Did I get lucky? (5700 XT UC/UV)

[JBodie]

So, to start off I began this mini adventure by having my junction temp sitting at around 100c. I personally just couldn't leave it. Therefore, I ordered in kryonaut and fujipoly pads swapped everything out just to have identical temps. (FML) After this disappointment, and about an hour of slamming my head on my desk, I decided to underclock and undervolt to get these temps under control. I started with 1900Mhz@1000mV and kept stepping it down. Finally arriving at what is so far a stable 1900Mhz@930mV with a 77c max Junction temp. The voltage just seems low to me but alass it's still trucking along in valley as I am typing this. Y'all think I should bump it up just in case or did I get lucky with a card that just asks for less?

 

[moproblems99]

So, to start off I began this mini adventure by having my junction temp sitting at around 100c. I personally just couldn't leave it. Therefore, I ordered in kryonaut and fujipoly pads swapped everything out just to have identical temps. (FML) After this disappointment, and about an hour of slamming my head on my desk, I decided to underclock and undervolt to get these temps under control. I started with 1900Mhz@1000mV and kept stepping it down. Finally arriving at what is so far a stable 1900Mhz@930mV with a 77c max Junction temp. The voltage just seems low to me but alass it's still trucking along in valley as I am typing this. Y'all think I should bump it up just in case or did I get lucky with a card that just asks for less?

If it doesn't crash, it doesn't crash. Just keep an eye on it. In general, you can't hurt by too little voltage.

 

[JBodie]

Right on, although after about 40 min I did get a crash, trying out 950mV now. I hate seeing 80c popping up from time to time but I don't really want to sacrifice any more from the clock speed..

 

[moproblems99]

Right on, although after about 40 min I did get a crash, trying out 950mV now. I hate seeing 80c popping up from time to time but I don't really want to sacrifice any more from the clock speed..

Shit mines in the 90s-100s all the time. Never really worried about it.

 

[JBodie]

Hmm, maybe I'll just run it high. Go back to maxing the core slider like I did out of the box XD

 

[Aquinus]

Hmm, maybe I'll just run it high. Go back to maxing the core slider like I did out of the box XD

Modern AMD GPUs will start clocking down once a certain temperature gets reached. For me and my Vega 64 it's something like 82*C. It's worth noting though that if you hit the thermal limit, performance is likely going to tank due to the chip clocking down. So performance will always be better if you're not bouncing off the power limit. For example, if I raise the power limit on my Vega 64 to 330 watts from 220w stock, it will run better for the first few minutes, but then it will run worse as it's bouncing off the thermal limit unless I fiddle with fan speeds.

 

[JBodie]

I get that, I was able to get a stable OC with it running at around 100c junction temp without hitting it's throttle point of 110c junction.

 

[azhighwayz]

My adventure with a used 5700 XT.

I recently bought a used reference Radeon RX 5700 XT blower card, I thought it was a pretty good deal for $300 shipped to me. I was a little worried because the guy claimed to have already done the washer mod on it. But I went ahead and bought it anyway. I stuffed it in and began testing. Temps were scorching. 90*C CPU, and 110*C Junction temps. Memory was in the low to mid 90's. VRM temps were around the high 70's to mid 80's. It was a disaster. (Edit: I failed to mention originally this was all done with an extremely aggressive fan curve that sounded like a vacuum cleaner during gaming), It wouldn't hit over 1815 for clock speeds but averaged around 1750. Thermal throttled hard. I decided to pull it apart and see what I could do. In the process I accidentally broke the connector off the board that goes to the lighting for the Radeon logo on the fan shroud, and I also broke two wires off the fan connector right where they plug into the connector. Not because I forgot to disconnect them, but because of how difficult it is to get to them in order to disconnect them, and trying to use regular pliers wasn't a good idea. Had I taken the time to fetch some tweezers I could have saved a lot of time. Luckily I'm an electronics tech and a little soldering later, I had the plug back on the board and found an old fan connector on an older graphics card to splice the wires together for a new fan connector. After all that I get it apart and it turns out the individual I purchased it from had indeed done the washer mod. He just forgot to remove the stock graphite thermal pad between the die and heat sink before applying thermal paste and putting it back together (see pic below).
So I removed it. Slapped the card back together cleaning up his thermal paste and graphite pad, and adding some arctic silver 5. That dropped everything about 7*C which was still too hot for my tastes.
So I decided to fix it. I knew that lapping the heat sink could prove beneficial, especially after seeing how concave the markings on the graphite pad were and the pattern of the thermal paste (see the pic below after removing the graphite pad). It had a very significant bowl shape in the middle of the die contact plate. I guess there is no such thing as engineering quality control at the Radeon factory because I never would have sent that heatsink out the door on a card like that. So I got my drill, some sand paper and spent an afternoon removing some copper. I knew Conductonaut (thermal grizzly's liquid metal) tends to drop temps nicely. I also knew that Fujipoly 17 W/mk thermal pads do a nice job dropping temps also. I used both on an old laptop to do some overclocking and get a year more of use out of it a while ago, and I had still had the liquid metal and Fujipoly pads laying around. I used 1.0 mm thick pads for the memory chips and .5mm for the VRMs and other components on the board that I could see made contact with the plate. So between the washer mod, flattening out the contact plate a bit (it's still slightly concave but I didn't want to remove too much copper), liquid metal, and new Fujipoly thermal pads things worked out nicely.

New temps are beyond my expectations after 20 minutes under full load running Fire Strike Extreme Stress Test with no detectable artifacting.
CPU temp averages 64*C, the max I saw it was 73*C
Junction temps will not go above 80*C
Memory maxes out at 80*C
Highest VRM temp is 64*C
average clock speed is 1995 with boosts to 2005
Undervolted to 1100 (anything below that gets unstable or artifacts start showing up), with frequency set to 2044 and Power cranked to max. Under full load it draws up to 217 Watts, but sits around 190 to 200.
Fan curve is a little aggressive and I could turn it down if I wanted to drop the clocks and power a bit, but I use headphones anyway and can't really hear it with them on. I haven't touched the memory frequency yet and probably won't unless I drop the clocks down to make the fans quieter.
Overall I was pleasantly surprised with the drop in temps. It was a really hot card and I brought it into the realm of what some of the better partner boards are doing out of the box. So for $300 and a little work I'm pretty happy with it. So If you have a hot card like mine you might want to try the liquid metal and Fujipoly pads, or try an aftermarket cooler. Also look at the contact plate. If you can see the reflection of a light in it distort really badly as you move it, it probably could use a good lapping.

 

[nguyen]

Just a little head ups:
_Kryonaut will break down at high temperature (after a couple months at above 80C, which 5700XT with stock cooler still be sitting at most of the time)
_Conductonaut (Gallium) react with bare copper and would also harden, albeit after like a year a two.

I reckon geting the cheaper paste alternative with low maintenance like GC Extreme, NT-H1, etc... is better if you don't want to spend too much time messing with your system.

 

[R-T-B]

Just a little head ups:
_Kryonaut will break down at high temperature (after a couple months at above 80C, which 5700XT with stock cooler still be sitting at most of the time)
_Conductonaut (Gallium) react with bare copper and would also harden, albeit after like a year a two.

I reckon geting the cheaper paste alternative with low maintenance like GC Extreme, NT-H1, etc... is better if you don't want to spend too much time messing with your system.

I've seen evidence of the thermal dryout on Kryonaut, admitedly. But I've never heard anyone claim it actually hurts performance in any significant capacity. I see no reason it should if the thermal pastes bond is not broken.

 

[azhighwayz]

Just a little head ups:
_Kryonaut will break down at high temperature (after a couple months at above 80C, which 5700XT with stock cooler still be sitting at most of the time)
_Conductonaut (Gallium) react with bare copper and would also harden, albeit after like a year a two.

I reckon geting the cheaper paste alternative with low maintenance like GC Extreme, NT-H1, etc... is better if you don't want to spend too much time messing with your system.

I've seen some results of Conductonaut and bare copper. The laptop I mentioned was recently taken apart after almost two years with liquid metal. Not because of any problems but because I'd begun hearing that some people were having issues with overheating and hardening later on and I wanted to see what was what. I checked the heatsinks on my CPU and the two GPU's in my laptop. All three copper heatsinks showed gallium absorption, but no evidence of liquid metal hardening, the liquid metal was still liquid and not noticeably different in consistency or appearance . However temps were still at the same spot as when I first applied it and the absorption was not significant enough to deplete the amount of liquid metal to cause any adverse effects. Granted I do not use the laptop everyday or even very often anymore as I don't travel nearly as much as I did then. But it did see almost 7-8 months of constant usage at one point with the liquid metal. So yes, there could be some absorption or hardening of the liquid metal down the road, however I like to play with my toys and for me it won't be an issue. If someone is the type that likes to "set it and forget it" then yes I wouldn't recommend liquid metal. But if you don't mind some maintenance in a year or so it shouldn't be a problem.