pastrychef
Moderator
- Joined
- May 29, 2013
- Messages
- 18,253
- Motherboard
- Asus Z370-G Gaming (Wi-Fi AC)
- CPU
- i9-9900K OC'd @ 5.0GHz
- Graphics
- RX 6600 XT
- Mac
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- Classic Mac
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- Mobile Phone
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As this build has reached a state of nirvana (honestly, I can't imagine a hackintosh running macOS any better than this), I got a bit bored... I wanted to see how a video card with an "open" style cooler would affect the system. So, I procured a Power Color Vega 56 Red Dragon to do some testing.
The Red Dragon that I got has been flashed with a Sapphire Vega 64 Nitro+ BIOS. I did a quick Unigine Heaven run before swapping out my Vega 56 with reference style "blower" cooler. Once the Red Dragon was in, I ran Heaven again. With the blower cooler, my CPU temps never exceeded 37C. With the open cooler, my CPU temps were at 50C!! That's a huge increase. Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to see VRM and/or RAM temps in macOS, but I would imagine that their temps would also see significant increases.
Fidgeting with undervolting the Red Dragon did nothing to help the temps of the CPU or the Red Dragon itself. In fact, I found that running the Red Dragon with the stock macOS 10.14.5 power table yielded the best benchmark results. However, those results were still lower than my tweaked Vega 56. In Heaven my tweaked Vega 56 gets ~72.5fps vs ~68.5 with the Red Dragon running a Vega 64 BIOS. On the other hand, the Red Dragon was completely inaudible to me and GPU temps never exceeded 65C. With the blower, I can hear the movement of air and GPU temps got as high as 72C.
So, what's the takeaway here? Well, if you overclock your CPU and are using an air cooler, you should probably stick with video cards that use blower style coolers. The heat from a video card with an open style cooler will keep heat inside your case rather than push it out of the case. The amount of heat can be significant depending on the video card. I don't know how much impact this would have if you are using water cooling, but I would guess that VRM and RAM would get even hotter since there will be less air circulation around them without the fans of an air cooler.
Just something to consider for those who are thinking about a Radeon VII which only comes with a open style cooler...
The Red Dragon that I got has been flashed with a Sapphire Vega 64 Nitro+ BIOS. I did a quick Unigine Heaven run before swapping out my Vega 56 with reference style "blower" cooler. Once the Red Dragon was in, I ran Heaven again. With the blower cooler, my CPU temps never exceeded 37C. With the open cooler, my CPU temps were at 50C!! That's a huge increase. Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to see VRM and/or RAM temps in macOS, but I would imagine that their temps would also see significant increases.
Fidgeting with undervolting the Red Dragon did nothing to help the temps of the CPU or the Red Dragon itself. In fact, I found that running the Red Dragon with the stock macOS 10.14.5 power table yielded the best benchmark results. However, those results were still lower than my tweaked Vega 56. In Heaven my tweaked Vega 56 gets ~72.5fps vs ~68.5 with the Red Dragon running a Vega 64 BIOS. On the other hand, the Red Dragon was completely inaudible to me and GPU temps never exceeded 65C. With the blower, I can hear the movement of air and GPU temps got as high as 72C.
So, what's the takeaway here? Well, if you overclock your CPU and are using an air cooler, you should probably stick with video cards that use blower style coolers. The heat from a video card with an open style cooler will keep heat inside your case rather than push it out of the case. The amount of heat can be significant depending on the video card. I don't know how much impact this would have if you are using water cooling, but I would guess that VRM and RAM would get even hotter since there will be less air circulation around them without the fans of an air cooler.
Just something to consider for those who are thinking about a Radeon VII which only comes with a open style cooler...