Gadgetory

everyone today we are going to be turned down at Vega 56 the cheapest current version of Vega at $400 this is the reference card from AMD I need to put thermocouples on it for thermal testing so we're going to take this apart and see if there's any difference between this Vega feee and Vega 64 for which we already have board shots and as a note I'm shooting this one alone because I gave Andrew the weekend off so we'll see how it goes before that this coverage is brought to you by cable mod already well-known for their work in custom sleeved power supply cables cable mod is now venturing into liquid cooler tubes leaving with their new AIO sleeping kits compatible with corsair and NZXT as of now check the link in the description below for more information alright so here's what we're going to add to this thing a bunch of thermocouples and probes and we need to get the backplate off first which looks like it's attached plus with Phillips this time so this is a departure from the Torx screws we saw on Vega Frontier Edition which used TR 6 and TR 5 instead this one is just using standard larger size 2 Phillips screws and there are one two three four six of these for the backplate they are actually kind of longer screws as you can see and then we have four more to get out of there for the retention kit the cooler look at the cooler on the other side see if it's another vapor chamber and aside from that they're going to be selling the shroud on the outside I'm not sure if there's torts or not they were torques on Fe we'll see if it torques here okay there's the backplate it is actually a fairly solid backplate in terms of just construction it's not plastic it's metal now does that matter well depends on what's connected to and this one is I mean it's just it this may be more for looks than anything like a lot of the backplate some of them actually do have a thermal benefit but not all of them do anyway that's off so worried about that more once we're doing thermal test we can do some a beyond it next thing I want to do actually before gif going there is removing the shroud so this is going to be done by taking out one two three four five six screws here and then I think we also take some out of the i/o covers towards the back of the card separate these on our project Matt is that Radeon logo we've got two eight pins on here they go 56 and we'll be testing power draw in the review obviously haven't done it yet if you are curious about power draw be sure to check that review okay now that we're getting into the more sensitive parts of the card I am going to put it on an anti-static wrist strap just because all the ways to damage a review component static electricity is one of the stupider ones and although it is less common of a problem with all the protection these things have these days it's still not something you want to do backside alright so here we've got a couple of screws on the back we have one two three four five six so two over here are the ones that secure the back plate - I believe the base plate or at least the shroud and on the other ones are just for the i/o I'm going to start with the two up here these are all Phillips still don't paste on my hands or sharpie we know how much you all like dry erase markers so this is what happens when you're working alone there's less pressure to to perform I suppose so just start throwing stains everywhere and we do like to leave those kind of silly mistakes and just anyone it's entertaining and - it's just realistic it's no point in trying to make everything look like it's completely flawless because the reality is it probably won't be for most people taking these things apart before anyone gets confused these things here these smaller screws we'll call them in the corners those aren't real you don't have to take those out they are plastic they're for show only so don't try and hostess they won't go anywhere I need to pull this off first of all before before doing that right here there's a little switch there and that switch as many of you know is a toggle for BIOS so they have dual BIOS on here which is actually a really nice feature for a reference card that means if you wanted to flash it you've got a backup never flash both let's don't do that do not yeah so looking the same as epi in terms of that we got to get in further to figure out the rest let's say warranty void warranty void if removed you know I wish these companies would would just stop with those stickers for philosophical reasons a lot of them do it not all of them do it it is becoming less common fortunately with some of the vendors they're kind of learning but we're not going to does it say remove too tampered remove that well fortunately we're not removing it are we here going through it I don't know why there's a screwdriver shaped hole on the sticker it came that way I would never open one I don't I wouldn't even know where to begin with opening the video card that's what you tell them right all right so there's the all the retention stuff off now we can pull the shroud separate yet or do we need to remove the get the base plate loosened there are no more screws in the shroud and we're not separating so I think we are actually oh wait there's the screw on the top side is now haha a sneaky screw right there up here in the corner okay I don't think that's going to really change anything we still need to take the other screws out these are for the base plate there are one two three four five six seven eight nine ten ten of these Plus that one hidden on each side so 12 that we have to remove I think okay that's the fan we've just taken out these three right here those are for the fan which on FPU or the Delta fan and it looks the same here that one right there it's obviously loose now so let's get that the rest of the way out that is all the screws so we need to separate throne pads like that this is starting to look pretty familiar to cables one for an LED one for I think in Italy one for the the fan okay so let's start looking this board over on the back side we have right here the voltage controller and that controller is the same as Fe IR 30 five to 17 that is the exact same as happy so they're using the same voltage controller on here and I'll bet they using the same vrm as well okay so here's the PCB it looks pretty familiar and there's a reason for that if you saw our Vega frontier Edition coverage and PCB analysis looks like it's pretty much going to apply here we have the same voltage controller these are the same MOSFETs it's the same count of them let's see one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve yes so our still twelve phase these right here it's an l-shaped vrm which helps with propagation delays and we're able to do that because there's no DDR surrounding the chip it's all just HBM so that means you can get this closer but anyway it's still twelve days is the same vrm as the frontier Edition if you saw our front two your addition analysis you can apply that here this is Vega 56 the fact that this has the same vrm which is a pretty damn good vrm will it's absolutely one of the better reference cards we've seen especially the dual BIOS which the fact this is on here means this is a very expensive card for Andy to make considering it's got HB m to a high-end vrm and they're using it in EFI you it should pretty much show where it stands so that's probably the well this absolutely is in 64 as well we've seen it so same BRM 64-56 and EFI which may come out cheaper for them if they're just printing a mass quantity of this board and putting the same stuff on them all but anyways nothing not exciting here what about the fan we look at the fan the cooler and this I'll go ahead and clean off that surface anyway they don't know we print anything on theirs though so we don't really have a great way of knowing what revision it is there's nothing on there maybe we can just add something to it nope nope no resist resist we look at the cooler next so this is the cooler Malcolm and you can see the text from the chokes in the throne pads that's kind of cool anyway let's skip this apart so what do we need to take out at this point you just pull okay so just pull right here and it'll separate that makes it easy I think we're still held on up here by something if there's screw I'm Esther what now we didn't miss any screws okay all right cool so just kind of on there tight so there's the shroud obviously nothing nothing pretty here yeah I mean there's there's nothing to look at here so that's the shroud here's the Team Rocket fan and let's look at this so this is a vapor chamber cooler it's the same one on the front to your addition and it's a copper cold plate you can see where the contact is clearly we're contacting both HBM and the GPU here there's no VRAM outside to be concerned about and that's really all there is to it I mean it's the same thin density it's the same thin pitch it's the same cooler as frontier addition so that's very familiar to us and then the next thing it's going to be the fan which let's just go ahead and see if it's Delta still yeah yeah so this is a it's a recognizable logo most people know that logo I think so the Delta where's the there we go 2.4 amps for the fan 12 volt fan as usual 2.4 amps so does that like 28 watts or something you got to and this is powered through just before anyone asks powered through the PCIe slot not through the 8 pins at the top so if you're monitoring the power consumption of the board by the 8 pins which is what we do you won't capture the power that this consumes so you basically add on another 28 watts if it's moving at full BeeZee 12 volts is what that would add the same goes from pretty much all the other fans as well so that's the fan this is actually I mean it's not a bad fan it's just the coolers not good in general but that's that's pretty much always the case with these reference coolers Nvidia or AMD and I think that mostly wraps up the card okay so that's Vega 56 torn down it is the frontier Edition that's what it is a frontier Edition PCB its frontier Edition vrm frontier Edition cooler than heatsink everything on a fifty six $400 card and then 64 same thing so until we see a different PCB design there's not a lot more to say we won't be doing a separate 64 video probably almost well unless there's a special project but otherwise be on the lookout for our AI v partner coverage because that's where we'll start seeing unique vrm designed since I am these using the same board and vrm for all three of their models which could go either way I'm not a manufacturing expert but I would imagine that one option is it's cheaper because you're buying a whole lot of the thin and if you have a really low volume part like epi which is a really low volume part then buying a lot of that board and vrm so that you can apply the 64 at least would get your helping meet moq in the very least the other end of it is you're putting an expensive board and vrm on a 56 which i don't know if it needs it or not we'll find out in power testing so either way but in the very least the 56 has a good VR on it the reference 1 so if you're going to liquid cool something is probably not a lot of reason to buy a partner model when you can buy one of these liquid cool it and have a good vrm already but otherwise if you're not liquid cooling it as usual we suggest buying partner models instead because on nvidia and AMD parts these coolers not so good but we already talked about that in the frontier edition review and we'll talk about it again in this review so that's all for this time as always you can check out more on our website gear ins nexus net patreon.com slash skimmers nexus tells out directly gamers active squarespace.com to pick up a shirt like this one subscribe for more I'll see you all next time you