Sapphire Pulse 5700XT Cooling Upgrade - Morpheus Core II

[Demonic Donut]

TL:DR and Temps at the bottom.

 

 

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across the Morpheus II cooler and grabbed it on a whim. I had never seen an aftermarket GPU air cooler and read some good things about it. Why not buy one and have something new to play with? I figured worst case, I wasted $85 (after shipping from the UK) More likely it'll be quieter, at least. But maybe it'll perform better and let me push my card a bit further, although I was a little worried about vrm and memory temps. Sapphire's cooler works well in that department, especially if you sacrifice some noise. But it really hits a wall with die temps. I found extreme diminishing returns above 50% fan speed, and it screams like a banshee.

 

 

I decided to use 2 Noctua P12 redux fans. I would have liked to try some Arctic P12s, as I've heard good things about them, but I had the Noctuas already. That 5 pack of Arctic's for $30 on Amazon is tempting though... I also purchased some alphacool copper heatsinks for the VRMs and RAM (10x10 and 14x14), but I wasn't sure if they would fit under the Morpheus.

 

 

I did everything in steps to establish how much each change affected temperature. My temperature benchmark was Furmark at 1440p with all stock GPU settings, except fan curve. Case fans were locked at my max curve speed, 60%. I let Furmark run until temps settled out, but at least 15 minutes. My ambient temperatures will be noted, but are usually at 70F +/- 2 degrees. I also pulled the cooler when I got the card just to look at the cooler design, and repasted with Noctua H2 paste so it isn't technically stock. I found no temperature change from the repaste though.

 

 

Evening One: I pulled the backplate and fan shroud, then mounted the two P12s with some zip ties to the stock cooler and started up Furmark. The first thing I noticed was that the new fans are roughly equal in noise at full speed to the stock fans at about 40%, and with a lower pitch sound that I prefer. I ran my stock fan curve at 50% max and was satisfied with temps but not with noise, so this alone was a great upgrade for me. Memory temps saw a nice improvement at the same noise level, but not compared to stock fans at 50%. I noticed that die temps were pretty close. Fan speed maxed on the stock fans gives similar die temps to 50%, but I never paid close attention to memory or vrm temps at high stock fan speeds.

 

Evening Two: I pulled the card all the way apart and started test fitting the included heatsinks to the memory chips and VRMs etc. Unfortunately the Morpheus didn't come with enough of the right size/shape Heatsinks to apply to the RAM, VRM and various other chips that the stock sapphire cooler contacts. The Alphacool heatsinks hadn't come yet, so I applied 1mm Thermal Grizzly minus 8 pads to the chips and reinstalled the stock cooler with the Morpheus included thermal compound. I wanted to see if there was any difference in thermal pad quality. The Morpheus thermal compound gave me about 5C higher temps and a larger Delta between junction and average temps, so I decided to pull the cooler again and repaste. After some isopropyl and gentle scrubbing with a soft toothbrush to clean the extra goop off, I repasted with some older Noctua H1 I had left over. Disaster! It wouldn't post. After clearing CMOS and reseating the GPU, I was worried I killed the card somehow. I would get the Aorus splash screen, then reboot. Couldn't  enter bios as well. It was late and I headed to bed. I would do troubleshooting the next evening.

 

Evening Three: I had a stroke of luck, my tower booted up and everything was normal. My first guess was some unevaporated Iso had been causing an issue. Junction temps ended up even worse than with the Morpheus Paste. I thought I had a mounting pressure issue or bad paste job. Pulled the cooler again, paste looked good but I believe I zip tied my fans too tightly and tweaked the cooler and PCB just enough to mess with die contact. Cleaned the board up and started prepping for copper heatsink application. When cleaning again, I found that Iso will wick under the PCB layer around the die and takes some encouragement to dry/get out of there. I got as much out/dry as I could with compressed nitrogen.

 

Evening Four: Alphacool heatsinks arrived. They definitely get a thumbs up from me. Well packaged, well made and not too expensive. The RAM heatsinks won't clear the cooler in all places though. Heatpipes and mounting hardware interfere somewhat. I attempted to use a bandsaw to trim the heatsinks quickly… I don't recommend it. Once you hit the fins, they bend/bind and rip the heatsink out of your holding implement. A very fine saw might work, especially hand powered, but I don't have one. I then switched to tin snips, and while it's not the prettiest, it's functional. Most of the fins I could simply bend out of the way, but some required trimming. I don't love the VRM solution Morpheus provides, but it works. I couldn't find a copper VRM heatsink and the copper ones I have are too big. Once the heatsinks were trimmed and passed test fitment, it was on to attaching them. I used the included double sided "thermal tape" with pretty good luck. There is plenty of extra to use if you mess up or if it moves and touches you etc. Once they were all attached, I applied conformal coating (2 coats) to the die area in preparation for TG Conductonaut.

 

Evening Six: Getting close! Heatsinks attached and seem well adhered. Conformal coating is dry and everything is ready for the cooler to be mounted. Spread TG Conductonaut on the die and cooler and mounted to the card. Attached fans with included clips (which kind of suck and barely hold the fans on) and seated the card. On to final testing!

 

Wow. This cooler is impressive! Memory and VRM temps are a bit higher, but those die temps! Played with overclocking the card and was thoroughly impressed with temperatures. I am running the same OC I did before but with power limit increased to 25%.

 

I don't love the memory and VRM temps, I want better performance everywhere. I found Arctic makes a thermal adhesive, and reports say when cut with their same version of thermal paste (Arctic Alumina), you can make a semi permanent bond. The adhesive is rated at 8 w/mK, which is the same as the Thermal Grizzly thermal pads I have and the material layer will be thinner.

 

If anyone has a source for a good copper GPU VRM heatsink, let me know. The aluminum one is fine, but it's aluminum and not copper. I'm going to purchase more low profile RAM heatsinks as well so I can get rid of a couple of my hacked up ones.

 

TL:DR

 

I wanted to try to improve the temps on my Sapphire Pulse 5700XT with new fans and a custom cooler. Performed tests at each stage.

 

All tests done with case fans locked and stock GPU bios with only GPU fan speed being modified/held. Furmark was ran until temps stabilized, then HWInfo reset and recorded for 5 minutes.

 

Stock Card - 40% Fan Speed

Ambient Temp: 70F

GPU Temp: 74C

GPU Junction Temp: 87C

Memory Junction Temp: 88C

VRM Temp: 75C

Average Clock Speed: 1803Mhz

Average Power Draw: 193W

 

Stock Card - 50% Fan Speed

Ambient Temp: 70F

GPU Temp: 71C

GPU Junction Temp: 84C

Memory Junction Temp: 82C

VRM Temp: 69C

Average Clock Speed: 1808Mhz

ASIC Power Draw: 193W

 

2 Noctua P12 Redux on stock cooler - 100% Fan Speed

Ambient Temp: 71F

GPU Temp: 71C

GPU Junction Temp: 85C

Memory Junction Temp: 84C

VRM Temp: 69C

Average Clock Speed: 1811Mhz

ASIC Power Draw: 193W

 

Morpheus Core II Stock Settings

Ambient Temp: 74C

GPU Temp: 53C

GPU Junction Temp: 65C

Memory Junction Temp: 88C

VRM Temp: 70C

Average Clock Speed: 1819Mhz

Average Power Draw: 193W

 

Morpheus Core II High Power Limit OC

Ambient Temp: 74F

GPU Temp: 61C

GPU Junction Temp: 80C

Memory Junction Temp: 96C

VRM Temp: 88C

Average Clock Speed: 2060Mhz

Average Power Draw: 255W

 

 

 

 

 

[Aereldor]

Reminds me of when people were strapping CPU tower coolers to their GTX 400 series cards. Rad.

[Demonic Donut]

1 minute ago, Aereldor said:

Reminds me of when people were strapping CPU tower coolers to their GTX 400 series cards. Rad.

That's the only thing I had seen before as well.

 

From what I've read, these coolers are popular with the Vega cards.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

A friend of mine did a similar thing with his Vega 56. Morpheus cooler, custom firmware, crazy high power limit. Was pretty sweet for a while, but the card degraded fast and now (3 years later) he has to run it underclocked.

[Demonic Donut]

1 hour ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

A friend of mine did a similar thing with his Vega 56. Morpheus cooler, custom firmware, crazy high power limit. Was pretty sweet for a while, but the card degraded fast and now (3 years later) he has to run it underclocked.

I don't plan to do anything crazy with the GPU. Perhaps use More Power Tool to lock in the OC without needing to open Radeon Software, but I'm going to stick with the 1200mV at 2100Mhz target frequency. I found 2150Mhz target (max allowed in Radeon app) gets glitchy in RDR2. I also don't want to kill my card yet, I've only had it since November.

[moonbeamjones]

How are new fans powered?

[SavageNeo]

Try to set the voltage to max (1300mV) and test the gpu

[JakeOfOz]

Awesome stuff! Do you have any pictures?

Temps are great too!

 

I put a CPU cooler on my 5700xt inspired by one of Linus' vids, my temps are not that much lower. except on the memory. I'd advise you to maybe put some other heatsinks on there. I have copper ones, and they do the trick well.

 

I'd really like to see how your card looks though.

 

Edit: Link to my build (LTT forum)

Edited August 12, 2020 by JakeOfOz
added link to my build

[Demonic Donut]

7 hours ago, moonbeamjones said:

How are new fans powered?

I used a splitter connected to a VGA fan adapter connected to the GPU. Fans are controlled like the stock fans.

 

7 hours ago, SavageNeo said:

Try to set the voltage to max (1300mV) and test the gpu

My card doesn't allow voltage over 1200mv through wattman. I'm not really willing to push the card too far anyway and cook it, I don't have THAT much disposable income. I already have my 3600 at 4.4ghz and probably high enough voltage to degrade it...

 

4 hours ago, JakeOfOz said:

Awesome stuff! Do you have any pictures?

Temps are great too!

 

I put a CPU cooler on my 5700xt inspired by one of Linus' vids, my temps are not that much lower. except on the memory. I'd advise you to maybe put some other heatsinks on there. I have copper ones, and they do the trick well.

 

I'd really like to see how your card looks though.

 

Edit: Link to my build (LTT forum)

 

I took some pictures at the beginning but wasn't diligent about it. I don't have any after I removed the stock cooler. I plan to update with pictures next time I pull the card out. I only have a couple hours each night once my kids go to bed and I ended up in a hurry.

 

I have some copper heatsinks, but the ones I bought were too tall and had to be trimmed in places. I ended up using a couple of the aluminum ones that came with the Morpheus as well. I want to find copper sinks that will fit without being trimmed, then use Arctic Alumina adhesive to attach them. I don't think the tape is the best thermal conductor.

 

I can take a picture of the assembled card tonight though.

[Demonic Donut]

15 hours ago, JakeOfOz said:

Awesome stuff! Do you have any pictures?

Temps are great too!

 

I put a CPU cooler on my 5700xt inspired by one of Linus' vids, my temps are not that much lower. except on the memory. I'd advise you to maybe put some other heatsinks on there. I have copper ones, and they do the trick well.

 

I'd really like to see how your card looks though.

 

Edit: Link to my build (LTT forum)

Didn't pull the card right now. But here it is mounted. I know my cable management sucks, but I don't have a side window so . . .

[BTGbullseye]

11 minutes ago, Demonic Donut said:

Didn't pull the card right now. But here it is mounted. I know my cable management sucks, but I don't have a side window so . . .

That CPU cooler is major overkill for a 3600, even with that much overclock. Were you planning on upgrading to a 3950 or something?

[Demonic Donut]

4 minutes ago, BTGbullseye said:

That CPU cooler is major overkill for a 3600, even with that much overclock. Were you planning on upgrading to a 3950 or something?

No plans to upgrade yet. Maybe when the new Ryzen chips come out. But doubtful. I bought it years ago for my 3570 and ran it without fans. I like to keep my system quiet, hence the 5700xt cooler upgrade.

 

[BTGbullseye]

5 hours ago, Demonic Donut said:

No plans to upgrade yet. Maybe when the new Ryzen chips come out. But doubtful. I bought it years ago for my 3570 and ran it without fans. I like to keep my system quiet, hence the 5700xt cooler upgrade.

 

Ah, good reason then. I don't see the point of aftermarket coolers on the 5700XT at this point though. It's cheaper to just sell any underperforming card, and buy a new one with a better AIB cooler. (it's the only reason I still have the reference cooler on my 5700XT, which I wish was way quieter)

 

I hope AMD ships their Big Navi with a better stock cooler design than the 5700XT reference.

[Demonic Donut]

6 hours ago, BTGbullseye said:

Ah, good reason then. I don't see the point of aftermarket coolers on the 5700XT at this point though. It's cheaper to just sell any underperforming card, and buy a new one with a better AIB cooler. (it's the only reason I still have the reference cooler on my 5700XT, which I wish was way quieter)

 

I hope AMD ships their Big Navi with a better stock cooler design than the 5700XT reference.

I agree that there isn't a price/performance benefit of doing this. Just like water-cooling anything but a 2080TI is a bad investment if you only care about price/performance. I bought the Sapphire Pulse because it was the best price/performance 5700XT at only $10 more than the reference blower card.

 

People "waste" money on all kinds of of components. But a lot of value is subjective. I think RGB is a giant waste of money. In my mind, why would anyone buy a tempered glass side panel case? They are expensive and perform worse than one with a side intake. People buy them because they like them, and they see value in them. And that's ok.

 

But as I said in the OP, my main reason for doing this was for fun. I was hoping to make my system quieter but, mainly, I just like to tinker. That's where the value is for me.