Gadgetory

hey Roen i am steve from gamers and access dotnet and today we're talking about andy's are nine at fury x and specifically we're talking about the pump line issue this was originally discussed about a week ago and it's been discussed throughout the last week all the way up through the last few days and it's only gotten louder in terms of the online discussion surrounding the pump wine so just to bring everyone up to speed this is the r9 fury x this is andy is a new flagship it's cooling solution is all liquid there is no other than the fan on the radiator there is no air involved on the card itself so to this end it is a little bit different than the 980 TI hybrid that we looked at recently which uses a VR M&V ram cooling solution on the video card sort of all the way to the side and then it uses liquid on the GPU itself this is different from that and that is why it's called the hybrid this card uses a pump located centrally on the GPU a radiator with an expanded liquid chamber for longevity basically more liquid and then a fan on the radiator and the wine issue that has been discussed is not coil wine this is very traditional of video cards to have coil wine which is normally related to activity as your frame rate increases as the effort of the video card increases things like that there will be a wine emitted from coils in the card electrical components in this case it's pump wine which is emitted from the high speed pump which circulates liquid through the loop so that's what we're looking at today and specifically what we're looking at is one does it exist in retail cards which is what we have and two is it actually an issue to the end-users there's only something you hear in an open bench so let's go over the testing methodology briefly it's all defined in the article linked in the description below if you have not discovered that yet and then we'll get into the actual results with frequency testing and spectrum analysis the methodology here is pretty important AMD wants its tubes to be located in a certain position it wants the radiator to be in a purse erten position this is all in the fury active manual so the manual states that the radiator should be higher than the video card and that the tubes should be lower on the radiator install so it doesn't have to work as hard as what my guess would be and also to probably reduce some noise so we installed it that way perspect of AMD's manual and then also we used a few different audio devices and tested from a few different angles so first of all the tripod be located it on top of the bench and positioned it 11.5 inches away from the video card at a 45 degree angle so it's effectively you know up here somewhere and the reasoning for this is if it's too close you'll hear a lot of noises that the end user will never hear and then you obviously wanted to be a distance that is more reasonable for user so we positioned it there for accurate acoustics testing we used a roland r05 reporter class audio recorder for decibel and frequency analysis and then used an MK ii 600 sennheiser mic which is also mounted to this camera and use the camera pointed it at the video card from a different direction so this was directional testing that we performed see is it really louder from one direction or the other finally I had a third microphone that I positioned sort of around the RAM so sitting and connected to the memory heatsinks because this is really not a concern to position something there so we had one there to be basically 1.75 inches away from the back of the video card and see what can we really hear when we're that close as a user you'll never be that close so it's not data that is representative is is not an actionable data set but it's interesting and fun to test so the mic we're interested in and looking at today is the Roland which was positioned 11.5 inches away from this device all the other methodology is in the article and what we found between the 980 TI reference the 980 TI hybrid which is the EVGA card that uses an ace attack CLC and the fury x i have two fury x's which use a cooler master CLC and what we found as you see in these charts is that there is in fact a very high frequency produced and this is something that we can test in observation effectively clinically as well as in objective analysis so there is a higher frequency produced by the fury x at least card number one then by the hybrid and 980 TI reference for instance but it's not inherently louder they are effectively the same volume level in fact the decibel level slightly favors the fury exits it's extremely small in favor of the fury x over the 980 I hybrid this is really just because the 980 I hybrid has a APR M&V ram fan on it and this does not do that it cools its devices with liquid instead so that's where the noise differential is but the frequency we sit in the 22 22 kilohertz range for this fury acts which is a very high frequency that actually begins to exit the frequency range of a lot of headphones and that's that's why you get that irritating wine so even though it's not louder it is more irritating as a user but this isn't an open bench we're talking about and we'll discuss how it performs in an actual enclosure momentarily here's an audio recording of the fury X and the 980 TI hybrid for your reference please note that your own audio setup will greatly impact how these sound so what you hear may not be necessarily what we're hearing in the real world but it will at least give you some comparative items to analyze from the two different video cards so there is definitely a high frequency output of that we are certain but it is of a lower decibel level and is questionable once you get it in an enclosure the 980 TI hybrid has fewer spikes if you look at the two graphs of the cards you'll see that both Fiore X is even though the frequency range is slightly different both of them have very spiky crests of this it's not really a wave it's a spectrum analysis but it has peaky crests and that means that those are the points at which the wine becomes more audible and the 980 TI is a bit smoother in that regard but it still outputs a hum it definitely outputs inaudible hum but it's of a lower frequency so it's less irritating and this is somewhat subjective but for I would imagine most users myself included is certainly less irritating to have a lower hum because that is more in line with the hum of most system components like other fans so you can't audibly tell it apart as well from the other fans of the system let's talk about the real world use case and our test bench it's open air it's exposed and it's probably about two feet away from my ear so it is definitely audible and in the test bench we also disabled all other fans on an essential fans so the frequency was more was much easier to pick up basically by the instruments in an enclosure we tested in an H 442 the NZXT case and a rosewill thrown just a much larger case and I was positioned about three feet away from the case from head to ground where the case was and I could not hear the whining yes it is present it is absolutely present in an open-air bench if you're using an antic skeleton or an open case you should probably consider the wine but if you are a user who's building in an enclosure which is probably most people and this is the one thing keeping you from buying the card the audio concern then I would say this is this is of no consequence and that you would be fine purchasing the card assuming you already have your heart set on it for various other reasons just to clarify a few important details about our tests the cards we have are both retail model so they are what you would be buying as an end user and he has stated that they are aware of the issue they indicate that it is a pump issue for sure there is certainty in that statement and they've also indicated that they are seeking to resolve this issue in the immediate future they did technically say that the issue is resolved for retail cards these are retail cards we still hear it so that will probably happen in the next batch or the batch after that but that's that's what we've been told and then the other important item here is that we didn't detect the noise really add an audible level even on the open air bench when we were just idling so it kind of exists but really to know substantial level in our testing we noticed that the wine was more prevalent on the opener bench when playing games so basically when the card was placed under heavy load when we loaded the card with far cry 4 with GTA with 3 mark ultra the wine became more audible and it was still inaudible in a case but this is an important differentiation to make when we were idling it was effectively inaudible even in open air I want to emphasize here that I am NOT saying this is a goodbye or a bad Buy we're not looking at performance today but of the audio concerns pertaining to the pump wine that should not be a factor in your decision if you're building in an enclosure so with that stated when I spoke to Patrick stone he's our Hardware analyst who works with me he does a lot of the benchmarking with me we both decided as a unit that we would really not be concerned with the frequency produced when it's in an enclosure so that's really all we have to say about this issue decibel levels are effectively the same for both cards both liquid cooled cards that we tested the frequency is spike here on the fury exits at the higher end of the spectrum 20 kilohertz which is quite high but it's it's not audible so that is all for this video hopefully that helps some of you out and check out our patreon page if you like this type of coverage and certainly check out the article on this if you want more discussion want to learn about the test methodology how to reproduce it things like that we try to make it easy for you so thanks again links in the post role I will see you all next time