RX 480 is apparently killing pcie slots

[Tyns]

There's one report of a mb slot going bad

There were three - two on the AMD community forums, one on the AMD subreddit and then there was the guy on overclock.net forum that used 3x RX480 in CF and no longer has analog audio. Then there was ScienceStudio's youtube video describing his computer shutting down on a lower end motherboard when gaming but worked fine with a 980ti.

 

[Imhotep]

Guess what? RX 480 is not an enthusiast card and the majority of them will not end up in enthusiast motherboards overbuilt for OC'ing. On top of that, these other so-called examples of high sustained power draws were when overclocked - user induced damage if it were to occur. RX 480 is out of spec *at default settings*. On other forums they're throwing around the excuse "well Toms was running 4K, who would run this card at 4K?" as though that was a valid excuse - it's end user failure! "Why would he use a PCI-E 3.0 card in a 2.0 slot?", another desperate attempt to shift blame. If an end user can do something, they will do that thing. That's why nVidia throttles Furmark, isn't it?

Its not about excuses. Its about cheap mobos that are at least 4 generations old trying to run current generation spec hardware.

 

[Nenu]

Its not about excuses. Its about cheap mobos that are at least 4 generations old trying to run current generation spec hardware.

Those motherboards have no problem running other cards.
Only the 480 causes problems and is so bad it is the prime suspect in some cases of damage.
We know the reason, its amusing seeing you squirm.

 

[razor1]

Its not about excuses. Its about cheap mobos that are at least 4 generations old trying to run current generation spec hardware.

Ok just a general question for everyone here, how many gens do you tend to keep your motherboard?

Since Intel went ahead of AMD I have gotten 2 new builds, that's 2 builds in 8 years or so....... And one of them I did that because I had to do it because of the bios change.

 

[Nenu]

My 2500Ks mobo lasted almost 5 years in my pc and is now in my Dads.
It ran a heavily clocked 980ti fine.

 

[Ocellaris]

Its not about excuses. Its about cheap mobos that are at least 4 generations old trying to run current generation spec hardware.

Every AMD motherboard is about four generations old

 

[NKD]

It cannot maintain that power use and comply with PCI-E and ATX specs while using a 6 pin connector.
No way round it.

dude what I am saying is if it can pull more through the 6 pin with bios or driver update. Cuz it is designed well enough. Who gives a fuck if it pulls more through 6 pin if the card is built with quality which it is, just look at the pcb.

You rather have motherboards burnt out? 8 pin is just for ground. but that card is designed just fine to handle more load. As long as it pulls less from pci-e slot it will be fine.

 

[danmoody]

Ok just a general question for everyone here, how many gens do you tend to keep your motherboard?

Since Intel went ahead of AMD I have gotten 2 new builds, that's 2 builds in 8 years or so....... And one of them I did that because I had to do it because of the bios change.

x58 Sabertooth still running great ! I have a 6700k I have to pick up from the fed ex hub and this x58 i7 950 is going to my step son to replace his i7 860 and that will be going to a guy I work with who cant afford a computer for the kids to game on. I wanted to buy a 480 but now I'm holding off.

 

[Nenu]

dude what I am saying is if it can pull more through the 6 pin with bios or driver update. Cuz it is designed well enough. Who gives a fuck if it pulls more through 6 pin if the card is built with quality which it is, just look at the pcb.

You rather have motherboards burnt out? 8 pin is just for ground. but that card is designed just fine to handle more load. As long as it pulls less from pci-e slot it will be fine.

Its already exceeding the 6pins specced power.
Its not a matter of pushing more power through that connector, its a matter of fixing the card or withdraw it from sale, then motherboards wont get burnt out.
The reason the card needs fixing is because there is a serious quality issue with it.

 

[razor1]

x58 Sabertooth still running great ! I have a 6700k I have to pick up from the fed ex hub and this x58 i7 950 is going to my step son to replace his i7 860 and that will be going to a guy I work with who cant afford a computer for the kids to game on. I wanted to buy a 480 but now I'm holding off.

So lets see 2008ish you got that motherboard? Think that is when the x58 was released 8 years or so?

 

[Axehandler]

Lol this is not racing tires it's $200 budget gaming card that draws more power than spec dictates. Do you think someone buying $200 graphics cards has a $300 motherboard?

Honestly I've been thinking of getting the 480 - it would allow me to run the Vive better AND allow me to wait for the 1080TI..

so not out of the question..

 

[CSI_PC]

Interesting PC Perspective got different results with the GTX 960. Considering how many crap posts are in this thread, it's easy to miss something like this. But even their graphs don't seem concerning. It does look like it draws on average 5w higher than the 75w specification. If that's a concern is another area that board makers can try to answer.

Remember the parameters adjust per game now for the AMD cards.
What did they say about Metro Last Light 4K?

Taking a closer look reveals that the motherboard PCI Express connection is supplying 80-84 watts of power over the +12V rail continuously, while the +3.3V rail hovers just below 5 watts. This is definitely a concern for the RX 480 design, but to what degree?

But as we have been saying a good PC system will handle this fine, until probably OC or adjusting power targets which puts undue pressure on the PCIe x16 slot and to some extent the ATX 24-pin connector.
The consideration is with lower priced mainstream motherboards and PSU, I noticed in one Youtube video some asking if their motherboads would be fine and these were varied in price from $45 to $60.
And 2x480 will double the demand of the ATX 24-pin connector, by standard this is rated at 6A with 2x12V contacts so giving a total of 144W sustained, you can also get this spec'd as HCS with better motherboards and that boosts it a fair amount I think to 9A and giving 216W in total.
This 24-pin power connector is supporting all the PCIe slots (note each separately is individually rated at 5.5A spec and not same as the ATX 24-pin) and other devices that do not have their own power from other rails.

One important thing, a machine will not necessarily have a failure straight away, it could be months of use and the impact may not be initially perceived but could be in terms of influencing or further exacerbating power traits-characteristics.
So just because it is working does not mean it is not affecting the PC.

But as I say such issues would fall into specific focus-scenario as I mention just after quoting PCPer.
But none of this would be such a consideration or headache if AMD did not go over the spec of the PCI express slot, it would not be such an issue to do that for the auxiliary connectors, hence why I posted the 295x2 power distribution charts as shown by Tom's Hardware.
Cheers

 

[NKD]

Its already exceeding the 6pins specced power.
Its not a matter of pushing more power through that connector, its a matter of fixing the card or withdraw it from sale, then motherboards wont get burnt out.
The reason the card needs fixing is because there is a serious quality issue with it.

Dude there have been plenty of fucking cards that draw more power from the connectors. The only difference here is that this one is pulling from pci-e. Read up and educate yourself. 6 pin can pull more than 75w, I am sure there are people here that an back me up on this and its perfectly safe if the PCB is designed to handle more draw, that pcb is frickin 6 phase vrm. More than 1070 and 1080, they don't need to recall shit if they can fix just that part.

 

[razor1]

dude what I am saying is if it can pull more through the 6 pin with bios or driver update. Cuz it is designed well enough. Who gives a fuck if it pulls more through 6 pin if the card is built with quality which it is, just look at the pcb.

You rather have motherboards burnt out? 8 pin is just for ground. but that card is designed just fine to handle more load. As long as it pulls less from pci-e slot it will be fine.

It will still be out of spec though, unless they put that 8 pin connector on there, but at least temporarily it will solve the main problem of the pci-e slot power draw.

 

[jbc029]

Its already exceeding the 6pins specced power.
Its not a matter of pushing more power through that connector, its a matter of fixing the card or withdraw it from sale, then motherboards wont get burnt out.
The reason the card needs fixing is because there is a serious quality issue with it.

At least be honest about it. The PCIe spec violation is the only one here that matters. Other cards from both NV and AMD have exceeded plug specs for years when you overclock them. The issue here is that it never put older motherboards in (serious) danger.

 

[Tyns]

Ok just a general question for everyone here, how many gens do you tend to keep your motherboard?

Since Intel went ahead of AMD I have gotten 2 new builds, that's 2 builds in 8 years or so....... And one of them I did that because I had to do it because of the bios change.

I'm still on a 980x in an Asus Rampage III extreme (5.5 years old). I was all set to build a new machine last year with Skylake, but then I looked at my CPU performance and it more than meets all of my needs. I plugged a 980ti in six months ago - I'm not winning and benchmark competition but I get 5k on Fire Strike Ultra, 16k on Fire Strike. Not bad for a 5.5 year old machine with only a GPU upgrade.

I'm upgrading this year mainly b/c I wan M.2 slots and want to build a more powerful NAS (i.e. repurpose my existing machine).

According to some, if an RX 480 were to fry my board, it would be my fault for using ancient components.

 

[NKD]

It will still be out of spec though, unless they put that 8 pin connector on there, but at least temporarily it will solve the main problem of the pci-e slot power draw.

Yea but we have seen other graphics cards pull more. As long as they fix the main problem its fine. Since the card can handle it.

 

[jbc029]

It will still be out of spec though, unless they put that 8 pin connector on there, but at least temporarily it will solve the main problem of the pci-e slot power draw.

The thing that worries me is what if that doesn't fix the issue. It's splitting the power draw almost completely evenly between the PCIe and the plug. That's a big change in default draw behavior, so what else may be screwy.

 

[Presbytier]

The reasoning is simple. You dont see 4 door grocery getting sedans with high performance summer tires sold by the respective dealerships. The issue is with the cheap matherbords and not the card itself.
Or it could be as simple as Gen 2/3 spec of PCI-E required to run the card.

He threw a 980ti on it with no issues try again.

 

[NKD]

At least be honest about it. The PCIe spec violation is the only one here that matters. Other cards from both NV and AMD have exceeded plug specs for years when you overclock them. The issue here is that it never put older motherboards in (serious) danger.

exactly! The main issue is the pci-e over draw. As long as they fix that and pull from the 6 pin this shit shouldn't be a problem then we are just being fuckin mad for no reason because cards do that all the time when you push em, andt this card is designed just fine to handle more load.

 

[Ocellaris]

dude what I am saying is if it can pull more through the 6 pin with bios or driver update. Cuz it is designed well enough. Who gives a fuck if it pulls more through 6 pin if the card is built with quality which it is, just look at the pcb.

You rather have motherboards burnt out? 8 pin is just for ground. but that card is designed just fine to handle more load. As long as it pulls less from pci-e slot it will be fine.

Dude there have been plenty of fucking cards that draw more power from the connectors. The only difference here is that this one is pulling from pci-e. Read up and educate yourself. 6 pin can pull more than 75w, I am sure there are people here that an back me up on this and its perfectly safe if the PCB is designed to handle more draw, that pcb is frickin 6 phase vrm. More than 1070 and 1080, they don't need to recall shit if they can fix just that part.

You might make a horrible electrician... "Yeah you can definitely pull 25A on this 110V line, I replaced the 10A fuse with a few welded quarters and now it's good to go!" The wiring it definitely good for more than 10A so it should be fine right?!?

Electrical gear all has ratings for a reason.

 

[razor1]

Yea but we have seen other graphics cards pull more. As long as they fix the main problem its fine. Since the card can handle it.

Yes that is true! And the problem will be confined to the PSU and graphics card only so people that have already bought the card don't need to worry it. But again its a ref card going into OEM systems, so AMD still has to fix the issue for those cards.

 

[Nenu]

At least be honest about it. The PCIe spec violation is the only one here that matters. Other cards from both NV and AMD have exceeded plug specs for years when you overclock them. The issue here is that it never put older motherboards in (serious) danger.

Only because they havent tried to dump the excess PCI-e power through the 6 pin, which is what is being proposed.
Even then there are fringe cases where it will present a problem.

At least you accept its exceeding the PCI-E spec.

 

[Presbytier]

Yes that is true! And the problem will be confined to the PSU and graphics card only so people that have already bought the card don't need to worry it. But again its a ref card going into OEM systems, so AMD still has to fix the issue for those cards.

Watch when OEM versions come out it will either be clocked way down with over locking being locked out or they will throw a 8-pin connector on it.

 

[Tyns]

Watch when OEM versions come out it will either be clocked way down with over locking being locked out or they will throw a 8-pin connector on it.

8 pin is the easiest solution but that's not useful for existing boards. Couldn't a bios update reduce the power target down which would then give users some actual overclocking range (to current levels)?

 

[primetime]

Lol this is not racing tires it's $200 budget gaming card that draws more power than spec dictates. Do you think someone buying $200 graphics cards has a $300 motherboard?

i would lol...my board was 320 when i bought it....and im still considering getting a 480 as an upgrade.

 

[NKD]

Watch when OEM versions come out it will either be clocked way down with over locking being locked out or they will throw a 8-pin connector on it.

They will probably be just clocked down. Oem don't care about losing 5% of the speed. They rather go cheap.

 

[Nenu]

Dude there have been plenty of fucking cards that draw more power from the connectors. The only difference here is that this one is pulling from pci-e. Read up and educate yourself. 6 pin can pull more than 75w, I am sure there are people here that an back me up on this and its perfectly safe if the PCB is designed to handle more draw, that pcb is frickin 6 phase vrm. More than 1070 and 1080, they don't need to recall shit if they can fix just that part.

Lol.
I have a degree in EE, I suggest its you that has deficient knowledge.

If you dont understand the need for specifications then this is not a thread you should participate in.
The point of a spec is to give margin of error for safety.
The 480 card exceeds the spec under normal use and exceeds the margin of error when used as intended.
Some kit will handle it ok, some kit wont.
Some kit that can handle it well for short periods will struggle under extended sessions or after multiple uses. It can take time to cause damage.

A machine that has burned out cant be switched off to cool down and be ok later.
It will need repair.
And in some cases it will be a fire risk.
Would you like AMD to shoulder this?

 

[razor1]

8 pin is the easiest solution but that's not useful for existing boards. Couldn't a bios update reduce the power target down which would then give users some actual overclocking range (to current levels)?

Its possible, but then the person that bought it doesn't' get the performance that was promised to them lol.

 

[razor1]

Guys calm down most of us that have been posting in this thread I think are very knowledgeable of why specifications are there and why they are important to follow, the question is how can AMD fix this quickly to avoid a major issue down the road.

 

[Tyns]

Its possible, but then the person that bought it doesn't' get the performance that was promised to them lol.

Yes, and that is AMD's scandal to handle, but it won't cost them any money directly, can be done immediately once the new bios is developed (card never leaves the consumer's PC), and still gives the consumer the option to clock it back up to current levels if they're ok with voiding the warranty. A recall would be devastating to them financially and also with the time period the consumer does not have the card. I'd bet most of them would simply RMA and buy a 1060.

 

[razor1]

Yeah this isn't rocket science for AMD by any means, I just hope this entire time they have been testing, they don't come back and say the same thing its just a small batch of cards, that would be the kiss of death for them........

They can't let something like this stretch out,

nV did with bumpgate because NO ONE knew about it till the problem surfaced many months later.

 

[Axehandler]

Nothing like this problem POPPING up over the July 4th holiday weekend

This in no way imply's ANYTHING.. just a statement of fact

 

[Lord Risky]

Lol.
I have a degree in EE, I suggest its you that has deficient knowledge.

If you dont understand the need for specifications then this is not a thread you should participate in.
The point of a spec is to give margin of error for safety.
The 480 card exceeds the spec under normal use and exceeds the margin of error when used as intended.
Some kit will handle it ok, some kit wont.
Some kit that can handle it well for short periods will struggle under extended sessions or after multiple uses. It can take time to cause damage.

A machine that has burned out cant be switched off to cool down and be ok later.
It will need repair.
And in some cases it will be a fire risk.
Would you like AMD to shoulder this?

Mad respect for anyone with a degree in EE. Question for you: out of the dozen of so major review sites, only two of them noted excessive pci-e power draw. [H] was among those with no issue. In your opinion, what would explain only 20% of the reviews noting excessive pci-e power draws?

 

[NKD]

Lol.
I have a degree in EE, I suggest its you that has deficient knowledge.

If you dont understand the need for specifications then this is not a thread you should participate in.
The point of a spec is to give margin of error for safety.
The 480 card exceeds the spec under normal use and exceeds the margin of error when used as intended.
Some kit will handle it ok, some kit wont.
Some kit that can handle it well for short periods will struggle under extended sessions or after multiple uses. It can take time to cause damage.

A machine that has burned out cant be switched off to cool down and be ok later.
It will need repair.
And in some cases it will be a fire risk.
Would you like AMD to shoulder this?

My point was it wont kill motherboards which is the bigger issue. Oh by the way to call out people fuckin dumb might make you feel better.

I have a degree in mathematics. So next time you pull this education thing on someone just know they might not be as stupid as you think.

There are nicer ways of making your point without bragging about your education and assuming someone is dumber than you.

 

[Vercinaigh]

Lol.
I have a degree in EE, I suggest its you that has deficient knowledge.

If you dont understand the need for specifications then this is not a thread you should participate in.
The point of a spec is to give margin of error for safety.
The 480 card exceeds the spec under normal use and exceeds the margin of error when used as intended.
Some kit will handle it ok, some kit wont.
Some kit that can handle it well for short periods will struggle under extended sessions or after multiple uses. It can take time to cause damage.

A machine that has burned out cant be switched off to cool down and be ok later.
It will need repair.
And in some cases it will be a fire risk.
Would you like AMD to shoulder this?

If they can pump that much power through that small of wiring and connectors, I'm extremely certain you're pushing some serious hyperbole about 6 pin power draw. I'm just saying dude, yes this is a issue, and a pretty stupid over sight, but it won't hurt a damn thing to pull more from 6 pin, especially not 5-15 fucking watts, get real dude. I've pulled more than that from every video card I've ever owned for the life of the hardware which all worked and was handed down. So whatevs!

 

[razor1]

Mad respect for anyone with a degree in EE. Question for you: out of the dozen of so major review sites, only two of them noted excessive pci-e power draw. [H] was among those with no issue. In your opinion, what would explain only 20% of the reviews noting excessive pci-e power draws?

Most sites didn't do extensive power testing from the different rails...... So they wouldn't know. But all the ones that did, came across the same problem lol.

 

[Trimlock]

I've noticed the phases on the motherboard are getting brought up again, I believe the advertised phases are for the CPU. I have no clue what they are/would be for the rest of the MB (if its even uses phases that is). I don't believe the PCIe uses phases as it assumes the devices will have them if needed.

 

[Dayaks]

Dude there have been plenty of fucking cards that draw more power from the connectors. The only difference here is that this one is pulling from pci-e. Read up and educate yourself. 6 pin can pull more than 75w, I am sure there are people here that an back me up on this and its perfectly safe if the PCB is designed to handle more draw, that pcb is frickin 6 phase vrm. More than 1070 and 1080, they don't need to recall shit if they can fix just that part.

Yes. The six pin can handle way more than 75W no problem. Hell I ran my Titan X at 400W and that was a 6 + 8. Didn't even get warm.

 

[Trimlock]

I haven't tried this on a cheap PSU, but on a Seasonic, Corsair and a few Antec's (which might be cheap?) I've pulled over 100watts through the 6 pin many times and saw no issues. Now I didn't OC through it, but it was more than enough to get my cards to boot up and boost.