Gadgetory

hey guys builds over here today we're going to be taking a look at an RX 460 sapphire nitro PCB so this is one of the custom Rx for 60s that you can go and buy you know buy right now if you're interested in the performance fps and thermals of this card there is a review down in the description below the video so you can just click on that if you want to know performance metrics and that kind of thing because in this video we will only be covering PCB components PCB quality and you know that kind of thing so with that out of the way let's get to it first things first the main VRMs on the RX 460 nitro our core voltage which is right here memory voltage which is located right above the core voltage v RM and the auxiliary rail which is located down here now we will not be going into too many details about the auxiliary rail because it's not really important it's not a high power v RM there's no real good reason to push a ton of voltage through it but we will cover core voltage and memory voltage and all of those the other vrm that I should know that I'm not covering on this card is the point 9 5 volt rail because apparently it's so low power that it doesn't actually need a full load out of the RM components and so I haven't managed to find it since I'm only given pictures and it's really hard to find either way you do not have to worry about the point 9 5 volt rail because there's never almost never a reason to actually care about that v RM like really even it even when doing like ln2 overclocking you don't have to worry about it generally speaking so it doesn't matter that I'm not covering it so then let's look at the most possibly well arguably the most important we are I'm located on the card so that's the core voltage v RM right here so this provides the bulk of the power for your GPU over there and so for phase v RM that you is sapphires black diamond chokes if I'm not mistaken is the name for them there's slightly different design to improve thermals with the you know the ridges on the top and all that to increase surface area there's four of these so that tells us this is a four phase design because we also have of course for power stages so our stages are basically all in one VRM components they combine all of your usual vrm components into one large IC like you can see here these things are from vishay these RS IC 780 s they are they are capable of as much as 50 amps and you really shouldn't actually run them at that because the datasheet says they can do 50 but if you actually look at the data sheets specification graphs they lose a lot of their efficiency by around 35 amps current throughput so that puts this vrm at around 150 amps maximum current if you don't want to completely throw the efficiency out the window and 150 amps is actually completely overkill for a card like the rx 460 because this is a 75 watt TDP by AMD's like for AMD's recommended spec the Nitro is an overclocked card so it obviously draws a little bit more than that however nonetheless a hundred 50 amps is way too much for a card that pulls around 80 to 90 watts even if you overclock it you're gonna be you know maybe in the hundred a hundred something watt range and this can do 150 amps okay this can do courage that's not what so what you could probably push around 200 Watts through this VRM or more depending on how much voltage you actually ask ask it to output speaking a voltage you really don't have to be worried about damaging the vrm on this card because the voltage levels you need to actually achieve those levels of currents so around 150 amps on an Rx 460 you'd be looking into the well over one point four volts range and that's just you know not useful for any day-to-day things because for day-to-day usage it's uncool about and even on liquid nitrogen most of the new 14 nanometer Global Foundries GPUs do not scale above one point four five ish Walt's so yeah completely completely overkill however this vrm does have its own it does have its benefits this approached the design with the ridiculously overkill components means that the RM does deliver much higher efficiency when it's not working and it's you know peak capabilities and it overall gives you better thermals and those kinds of benefits so that's all very well for the core voltage right there one thing to know is like you may be thinking this vrm is like you know I just said this vrm is completely overkill so you might be wondering how much does this actually cost because the RX 416 nitro is one of the most expensive Rx for 60s you can buy and this is a budget card well it's supposed to be a budget card this vrm actually like these power stages you can get them for a dollar if you're buying bulk so there's four of them that's like four dollars worth of actual like expensive components chokes capacitors especially these kinds of capacitors are relatively like it those are all cheaper than those uh you know power stages so basically that whole vrm might cost around eight dollars maybe something around there and this whole card costs a lot more than any other rx 460 so the PCB does not really justify the price point that a sapphire has placed this card at now then moving on from the core voltage up here alright we have the memory VRM this is made up of two individual like separate MOSFETs not a full power stage so we have a high side MDU fifteen fourteen this is from magna chip so this is a magnet chip MOSFET it's rated for give me a second yeah so it's rated for 66 amps at 25 degrees case temperature so that would be the component is running at 25 degrees sapphire opted to not put a heatsink on the memory vrm now this might be kind of concerning at first but bear with me here assuming a you know ambient air temperature of 25 degrees and no air flow these things can handle 22 amps and this is a memory vrm so mostly it's relatively high voltage application so you know 22 amps 1.5 volts that's 30 watts for memory you're not really going to be seeing that much power draw through it also it's the high side phase that's the high side MOSFET so it doesn't spend all of its time actually being conductive so it can actually get probably handled more current than the like the continuous rating is like the worst case scenario so it can certainly handle more current than you know 22 amps through the hole via through the hole actual vrm so the low side MOSFET is an MD you 1517 this can handle up to 30 amps in the same stagnant air 25 degrees conditions as the MD you 15-14 this actually spends most of its time conducting current because it's the low side MOSFET that's what it does and again it's completely overrated at 30 amps and that gives you about 45 watts total current K you know 45 watts of power capability for that vrm and that's assuming some really bad temperatures because the air flow from the heat sink of the sapphire natural actually goes over that vrm so the case temperature for those components will probably be quite a lot lower than what the 25 degree ambient temperature rating assumes because that rating actually assumes a case temperature of 125 degrees these really shouldn't be hitting that unless you have very very high internal case thermals so if your case is really warm yeah get there but even at 125 degrees you don't really have to worry because there's way too much you know they're significantly overpowered compared to what they have to do so finally down here we have the auxiliary vrm now the exam I nerve erm I can't actually get the component numbers for it it doesn't really matter because this is one of those VRMs where like with the nine point nine five volt vrm you literally don't have to care about what it does this one is one of those where you don't really want to push it very far because the auxiliary rail is the power supply for the memory system in AMD graphics cards and that thing is a lot more fragile than the majority of the core logic so too much voltage on this VR and will kill the chip and the vrm as it is designed will perfectly hand will handle you know it'll perfectly well handle the amount of voltage that you can set it to through the Whatman software and I do believe you get a voltage control for this VR M so that covers our V RMS here for the controller AMD is using the on semiconductor NCP 8 1 o 22 this thing is relatively easy to volt mod but for certain reasons we are not going to cover that in this video either way it is a true you know it's a four plus one phase a voltage controller in this card it controls the auxiliary so basically it sends a PWM signal over there and it also controls the core voltage so down here so it controls those two voltages this thing is a capable of being controlled via software we've seen that before with other cards using this voltage controller it's a well-known controller it's been used over and over and over and over again so yeah software voltage control should be coming for it very very soon if we don't already have plenty of voltage control available wot man apparently allows up to one point one five volts it shouldn't be too long before afterburner allows something like 1.4 1.3 volts so again you know voltage control or nothing to complain about it it's running a four-phase vrm it can produce four phases of pwm signals and it can also power the auxiliary rail on the back of the card we find the voltage controller for the memory and that's over here and this is one of those this is a fixed state voltage controller you can't control it via software it's dumb as a brake it doesn't really do like it doesn't have I do believe it doesn't even have any kind of major protection capabilities though I guess it should have at least over current it has an integrated driver circuit in it so you don't actually see a driver IC for the memory vrm you only got your high side and your low side fat so that that's not included because this voltage controller right here takes care of that this is a fixed frequency can't be controlled by software it is very easy to model but for the same reasons as before we don't have quite enough information to explain the mod in detail for this controller so we'll just leave it out and that really covers everything there is to know about the rx 460 nitro from sapphire the PCB is very you know I mean now you could say it's very high quality certainly well above the minimum requirement for mate powering and overclocking in rx 460 you have no worries basically with this ear PCB as it is about you know damaging the vrm with too much voltage or too much power or to hike or frequency really there's nothing to be worried about with this PCB because it's just very over built and very overage engineered on the other hand it is also extremely expensive and as I mentioned before that vrm does not really justify the price point because it isn't like it's well like it's still using relatively cheap component rate the other thing to note is that sapphire actually left out a lot of things on this PCB here like here we have a mass for a second vials chip that's not on here we can see that there was supposed to be a button to control RGB or maybe bio Caesar you know something something of that type that got left out as well so this got down costed pretty significantly just from what you can see on the PCB that's missing and the price point does not reflect that but it is a very very very high quality PCB nonetheless I just think the card should be a little bit cheaper so yeah thank you for watching like share subscribe there's a patreon link so if you would like to support gamers Nexus click on that and you know you can support us monthly here and that's not thank you for watching and hopefully I'll get to do more of these