ASUS RX 480 STRIX OC review

Thank you to ASUS for loaning the RX 480 STRIX OC

The backplate adds rigidity and is separate from the main heasink so it's not necessary to remove both if you want to get to the front of the PCB. It does not help cool the PCB but the holes over the VRM section stop it from causing unnecessary heat build up in the VRM area.




Specs
2304 stream processors clocked at 1310mhz
8GB of GDDR5 clocked at 2000mhz on a 256bit bus
1 8pin power connector
Core clock throttling temperature: 85C°
2 HDMI port, 2 DisplayPorts, 1 DVI

Physical Specs
length: 280mm
width: 124mm
height: 2 slots

Cooling

The noise measurements were taken 20cm away from the card on an open air test bench.
The GPU was kept under load by the Graphics Test 1 from 3Dmark Firestrike running windowed using the regular preset windowed at1440x900p with 8xMSAA.
The OC test is 1370Mhz(higher core clocks simply were not stable at high temperatures) core with +50% power limit +100mv using sapphire Trixx.
I test from the lowest fan speed to the highest this means that I actually wait for temperatures to come down this prevents me from getting low temperature measurements by taking measurements too early.

Notes:
The RX 480 Strix I have has a 86% ASIC quality and the core pulls about 20W more than the core of the RX 480 GTR I last reviewed. So even though this card delta temperatures aren't stellar that is mostly due to the power draw discrepancy between the cards.

In the OC test with stock thermal paste the card started throttling at around 86C. This is not due the temperature limit which is at 90C for this card like very other RX 480 I've tested but due to the fact that higher temperatures cause higher power draw and at 86C core temperature that card was pulling well over the 165W power limit that an RX 480 with +50% power has.

An important thing to note is that due to the way the STRIX's heatsink dumps hot air you will want to put some airflow in front of the card's fans or they will end up re-using air that already went through the heatsink which leads to sub optimal thermal performance. If you have good case airflow this should be none issue. If you're not sure I recommend that you try playing with fan placements a little. If you don't want to mess with airflow you'll have to live with the noise of higher fan speed because as far as I know most of the custom 480s have the same problem and the reference card is really really loud if you want get some real OCing done.






The STRIX heatsink is an obvious case of too many fins and too much airflow without enough heat transfer from the core as increasing the fan speed doesn't lead to a very significant drop in temperatures. I suspect this may have something to do with the ASUS direct contact heatpipe design as only 3 heatpipes get proper contact. I went on to try test this theory by attaching thermal probes to the heat pipes and at maximum fan speed there is a 5°C delta between the heat pipe with the most die contact and the outer most heatpipe.

It also worth noting the absolutely massive drop in temperatures going from the stock thermal paste(which judging by the lack of damage to the warranty stickers on the screws was not tampered with) to my current favorite paste Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. So I highly recommend that you replace the thermal paste on your RX 480 STRIX if the heatsinks seems to under performing. An 8°C temperature drop on RX 480 can make about a 10MHz difference in stable core clock.

AHOC RX 480 Heatsink ranking at a glance:
ASUS RX 480 STRIX
XFX RX 480 GTR
AMD Reference

VRM

Core
- 6 phases controlled by Digi+ ASP1300 (re-branded IR3567B)
- IR3555 PowIRstanges
- Unknown switching frequency
- 360A, 1.5V @ 125°C and 304KHz switching frequency

VRAM
- 1 phase controlled by uP1541R
- 2 low side QM3056 MOSFETs
- 1 high side QM3054 MOSFET
- 40A, 1.5V @ 125°C assuming 500KHz switching frequency
- 67A, 1.5V @ 100°C assuming 500KHz switching frequency

AUX
- 1 phase controlled by uP1541R
- 2 low side QM3056 MOSFETs
- 1 high side QM3054 MOSFET
- 40A, 1.5V @ 125°C assuming 500KHz switching frequency
- 67A, 1.5V @ 100°C assuming 500KHz switching frequency
The RX 480 STRIX ties with the GTR for most powerful Vcore VRM. The GTR achieves it's current rating by using IR Direct FETs. The STRIX with IR3555 PowIRPowerstages. The end result is the same. The VRM on both is ridiculous overkill for an RX 480 which even when pushed into the 1.4V range will only draw around 200A. So the STRIX's Vcore VRM is perfectly good for any kind of overclocking endeavor be that on the card's air cooler, a water cooler or LN2. The VRAM and AUX VRMs are both single phase designs which is the same as you would find on any other RX 480(at least as far as I'm aware). Both are capable of delivering 40A and such are of no concern in any kind of overclocking scenario.

Extras:

0RPM fans in idle 
RGB heatsink lighting
Backplate

Overclocking Tips
The STRIX is compatible with both the Elmor RX 480 Air BIOS and the Elmor RX 480 LN2 BIOS which makes really pushing the card a lot easier as both those BIOSs are signed to work with the AMD drivers and come with a 1.4V and 2V Vcore limit. Which is a significant improvement over the 1.3-1.35V limits that regular RX 480 BIOSs come with. The LN2 BIOS does not have GPU core temperature enabled so do not use it on cards unless you are using LN2.

The STRIX PCB comes with soldering points to mod Vcore Vmem and Vaux on the top edge of the PCB. Vcore control is well supported in software so I wouldn't bother with that one however Vmem and Vaux both lack software support so for those the solder points are very useful. The card does not however have a solder point for the 0.95V VRM so you will have to mod that one the usual way if you want to get rid of the black screens(the card is still running the benchmarks just not outputing to your monitor) that RX 480s get when on running benchmarks on LN2.

Conlusion

Once you replace the thermal paste the card has excellent cooling performance at low fan speeds and noise levels. The VRM quality is also far beyond what any gamer would ever need. So this is certainly a good choice if the card is to spend it's life in your daily system.

The VRM are far beyond what an RX 480 will ever need even on LN2 and as such the card is completely capable of smashing HW high scores sitting on a test bench with an LN2 pot where the heatsink would normally be. The volt mod points are especially a nice touch as they make modify the voltages without software support much easier. The only down side this card has is that it lacks dual BIOS functionality. Which is only really a problem if you intended to do a lot of BIOS modding which carries a high risk of flashing a BIOS that won't allow the card to boot.

OC Review: The Gigabyte GA-990FX-Gaming

The buying of a new 990FX motherboard for gaming right now is the height of stupidity. So while this board does offer bells and whistles like Killer Ethernet, M.2, USB 3.1 and an upgraded audio section I will ignore them since these features change absolutely nothing about the fact that 990FX is terrible platform for everything except benching AM3+ CPUs. While this is a "gamer" focused board is does also offer some overclocker goodies like post code LEDs and onboard buttons. As such I'm hoping for it to be a strong alternative as a benching board to the 990FX Sabertooth R2.0 and Crosshair V Formula-Z both of which actually lack some key overclocking features that this board offers. It also helps that Gigabyte's GA-990FX-Gaming comes in at a significantly lower price than the Sabertooth and the Fomula.

VRM

CPU VCore

- International Rectifier 3564 4+1 phase controller

- 4 phases using IR doublers to make 8

- low side Renesas K0393 rated at 40A @ 25C°(ambient)
- high side Renesas K03B7 rated at 30A @ 25C°(ambient)

- 680nH Inductors
- 12 5K rated 6.3V 560uF capacitors

- 200KHz to 2MHz 
- large VRM + NB + PCH heatsink with 2 heatpipes

CPU NB

- 1 phase using a doubler to make 2

- Renesas K03B7 rated at 30A @ 25C°(ambient)

- 200KHz to 2MHz 
- shares main heatsink

RAM

- 2 true phases

- Same MOSFETs as CPU core - No heatsink

- Unknown minimum to unknown maximum KHz

Verdict: 7/10
The VRM on the 990FX-Gaming is strong offering 320A to the core and 80A to the CPUNB as long as you keep the VRM cool. On LN2 that is not a problem as the LN2 pot will be cooling down the entire motherboard. However on air and watercooling the VRM will need some extra cooling because during my short testing with minimal airflow the VRM heatsink was reaching into the 90s with core voltage at 1.55V. Direct airflow from a fan quickly got the temperatures under control however without it I'd expect the IR 3564's OTP to kick and either throttle the CPU or shutdown the VRM. So if you plan to bench this board with an air or water cooler I recommend you stick a fan on the VRM heatsink(which recommend for most AM3+ boards anyway). You might also want consider attaching some small heatsinks on the back side of the PCB in this area:

BIOS

Maximum Voltages: 

- VCC: 2.3V

- CPUNB: 2.1V

- VDDR: 2.1V
- HTlink: 1.8V
- PCIe: 2.435V
- PLL: 3.135V
- NB: 1.735V 
- 5 Vcore LLC settings

CPU:

- NB clock from 400 to 6300

- 1 core per CU mode as well as 2 4 and 6 core mode

DRAM:

- XMP Support

- All timings and settings available

- Supports per channel timing settings
- maximum ratio of 10.66X for 2133mhz at 200mhz FSB
 Extras:
- core unlocking on Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs 
- 8 onboard BIOS profiles and option to store profiles on USB stick or SATA drive

Verdict: 9/10

The BIOS uses the standard Gigabyte layout. All the voltage limits are high enough that even with LN2 cooling you can kill anything and everything you could install on this motherboard. The VRM settings however are a little lack luster. There are no switching frequency, response time or current limit settings like you would find on an ASUS board and you only have LLC settings for the core voltage. The core voltage LLC settings are also pretty bad with Everything but the medium and extreme setting dropping far too much voltage to be useful. The medium setting is perfect for daily usage and even benchmarking since it idles at the voltage you set and drops only 20mv going under load. The extreme LLC setting on the other hand provides a huge amount of voltage boost going under load and as such is useless for daily use and I wouldn't use it even when benchmarking just because of the 80mv voltage spread it has. Memory overclocking on the 990FX-Gaming is on the tedious side especially when pushing above 2133mhz as the board does not have a 12x ratio. So in order to get any memory clock above 2133mhz you need to start messing with the FSB. That's not really a major issue if the board showed you the impact of FSB on the NB and HT link speeds but it doesn't so regardless of your FSB setting you will only ever see the NB ratio * 200. Of course you need to run your NB above your memory clock so you just need to use the 11x NB ratio when using the 10.66X memory ratio but it would still be nice to see what the actual NB speed is going to be. Other than that memory overclocking on the board works perfectly well and the board recovers from crashes quickly without trashing your settings so you don't even have to save overclock profiles every time you change something even though I do recommend doing that just in case the board doesn't manage to recover properly from an extra bad mix of settings that require a BIOS wipe. Overall the BIOS on the 990FX-Gaming has everything I want and need when overclocking and is easy to navigate after you get used to Gigabyte's layout.

Air Testing Results:

Max RAM speed (FX 9590 + 1 4GB stick): DDR3-2603 13-16-16-36-2T 1.75V
PSC best settings(FX 9590 + 2 2GB sticks): DDR3-2500 8-12-8-28-2T 1.83V
1600mhz low timings(Phenom II X2 555BE): 1600 5-7-5-18 1.9V
Max FX 9590 validation clock 2 cores with 1.65V: 5222mhz
Max CB11.5 core clock with 1.55V: 4950mhz
Max FSB: 320mhz
Verdict: 9/10

Gigabyte may only rate the board to do 2000mhz on the RAM and the highest RAM multiplier is only 10.66x however with a bit of tweaking I got the RAM as high as 2603mhz. More is probably possible however with AM3+ compatible CPUs your NB clock needs to be equal or greater than the RAM clock and as such maximum frequency ended up limited by the North bridge which needed to be on a 11X ratio to stay ahead of the RAM speed. This is not ideal as it forces your NB clock to be a few 10s of mhz higher than the RAM speed which makes you run into NB stability problems that much sooner.
My FX9590's Norhtbridge showed just how bad it is when I did my PSC testing. The kit is capable of doing 2600 8-12-8-28-1T on a little over 1.86V. My FX 9590 on the other hand is absolutely incapable of dealing with much more than 2400mhz with such low timings without giving the north bridge a lot of voltage. In the end I managed to get the system to just barely finish SuperPi 32M with 2500 8-12-8-28-2T with 1.83V on the RAM and 1.45V(too much to be safe on air or water) on the North Bridge. Since it's my CPU that's holding the RAM back I'm gonna say that the board handles high performance RAM just fine you just need a capable CPU.
Now some of you maybe wondering about why I do a 1600mhz low timing test. The test exists because most Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs can't go much beyond 1600mhz RAM clock so to get good memory performance it is important to be able to get really low timings at speeds between 1450 and 1650mhz. I'm happy to say that the 990FX-Gaming didn't have any problems doing 5-7-5-18 timings however the board can't go bellow 5 so if you have a kit of RAM that can pull of 1600 at CL4 you're out of luck.
The 990FX-Gaming manages the same maximum core clock at 1.65V as my Sabertooth did. However the software for the Gaming is a lot more painful to work with. Gigabyte's Easy Tune require's Gigabyte's App Center software which requires .NET 4.5 and really didn't like my stripped down win 7 install. So I had to go and make a new install of windows to get Easy Tune to work. Considering that I remember having similar issues with AIsuite so it's not like Gigabyte's obnoxious OC software is anymore obnoxious than ASUS's I'd still prefer a stripped down utility however I do understand that since no one really cares about AM3+ any longer that there isn't a slim OC utility for it.
For cinebench clocks the 990FX-Gaming matches the Sabertooth exactly so again no complaints from me.
Maximum FSB varies from motherboard to motherboard and maxing it out completely is very time intensive. A high maximum FSB is very important when benchmarking CPUs with locked multipliers like the Athlon II X3 460 or a Sempron 145. The Gaming getting an easy 320mhz is inline with what the Sabertooth does which is inline with most 990FX boards. They generally start having issues going above 330mhz on the FSB and as such the Gaming is not inferior to any of them in this department either.
Unfortunately even with the great overclocking results I can't give the 990FX-Gaming a 10/10 here because I've never tested any of the boards that are priced above the Sabertooth and they may deliver better results than this board.

Conclusion: 25/30 Points, 0.179pts/$(based on Amazon price at the time of writing)
Gigabyte's 990FX-Gaming makes for a great AM3+ overclocking board. Personally I prefer it to my deceased 990FX Sabertooth R2.0 and I'm not saying that just because the Saberooth decided to die on me. The fact is that Gigabyte's BIOS offers more features than the Sabertooth's. All the voltages you need are accessible and can be pushed higher than on the Saber. This is especially true of the Gigbayte's Vcore setting which goes all the way to 2.3V compared to 2.075V on the Saber. That's enough voltage to quickly kill FX chips even with LN2. The Gigabyte board also offers core unlocking on Phenom II and Athlon II chips which the Sabertooth R2.0 nor Formula-Z offer. You also get dual BIOS as well as on-board buttons both features that the Sabertooth lacks. In testing the Gaming managed the same results as the Sabertooth and recovered much more smoothly from bad settings than the Saber ever did. This board is however not perfect. The VRM is slightly weaker than the Saber's and while still plenty power full for water or LN2 cooling it requires direct airflow at high voltages and loads which the Sabertooth doesn't need as long as you just have decent airflow in your case. Overall I like the Gigabyte better than the Sabertooth between the buttons, the dual BIOS, the core unlocking and the lower price the Gigabyte is both less hassle to work with, better featured and cheaper than the Sabertooth and from my aircooled testing you don't seem to lose any performance for any of these benefits. Other than that the 990FX-Gaming also offers a bunch of "gamer" features that the Saber also lacks. Really if this board had been available when I was buying my Sabertooth and I weren't a massive ASUS mobo fan I would have probably taken this instead because it's just better and cheaper. So if you're looking for a relatively cheap motherboard for benchmarking ALL(you can't convert X2s to X3s on the Saber or Formula-Z!) AM3+ CPUs the 990FX-Gaming is one of the best out there. Oh and you can use it to play games I guess... if that's your thing.

As soon as I get my LN2 Dewar topped up again I will do another live-streamed 8+Ghz attempt with the 990FX-Gaming and after that it will be featured for any AMD CPU benching I do until AM4 boards launch.

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Sapphire R9 Fury Tri-X OC Physical review.

It's hard to see but Sapphire put a small piece of plastic over the interposer to protect it. It isn't perfect since you can still break the interposer but much better than nothing.

Buildzoid's GPU reviews explained

Specs
3584 stream processors clocked at 1040mhz
4GB of HBM clocked at 500mhz on a 4096bit bus
2 8pin power connectors officially supporting up to 375W
Core clock throttling temperature: 85C°
1 HDMI port3 DisplayPort

Physical Specs
length: 320mm
width: 110mm
height: 2.5 slots

Cooling: 10/10

 When I first played a game on this card I knew I was gonna end up giving away points like they grow on trees. And why wouldn't I the cooling on this card can get the same temperatures as a custom water block. I currently don't have the equipment necessary to do proper noise testing but just ot give you an idea of the fan noise I'll tell you this. With the GPU at 0RPM my sound meter reads about 51.5dB sitting 8cm from the GPU. With the fans at 40% it reads 52 dB. At 55% it gets 59dB. At 75% it reads 66dB and at 100% it reads 73dB. I'd recommend running the card around 55-65% fan speed since that's when the noise temperature trade off is quite reasonable.

VRM: 9/10
Core
- 6 true phases provided by an IR 3567B
- 1 low side IR 6894 MOSFETs providing 105A per phase at 100C case temperature
- 1 high side IR 6811 MOSFET providing 44A per phase at 100C case temperature
- 200KHz up to 2MHz
VRAM
- 1 phase
- 1 low side IR 6894 MOSFETs providing 105A per phase at 100C case temperature
- 1 high side IR 6811 MOSFET providing 44A per phase at 100C case temperature
VAUX
- 1 phase
- 1 low side IR 6894 MOSFETs providing 105A per phase at 100C case temperature
- 1 high side IR 6811 MOSFET providing 44A per phase at 100C case temperature
The low side on this VRM is a beast. However like on the R9 290X the high side here is iffy. If you keep it cool you'll be fine but if you let the VRM get hot you can't let the card pull much more than 500W because you'll be risking burning out the high side. There are plenty of cases of people doing this on the R9 290X. The Fury uses much less power so it's not as much of a risk but keep it in mind if you're going heavy on the voltage and not using LN2 because the VRM can easily overheat. Also do note that in certain situations the card has coil whine. Not enough to be as annoying as say loud fans but enough to be noticeable so keep that in mind. I will try somethings with the card to get rid of the coil whine and will put that into my Fury volt modding post which is coming soon.

Extras:
+1 Dual BIOS
+1 0RPM fans in idle 
+1 VRAM cooling
+1 Backplate
+1 Silicon Interposer protector

Overclocking
The highest I've managed to push this card to was 1144/566mhz using Sapphire Trixx. These were not 100% stable clocks. My 100% stable clocks are 1100/550mhz and require a custom fan curve to keep the GPU sub 55C core temperature. The GPU does not clock well and instabilities are hard to catch. I had the card running perfectly OK at 1135mhz core clock for several hours and then it black screened out of no where when playing a relatively light game. This leads me to believe that the dynamic power management is holding the card back.

Conclusion: 24/20 Why is the score so high?
I love this card. It is by far the best GPU I have ever had. It is way way quieter and cooler than all my past GPUs. It's so good a card that I'm terrified of volt modding it(also because the 3567B has the weirdest voltage sensing circuit I've ever dealt with). Which I'm working on as I finish up this review. I don't really have much to say. I love this card it provides an excellent platform for volt modded overclocking.

The voltmod guide for this GPU is now up

Thank you to CoolerMaster for providing the V1000 PSU that was used for this review.

Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 Review

Grey and black a color scheme almost as good as black and black. I like it. The board has two 4 pin fan headers one for the CPU and one for a chassis fan. There are six SATA 2.0 ports on the board and 1 IDE connector. Also one internal USB 3.0 port and two USB 2.0 ports.




















four USB2.0, one VGA, one DVI, one HDMI, and two USB3.0 along with basic audio.

VRM

CPU VCore

- Richtek RT8868 4+1 phase controller

- 4 true phases

- 2 Renesas K0393 Low side MOSFETs rated for 40A at 25C 
- 2 Renesas K03B7 High side MOSFETs rated for 30A at 25C 

- 680nH inductors
- 38.4g Heatsink

- 270KHz to 330Khz 
- 5K rated capacitors however they are very low capacity
- LLC Auto/Regular/Extreme 
- OCP(around 90A) OVP  

CPU NB

- 1 true phase

- 1 Renesas K03B7 High side MOSFETs rated for 30A at 25C 
- 1 Renesas K03B7 Low side MOSFETs rated for 30A at 25C

- 270KHz to 330Khz
- OCP OVP 

RAM

- 1 true phases

- Same MOSFETs as CPU core - No heatsink

- Unknown minimum to unknown maximum KHz

Verdict: 5/10

40A at 25C is very very little. So to be safe it's best to assume a de-rating of 50% at 100C meaning that there is a total of 160A available on the low side. Luckily the RT8868 features OCP so this motherboard shuts down before it catches fire if you push it too far. When under load the capacitors and inductors get into the 110C area without a fan over them. The MOSFETs them selves are kept in the 75-85C area by the heatsink. I'd recommend putting some heatsinks on the inductors and capacitors and a fan over the entire VRM in order to extend life span. Even a basic 50x50mm fan at 2000RPM would help significantly.

BIOS

Voltages:

- Max VCC: 1.4375V
- VCC LLC Extreme(I+75mv/L+150mv) Regular(I+0/L-30mv) 

- Max VNB: 1.475V

- Max VDDR: 1.9V

CPU:
- 35x maximum CPU multi 

- 20x maximum CPUNB multi

- Full active core cuntrol with support 1 core per CU mode

DRAM:

- No XMP Support

- Missing tertiary sub timings

- No support for asymmetrical timings
- All timings are either automatic or manual 
- Up to 2400mhz support 
EXTRAS
- No Extras 

Verdict: 4/10

This BIOS has many flaws. First of all the CPU voltage setting shows incorrect values until you get the OCP to trip. So when you first boot the board and want to overclock the CPU you will see the option to run 1.7125 Vcore however if you actually set that you only get 1.43V when idling and 1.4V while running regular LLC. Extreme LLC is what it says on the box. It's EXTREME LLC. Giving a ridiculous 75mv Vboost at idle and an even more insane 150mv Vboost under load. I suggest you just don't use Extreme LLC because setting up to not trip the OCP the moment you go under load is really really hard and the low idle voltage will mean stability will always be very very iffy when using it. There are also no OC profiles. The postives of the BIOS are the 1 core per CU mode and the relatively easy navigation and the good responsiveness that some of the overly graphical BIOSs these days lack.

That's 214W on the CPU power line. I tried to push more than that but the terrible LLC options and low maximum voltage setting meant that my attempts always pushed well over 240W(was aiming for 220-230W) to the CPU and tripped the OCP. So if you were really brave and patient you cold maybe get a 9000 series FX to run on this board. But you most likely won't and I don't think it's worth the effort.

Testing Results:

The following hardware ran stable, using Intel Burn Test (IBT) for stress testing.

- G,skill ECO 2x2GB 1333 7-7-7-24 1.35V/max clock: 1866mhz 9-10-9-27-2T 1.65V

- Max CPU clock 8 core: 4444mhz at 1.4375V

- Max FSB clock: 217mhz

Verdict: 5/10

My FX 8320E is not a very good chip. And this boards weak VRM will not give you more 
The OCP on the VRM does it's job however it makes rebooting a pain because it doesn't shut the system down it just kills the CPU VRM which leaves the rest of the system still running. When that happens you need to cut AC power from the system because holding the power button doesn't seem to do anything.

Conclusion: 14/30 Points, 0.233pts/$
Between this board and the 970M Pro3 I think the key to choosing the right one is knowing what you want to do. This board is easy to use and very safe. The Pro3 on the other hand offers much more CPU voltage freedom and can definitely push higher clocks but the only safe guard it has is the temperature related throttling. If you just want a basic AM3+ MATX board to get 4.4-4.6Ghz depend on your CPU this board is enough. The VRM has enough cooling to not catch fire and the OCP will stop you before you kill the MOSFETs. You also have an integrated GPU that can save you if you dedicated doesn't want to work. This board also offers better RAM overclocking however that's not really worth talking about with a board that is limited to 1.4375 Vcore. Either way it's a good board and if you want to run an AMD 8 core in an MATX system but don't plan to overclock very much this board has you covered.

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As always thank you to CoolerMaster for powering the blog.