AMD Radeon VII Unboxing and Teardown Video

Nice tear down Kyle. Now I want to see what matters most... The tests!
 
The card is simple and sleek. Interested to see the thermals and, of course, the performance.
 
Nice industrial design. I would have done the teardown after the testing was done because of that graphite thermal pad. Of course, you had no way of knowing that it was there. I wonder what impact that has on thermals vs. Shin-Etsu or other industrial thermal compounds that are traditionally used by GPU manufacturers — looking forward to the review!
 
PhoenixGenesys said:
I wonder what impact that has on thermals vs. Shin-Etsu or other industrial thermal compounds that are traditionally used by GPU manufacturers — looking forward to the review!
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The link I posted above your post has thermal specs on that new carbon "paste" material, called Hitachi HM03
 
interesting choice by amd to use that graphite pad. wonder how much of a difference there will be between it and typical thermal compound.
 
The card definitely has a vapor chamber, you can see the little fillport nub on the underside. Be interesting to see how that combined with the 3 fans and thermal pad on the core handles the temps.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
only if you don't live in the US(and maybe europe? i haven't really looked into their consumer laws on that). manufactures can't use that as an excuse to void the warranty anymore.
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Really? I didn't know that. That's quite an improvement!!!
 
This design looks great and the the assembly / disassembly is well thought out, very nice.

They may not have the performance crown and we'll see about thermals, but AMD wins in terms of industrial design. 2080ti reference disassembly involves 2x the screws, a pile of mismatched thermal pads, and is a pain compared to previous gen cards IMO.
 
SamuelL421 said:
This design looks great and the the assembly / disassembly is well thought out, very nice.

They may not have the performance crown and we'll see about thermals, but AMD wins in terms of industrial design. 2080ti reference disassembly involves 2x the screws, a pile of mismatched thermal pads, and is a pain compared to previous gen cards IMO.
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I dunno wtf Nvidia were thinking with their insane amount of screws on the FE. Think it was around 60 or 70 in total it has.
 
Judging by the reviewer kit, I think that performance is going to be decent. The Threadripper reviewer kits where also very impressive back in 2017. Look how that CPU turned out :) Here is to hope for high performance out of this GPU!

magda said:
Good bye warranty :eek::whistle:
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That warranty void sticker is not enforceable in the US. Of course, Apple has those plastered inside all of their devices, and they do actually void your warranty even in the US and get away with it.
 
Kyle, its interesting AMD used a graphite thermal pad which I didn't have good results with (poor contact) but AMD's pad looks to be more sticky with far better contact. Will you post new benchmarks after you replaced the TIM?
 
That was stressful to watch.

What are you gonna use to replace the Hitachi carbon tim?
 
SamuelL421 said:
This design looks great and the the assembly / disassembly is well thought out, very nice.

They may not have the performance crown and we'll see about thermals, but AMD wins in terms of industrial design. 2080ti reference disassembly involves 2x the screws, a pile of mismatched thermal pads, and is a pain compared to previous gen cards IMO.
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don't forget the heat gun if you ever need to replace the fans.. you have to pull off that center logo thing.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
don't forget the heat gun if you ever need to replace the fans.. you have to pull off that center logo thing.
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I never use a heat gun for removal of anything when it comes to computer parts. Use a hair dryer on its highest setting, it's less likely to do any damage. If you need to board repair, e.g. EEPROM replacement, use a hot air rework station, and always use the smallest nozzle size you can get away with to get the job done.
 
Thanks for the review!

World exclusive?

Guys, we need to get Kyle a proper tool kit lol. Should have had all of those tiny head bits along with a hard plastic shimmy tool / pen. Missed a chance to look completely and totally cool there Kyle! lol. Still, nice work.

If I may, I would like to comment on "Graphite Thermal Cooling Pads."

As far as graphite pads go, and I've used them, you get very very slightly higher temps, 1 or 2 degrees above what you normally would get with traditional TIM, but the thermal profile allows for higher stable temps along with the graphite being able to dissipate heat quicker. Something like that. At least that's my experience.

You can also check Amazon reviews to help temper your own conclusion if you're looking to research these types of pads further.


NOTE: Please use the HardOCP Amazon affiliate link if you decide to buy these items. It helps out Kyle and his Team.

https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Cooling-Graphite-Thermal-Pad/dp/B07CKVW18G#customerReviews

Here is the tool kit a recommend Kyle. It's cheap, well engineered / machined and has the hard plastic tool that is very useful. I have several kits, even the ifixit kits and this one I like the best. It's cheaper It actually has everything you need for a PC build as well. The larger heads which are magnetic. Also, they are hardened metal so they really grip which also helps against stripping. BTW, the ifixit heads are not hardened metal and easily disfigure both the head and screw.

https://www.amazon.com/Syntus-Preci...cs-Cellphone/dp/B01N0BEVZ1/ref=dp_ob_title_hi

NOTE: Please use the HardOCP Amazon affiliate link if you decide to buy these items. It helps out Kyle and his Team.
 
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Thanks for skipping the parts where you where looking for tools and figuring out how to hulk smash your way through the teardown. Every other youtube video leaves the camera running, turning what should have been a 10 minute teardown into 33 minutes of unbearable wasted time.
 
Jim Kim said:
Thanks for skipping the parts where you where looking for tools and figuring out how to hulk smash your way through the teardown. Every other youtube video leaves the camera running, turning what should have been a 10 minute teardown into 33 minutes of unbearable wasted time.
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Was wanting to keep it under 10 minutes. Took 45GB of video....
 
So this card is a downgrade from the 9700 pro, years ago!? /j

magda said:
Good bye warranty :eek::whistle:
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Who need them anyway. :)
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PhoenixGenesys said:
Nice industrial design. I would have done the teardown after the testing was done because of that graphite thermal pad. Of course, you had no way of knowing that it was there. I wonder what impact that has on thermals vs. Shin-Etsu or other industrial thermal compounds that are traditionally used by GPU manufacturers — looking forward to the review!
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We have seen results before for these kinds of thermal solutions, usually they run a couple/few degrees hotter(according to the companies) than thermal paste but the trade-off is that the paste never cakes/dries out or never needs to be reapplied so in reality it can be a really good tradeoff of never having a degraded performance issue.

Here is a review, using it on CPUs

 
1Nocturnal101 said:
We have seen results before for these kinds of thermal solutions, usually they run a couple/few degrees hotter(according to the companies) than thermal paste but the trade-off is that the paste never cakes/dries out or never needs to be reapplied so in reality it can be a really good tradeoff of never having a degraded performance issue.

Here is a review, using it on CPUs

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Avoid that graphite thermal pad. See my findings in the below post from last year. Still annoyed with myself for wasting $20 on it too :mad:

https://hardforum.com/threads/reusable-tim.1959610/page-3#post-1043766512
 
If i was to snag one of these it would be nice to have the acrylic stand to plonk my previous card on. Seen someone on ocuk mention something about the first 1000 units come with one of these, though no idea how legit that claim is.
 
Chris_B said:
If i was to snag one of these it would be nice to have the acrylic stand to plonk my previous card on. Seen someone on ocuk mention something about the first 1000 units come with one of these, though no idea how legit that claim is.
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Yeah, really liked the stand for the video card. I think AMD does this for storage and display once the video card has been reviewed. They want a nice presentation piece for any b-roll and or background video footage that makes it onto social media. Smart move. Def eye-catching. Wish the general public could buy these pieces but they are made in such incredible limited quantities. That would never happen.
 
TangledThornz said:
Avoid that graphite thermal pad. See my findings in the below post from last year. Still annoyed with myself for wasting $20 on it too :mad:

https://hardforum.com/threads/reusable-tim.1959610/page-3#post-1043766512
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Have them on 3 of my cpu's, they are no more then 1c hotter on the 6700K if that much. These pads maybe work better with any mismatched height of HBM and GPU then thermal paste. Kyle is an expert with thermal paste so these pads are probably a non-starter for him, for me they make very little difference, no mess, reusable and no pulling the CPU out of the socket like I did with a 1700x.

Video was sweet, love the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) design, will have to wait to see if it is effective in the review. Nvidia nightmare to take apart to clean, overcomplicated 50+ screw design is somewhat laughable.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
only if you don't live in the US(and maybe europe? i haven't really looked into their consumer laws on that). manufactures can't use that as an excuse to void the warranty anymore.
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AMD is usually really cool about stuff like that, Never had an issue with AMD, BFG, XFX, or EVGA for any kind of Warranty as long as the PCB and the chip/gpu isn't completely fried due to negligence with overvolting. Had quite a few RAMDACs burn out on NVidia cards never had an issue.

The only 2 real issues I have had is with Motherboards particularly on LGA sockets where it looked like a finger screwed up the pins from the factory or there were missing pins in the socket and particular companies(not gunna mention who) swore up and down that would never happen with their quality control from the factory, but yet they were 2 cheap to shrink wrap the box from the factory to ensure there was no tampering. Missing pins was a real interesting explanation from them as to how on my end it happened. The other was with monitors that were ridiculous IPS panels that had almost 20-35% black light bleed and unnamed companies didn't want to replace it under warranty stating it was normal nd hosts of other issues like Dead/Stuck pixels beyond acceptable amounts, vertical lines, artifacting on horizonal lines, blurriness on parts of the monitor. A lot of these issues were on high end gear(some midrange) they swore wasn't an issue from their end.
 
Where I work we have started moving towards thermal pads or old school thermal paste from Laird due to temp requirements and concern about compound drying out over time since our products can sit running on tarmac or outdoors for much of their life. So far so good using industrial temp components + newer design (not sure if we use this specific graphite pad). One note I have is that these thermal pads don't really like being overly compressed like how people crank down coolers onto CPUs.

I bet these thermal pads would be amazing in laptops though...
 
CombatChrisNC said:
EDIT: Also, I imagine that the board is only that long to allow for the 3 fan solution. If this were water cooler I bet an AIB could shorten the card down a good bit. Seems like a lot of empty PCB.
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Same as the regular vega 56 and 64 reference cards, a lot of pcb space that's not used.
 
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