they are running cooler than their Powercolor and Asus R9 390`s, they die quicker. I guess the pcb and vrm could be the culprits for that.
Heii, I wanted to talk to you but you are not to be found so I will let this comment here. You are an amazing person and I admire your intelligence. I have a sapphire r9 390 that I just bought for 30$ but the card does not power at all. I have checked any things that I could and this is what I found: all the ir3553 s are OK, all the fuses are OK but when checking the mosfet from vmem (4c10n) the drain and source are always shorted but not the gain. An very strange issue is that ALL of the caps that do filtering for the main gpu are shorted and I do mean ALL OF Them. nothing seams to be shorted but just the smd capacitors. Please, help me! I really wanted this card because I don't have any in my pc and yep, it was kinda cheap
XFX > Sapphire these days
could u maybe do a calculation of how much a good vrm vs a crap one actually costs? on lets say 2 comparing upcoming cards.
like i have no idea what price difference we are actually talking about comparing a rx480 red devil to a reference to a strix/gtr level.
i know i want the gtr/strix level and cooler, but knowing the price difference in vrm could make people get easier if a card is overpriced or not i guess.
also i have no idea why i am watching this video of a card i will never get, but it's somehow relaxing :D
Hello, a recomended under voltage or something ? I have R9 390 Sapphire Nitro and not working very well.
Thank in advance.
It is kind of funny that the only vrm you said is ok is the one that fails consantly, the aux voltage for the memory controller. You can find a lot of dead saphire r9 390/x on ebay and is iss basically
always the mosfet for the aux voltage. I already repaired 2 of them.
heh yeah kinda odd that since mine recently blew up after 5 years service, and after checking the vrms the only one that was shorted was the aux one.
Hey man appreciate the video but I got a question you know what the Fuse like looking things the the big R on them are? there are several throughout the board and I can't tell if they are fuses or not.
yes the red ones with R's are fuses and the white ones next to them are also fuses. The fuse by the PCIE- connector is for the 12v from the motherboard
I got a question about that 240A rating on the core VRM. That is a rating at 120°C, no? I would guess (didn't look at the data sheet) it can push more on lower temperatures? And since you shouldn't be hitting 120°C anyway, it should be fine for higher draws? Still a little disappointing especially since Sapphire did nice cards in the past but... eh?
If is missing 2 smd capacitor close to the pci slot I have to replace or I can put some wire to make a bridge? My graphics card Is not detected.
Can you do a breakdown on the PowerColor RX 480 RedDragon? I got it for $140 and then I saw how bad the Red Devil was and I'm afraid to see what a cheaper card from PowerColor will have. I love these videos by the way. Thanks.
I can't find any pictures of that PCB
Hello I have a r9 390 sapphire and still get the black screen I measured Vmem and 2 phases (4c10n) I think they're having problems can be there the problem?the board goes without problems sometimes!
Basically theyre to limited to 240 so you need to limit the power of board
Hy Buildzoid. That two resistors near 8 pin connector near fuses with R mark on them are those curent sensing resistors. Becouse i have dead 390x no signal no fan spin, after try to repair it and fail i mesure 0V after that resistors so i shotred them an now is working normal. I have another one that worked in crossfure with broken one now fixed card draw more power that unmodded. i can't find spare ones to change them and i dont know value of them can you help me. Sorry on me English and thanks for videos :-)
Hi Num3raty, can you help me to repair my card, i have read your comment and I think you are very skilled with this card.
It would be something very appreciated if you can give me hints how to solve the problem. thanks.
Similar issue on my dead 390, no video signal & no fan spin. The two large resistors (NF1203 & NF1206) next to the 8-pin power each read 0.3 ohm on my card. The similar NF1202 resistor next to the PCIe power appears to have failed open, I get no continuity between the two sides. I do see 0.3 ohm resistance between the bottom of the NF1202 resistor and the first 3 PCIe pins, as well as 350 ohm between the top of that resistor and 8th PCIe pin. I wish I knew if this was my problem.
Hmm, but the GPU or motherboard PCB reviews are the most interesting aspect of this channels production.
I can understand why sapphire may not build their power delivery with LN2 in mind. it's kind of ridiculous
So Wrong! :P
It's awesome yer doing this and i can just relax and learn what is what.
BTW, I have FX-8350 running on Msi 970 Gaming Mother board. I was wondering is it capable to OC at all? Somehow this MSI 970 Gaming feels funky. Atleast my xfx rx480 gtr works awesome. Maybe getting 990 mobo soon?
Wintelburst You can OC on 970 boards. Maybe not the largest ones (that's probably the 990fx's thing), and it depends on power delivery quality/phases, but you can just fine.
The 970 Gaming is a pain to OC on but not a disaster. If you get some good airflow over the VRM heatsink it will be OK running 1.5V core. The only issue with the board is that it only supports offset voltage not fixed voltage.
Actually Hardcore Overclocking Do you have any experience (or just knowledge of) the ASRock 970A-G/3.1? I have it, and haven't attempted OC yet. I believe it claims an 8+4 phase VRM, but I've also heard it uses doubling, so it may not be a 'true' 8 phase. Probably not too big a deal, I likely won't be attempting 5GHz (for example) on my 8350 or anything, but I am curious.
Well looks like i have hungry chip here. 4.5ghz 1.424 @ CPU-Z. Temps seems to stay low anyhow.
Wintelburst Damn, son. At least the temps are okay. What do you use to monitor temps, btw?
anyone got any idea what the issue could potentially be if the fuses for
the right hand side power connector are blown?. its the 2 with the
letter R on?. any help would be much appreciated. I've got tools to test
it but i'm not really sure as to what i should be checking first as i'm
fairly new at this.
Got any plans for AM4 boards?
If I get one I could send pics 😉
sort of question whats the idle temps of this card and whats the max to worry about it !!
Does anyone know the difference between GPU core current and GPU vrm current out (IOUT) in HWInfo readings?
I often reach 240A on gpu core current and 190-200A on IOUT. Which one is the actual output of the core vrm?
Since the 390X Nitro VRM is only capable of 240A, reaching 240A on gpu core current made me a little worried.
Could you please do a vid on the ancient i7 920? I know its old but still kickin it good when overclocked! On maybe a Rampage 2 extreme?
The budget is spread very thin as is. So I'm not gonna be able to cover it any time soon.
HI MY FRIEND in the card the componet NF 1202 R ? WHAT IS THIS???
Hi! I'm searching for it too. I think it's a fuse and I got to know yesterday that this one went bad on my card. As I'm curious (and newb), I tried to test jumping it and I burned down the aux mosfet and apparently a couple of transistors, hopefully that's it. Still trying to find out what that is and how to find it.
es un fusible de 8 amperios hermano
Muchas gracias por la informacion manito!
de nada hermano cualquier cosa energiaintensa@gmail.com
The 390 nitro also has a known problem with video playback. Many cards just crash after a loner session of video playback due to the memory just constantly jumping between 300 and 1500 mhz. For no reason. And at one time while jumping it crashes. Maybe and has an explanation for this?
Really? Never had that kinda problem, instead while browsing on the internet if the power efficiency is off I'm getting driver crashes sometimes. It's not often though but still annoying. I need to either turn the power efficiency on from Crimson or turn the harware acceleration off from browser settings. Can they be related?
yep, it is super strange, because in 3D applications there are no Problems, which makes you believe everything is fine with the card. You can just Google r9 390 Video blayback Crash and there come multiple threads where all have the Nitro and the same Problem. Not sure what is the base to that problem
Never had a video playback issue on vlc or gomplayer though. and those driver crashes while browsing on Chrome and Firefox is not happening when the hardware acc. is off OR power efficiency is on for me. Which made me believe there's something wrong with the BIOS of the card or the drivers.
Just asked another Nitro user on reddit and looks like he never had such a problem so far. So it also might be related with a completely different things. The real problem is Sapphire's cheaping out with the components lately though.
What's your experience with the Nitro 390 exactly?
Also, I tested everything, even fresh Windows install, nothing fixed the Problem. People in Forums ad various Solutions with different results. Some People managed to get around crashes by underclocking the Memory or letting it run fullspeed all the time. Didn't work for me. I did try turning off Hardware acc and every power Setting there was. No results.
Could be the combination of bios, Drivers and Hardware. I just had to chuckle when i saw that only NITRO Cards had this Problem.
In the end i RMAd the Card and got a refund. First got myself a malfunctioning 1070 then a 1080
Sadly it seems that no matter what you choose.. Intel AMD Nvidia... all have their Problems you cant escape
ah you rma'd. yeah, I agree, when it comes to problems you really can't escape them.
what do you think about asus 970 pro gaming aura VRM for cpu. Is it good for 5ghz at 1.5v on fx 8350
yeah it's fine for taht just get it some airflow
Does anyone knows the thickness of the thermal pads used on GDDR, Vcore and Vmem for this card?
this came 2 years late for me, next time i get a GPU i will not go with sapphire, i read that their 290 and 290x where really good so i went sapphire when i bought my 390, now i'm disappointed , nex time i go AMD i get an XFX card, from what i have seen their 480 is awesome.
Aaaaand something power-related on my Sapphire R9 390 died...
This card has been crashing every couple of days since I first bought it. Just recently it would crash within the first 5 minutes of being on Windows. Lowering the memory clock (was running defaults) to 1400 with MSI afterburner helped stabilize it(for a little). Since my pc was crashing so frequently I was able to swap in and out variables to see what was the cause. Once I disabled the display adpater in device manager. The problem became apparent since it would no longer would crash/blackscreen/reboot. So the PC is stable in Safe Mode or when I disable the GPU adapter... Well that checks off a lot of other things hardware-wise. Mind you I'm running a pretty old setup (fx8350 and a GA-78LMT-USB3).
So it means as long as i don't go over 1.3v and 1200mhz this is still a great card for gaming right?
Sadly, you may never go to 1200 MHz on this card. Mine "dies" at 1150 MHz. I could try more voltage to stabilize it, but I think that's the limit. The stock cooler is pretty good, though if you can provide a good airflow in your case. Like he said in the video, you could achieve stable 1200 MHz on an MSI card. I'm so sad that I'm a Sapphire fanboy right now.
um.....i have tried 1200mhz on +200mv using trixxx(on 16.11.5 iirc), i ran unigine haven for about half an hour, no artifact as far as i notice, but doing that is really really hot, around 81-85C for the core, 90C+ for the vrm reported by gpuz, which is way out of my comfort zone for 24/7 usage.
i was worried that i pushed too far that time, its a relieve to heard that this card will do fine unless for ln2.
i have heard msi card can usually do 1200mhz with way less voltage, maybe the core is just simply less bin then the msi one as well :(
My PSU is a Seasonic Platinum hybrid 760W. I use the latest drivers and watman for overclocking, because Trixx doesn't work with these drivers at all. I could try more voltage. On auto it's artefacting at 1150 MHz core clock, so I don't know if I could get 1200 MHz stable.
im currently on 17.2.1 and i faced the same problem a few week back as well, luckily i find a solution.
1)DO NOT adjust any clock rate in any aftermarket software i.e Afterburner and trixxx, adjust voltage, power limit and fan speed all you want.
2)apply it and close the program
3)adjust core clock or mem clock in crimson wattman
4)open trixxx/afterburner and you will see all the voltage adjustment remain and oc applied
Perfect video , but next time say it slowly. ( a bit ) :)
You said GDDR5X at 1:46, did you mean GDDR5?
He said "GDDR5 MEMORY CHIPS" Obviously he knows it has GDDR5 Memory.
Ah, alright. I must have misheard, thanks!
can we get a Galax breakdown
Can't find good pics of those cards
wccftech.com/galax-gtx-1080-hof/
was the best i could find, but thx for looking out
btw hope u get your own board or gpu pcb colab with a company soon xD
Hi! I'm a big fan of your videos. I have a Gigabyte G1 Gaming - R9 390 that has a different PCB than all of the other 390(X) and 290(X) boards that you have analysed. In case that you are curious to have a look at it, for completeness or other purposes, I took it apart and snapped some photos of it.
Best regards!
drive.google.com/open?id=0B5MeHZHaT2iNMmFHVERya1BfaFE
Not sure if it's safe, here's what i got on my 1130/1500 reference card @ 1.25-1.27V with LLC disabled in TimeSpy. So it peaks at 250A even with kind of modest OC / overvolting
imgur.com/a/fKi2G
I have the best 290x vapor-x model and overclocks like crap.
A good PCB doesn't magically exempt a GPU from the silicon lottery.
Actually Hardcore Overclocking is really crap isn't it imagine you pay extra $100 for a custom PCB GPU and then ends up same or worse than reference. I'm done with shapphire, next I will go xfx just look at their RX 480, just beautiful.
Actually Hardcore Overclocking that's what it always comes down to, unless of course the chips are binned which costs an arm and a leg, trying to explain the Silicon lottery to a non techy friend who is in to gaming and just had me build their first gaming PC freaked them out, guess it's quite a scary thing not knowing exactly what you are going to get for your money, I have always excepted it as a fact of how CPUs and GPUs work, but then I am far more into finding out how everything in a computer works, while all my friends just want to game
Switching from a brand to another one doesn't magically exempt a GPU from the silicon lottery either.