Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT Pulse Review – Navi with certain vibrations

1 - Intro and Overview 2 - Tear Down: PCB and Cooler 3 - Benchmarks 1920 x 1080 Pixels 4 - Benchmarks 2560 x 1440 Pixels 5 - Benchmarks 3840 x 2160 Pixels 6 - Power Consumption and PSU Recommendation 7 - Temperatures, Clock Rate, Thermal Images 8 - Fan Speed and Noise 9 - Conclusion and Bottom Line

Board layout and components

Sapphire, like AMD, uses a simple 7+2 phase design for the Pulse. The well-known IR 35217 PWM controller from International Rectifier (on the back of the PCB) handles the 7 integrated power stages SiC620A from Vishera for the GPU (VDDC, max. 60 A), which are basically asymmetric dual MOSFETs with an integrated gate driver and a Schottky diode in a common package. For the two phases for the memory (MVDD) Sapphire (like others) relies on an NCP 81022, a digital 2-phase voltage regulator, which drives a slightly smaller SiC232A from Vishera (50 A), which offers lower power, but has a very similar design. These smaller power stages can also be found in the SoC and VDDCI.

Sapphire uses a short PCB with very few active components on the back. A second 8-pin connector would have been possible, but this is an 8+6 combination. One of the VDDC phases for the GPU is fed from the motherboard slot (PEG), the rest via the external PCIe connectors. But we’ll come to balancing later.

Die nachfolgende Tabelle enthält noch einmal die wichtigsten Komponenten:

GPU VDDC
PWM Controller	IR35217 International Rectifier 8-Phasen PWM-Controller (7 genutzt, 3 dazu parallel)
Gate Driver	integrated
VRM	7x SiC620A Vishera Power Stage
Chokes	Encapsulated Ferrite Choke 150 mH
Memory and MVDD
Module	MT61K256M32 Micron 8x 8GB GDDR6 SGRAM-Modules 2 Channels x 256 Meg x 16 I/O, 2 Channels x 512 Meg x 8 I/O
PWM Controller	NCP81022 ON Semiconductor 2-Phases used
VRM	2x SiC632A Vishera Power Stage
Spulen	Encapsulated Ferrite Choke 330 mH
Other Components
BIOS	25080 CT EEPROM Dual-BIOS
Connectors	Input Filter, Shunts, 560 mH
MCU	Keine
Other
Features	7 + 2 Phase design 8-Pin + 6-Pin PCI-Express Power Supply

Cooler

The upper cover carries the two fan modules, each with 9 rotor blades and 9.5 cm diameter (opening 9.8 cm). There are no bigger secrets, but at least the two fans have something acoustic about them, because the speeds differ slightly from each other. But that’s what I’ll explain later in the acoustic measurements.

The GPU cools Sapphire using a simple copper heatsink that is not polished and whose fastenings must support the entire radiator. A total of 5 heatpipes made of nickel-plated copper composite material then distribute the waste heat to the one-piece finned heat sink with the horizontally arranged fins.

The memory and the voltage regulators are cooled by means of a special cooling frame (sandwich design), but one of its special features are the cooling fins mounted at the top, which considerably increase the surface area.

The backplate absorbs the waste heat from the VRM area and is thus integrated into the cooling system. The rest is optical in nature and serves mainly to stabilize the circuit board.