Board layout and components
Sapphire has almost outdone itself with the PCB. Well equalized hotspots and a very thoughtful design with a very neat filtering after the PCIe ports, which relies on a proper LC filter (low-pass) and not only on longitudinal coils (chokes), should on the one hand soften the load peaks at the power supply and on the other hand also increase the stability of the overall system. Nobody really needs annoying RF waves from the graphics card. The 12V rails are fused with two 20 amp fuses per 8-pin input and one each at the PEG and the 6-pin socket.
With an XDPE132G5C from Infineon, we, like AMD, rely on a very high-quality PWM controller that drives the 14 phases for VDDC_GFX. The same component selection as AMD’s reference is used for almost all important active components and the coils. A correct decision. In parallel an IR35217 from International Rectifier is working for the generation of other partial voltages for VDDC_SOC and the 2 phases for VDDIO_MEM.
In addition, we find another phase for VDDCI, so that in total there are 18 phases for the various main voltages, all of which work with one TDA21472 per phase as a Smart Power Stage, which can supply a maximum of 70A. The TDA21472 contains a synchronous buck-gate driver IC in a co-package with Schottky diode, as well as the high-side and low-side MOSFETs. The combination of gate driver and MOSFET (DrMOS) enables higher efficiency at the low output voltages for the GPU.
The internal MOSFET current measurement algorithm with temperature compensation achieves higher current measurement accuracy compared to the best inductor DCR sensor methods. Protection includes cycle-by-cycle overcurrent protection with programmable threshold, VCC/VDRV UVLO protection, phase fault detection, IC temperature detection, and thermal shutdown. The TDA21472 also features automatic bootstrap capacitor refill to prevent over-discharge.
The TDA21472 also features a Deep Sleep power saving mode that greatly reduces power consumption when the multiphase system enters PS3/PS4 mode. This certainly explains the very low idle load that both new Radeon cards generate. The coils used with 150 mH are quite decent and even buzz less than those on the reference card. MSI installs a total of 8 GDDR6 memory modules from Samsung with 18 Gbps. We also see a classic underfill on the four lower RAM modules, which stabilizes Samsung’s 18 Gbps memory lying hollow and protects it well from cracking the solder pads when the PCB is twisted by the heavy cooler. We remember the GeForce 2080 Ti and the Space Invaders here. That’s exactly what’s not likely to happen with this card.
The back is quite tidy and you won’t find any SP or POS caps below the BGA. in general, everything looks very high-quality in large parts and otherwise at least very purposefully equipped. Instead of elaborate design stunts, the game relies on solid home cooking, which can really please. The connection for the aRGB diodes of the Sapphire panel is still on the top of the cover.
On the back, we see the two PWM controllers, the chip for the dual BIOS and the white field on the PCB with the 8 SMD LEDs for the RGB illumination of the logo in the backplate. There is also a Preci-Dip connector on the end of the board for connecting a digital aRGB component (I’ll be using this for the Alphacool water block soon, for example), which is extremely handy.
Cooler and backplate
Sapphire relies on three 9.5 cm fans (10 cm opening) with 9 rotor blades each and an interesting rotor geometry for the cooler. The design of the impellers is very reminiscent of special fans for very much airflow with intended vortices. Even though it is a 3.5-slot design, the very large gap of almost 2 cm between the cover and the actual fin heatsink is surprising here. This distance does not increase the cooling surface, but it ensures a much better and, above all, more even distribution of the airflow to all areas with fewer dead areas below the drives, because the distance between the fan and the cooler is greatly increased.
The cooler is divided into the rather massive and very long main cooler with six 8 mm heatpipes made of nickel-plated copper composite material, which were soldered to the heatsink flattened behind it. Four of the heat pipes are even recirculated to better supply the GPU-side cooler area with waste heat. The actual cooler is not directly connected to the frame of the cover, but is only enclosed by it and can move freely. This takes out any stresses that could be caused by GPU packages of different heights because the rest of the board is screwed tightly to the cover’s frame. The cooler itself is only held by the four screws including the retaining clip on the GPU socket. Good decision!
The picture below shows the multi-part cooler setup, as here, for example, the heatsink (with extra fin cooler) for the voltage converters was bolted to the frame and not mounted to the actual cooler. The reason for this was already mentioned above.
The backplate made of light metal is another part of the stabilization and also an optical eye-catcher with the translucent light field of the logo. The use of thermal pads is not provided for and one trusts in the qualities of the actual cooler. However, one could be divided here and insert pads afterwards. It certainly won’t do any harm.
- 1 - Einführung und technische Details
- 2 - Teardown: Platine, Spannunsversorgung, Kühler
- 3 - Gaming Performance
- 4 - Leistungsaufnahme beim Gaming und Effizienzanalyse
- 5 - Leistungsaufnahme, Lastspitzen und Netzteil-Empfehlung
- 6 - Taktraten und Temperaturen
- 7 - Lüfter und Geräuschemission ('Lautstärke')
- 8 - Übersicht, Zusammenfassung und Fazit
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