Info My experiences with MSI Mech OC RX5700 8gb

Hello, here is a summary of my experiences with my MSI Mech OC RX5700 8gb non-xt.

Lets preface by saying that I have owned this card for quite a few months now and I certainly have had enough time to fully develop my thoughts about the card. My previous card was a Sapphire Nitro+ RX480 8gb.

I should also mention my system specs:
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 locked all core 4.2ghz @1.2v with Arctic Freezer 34 Esports
2x8gb G.skill AEGIS @3200mhz CL16
MSI B350 Gaming Plus
MSI Mech OC RX5700
Sabrent Rocket Q 1tb NVME
Samsung 500gb HDD
DeepCool Matrexx 55 ARGB.
Corsair CX550M

Performance:


First I will talk about the performance of the GPU, and how well it suits my needs. I play a lot of games and run them at 1080p usually with the highest detail available. I have a 144hz monitor, so I do like high FPS.

The only popular titles I play are as follows
TF2: Runs the highest settings with several hundred FPS, depending on map. Often around 300fps. This game is very old after all.
GTAV: I play with very high settings and get around 100fps or so. No complaints here.

Some other games I play are
Automation: Stresses my GPU VERY VERY hard since the settings are cranked as high as they can go which includes running the game at a 150% resolution scale. I used to run this game with a 60hz lock due to noise, which I will get to later. It can run far enough above this not for me to care or really even look at the FPS counter much.
BeamNG: I run at settings even higher than the highest preset. Dynamic reflections really hurts fps if you turn up the cycle count but if you keep it at default I get around 100fps depending on the map.

I am very impressed with the performance of this card and honestly have 0 complaints with performance. As long as you don't crank AA up to 16x in every title, you honestly will have no issues with 1080p 144fps with this card. I would expect you to be able to run 1440p 60+ FPS as well with this card.

Drivers:


I have had 0 issues with drivers. No black screens, no crashes, nothing.

Noise and thermals:

Here is the issue with this card. The stock thermal performance and noise levels are unacceptable to me.

With 3 (140mm) intake and 3 exhaust fans (120mm) in my case, I either run my case fans at full speed and try to keep the card's memory and core edge temp under 100c while stressed or I run the fans at a reasonable speed and the card ramps up its fans which make a really annoying noise, almost like an intel stock cooler at full blast pitch-wise. I tried to disable some case fans but I ended up with the card running its fans really fast and the GPU edge temps getting to 109c and the memory well over 100c aswell in furmark. opening side panel helped but not much.

With both case and GPU fans on at default curve and no case front or side panels on, it wasn't that bad temp wise but it wasn't quiet in normal games, except for automation. Automation, especially when in the engine designer, made the fans go LOUD.

What I have done to combat this:
Ripped off the stock fans and shroud then zip-tied on 2 arctic f12 case fans ripped from the top of my case. I run these at 100% all the time since the bios doesn't let you set a curve based on GPU temps and honestly, these fans are much quieter at 100% than the stock fans were at like 60%.

This fixed the issue. Now the card runs at under 70c on core and hot spot. The memory is still at an unimpressive 82c, unfortunately. This card has no dedicated memory cooling, no separate plate or heat sync, just some thermal pads which attach the memory to the main heat sync. This is not ideal.

This fan mod did allow me to overclock the card to 1800mhz core and 1860mhz memory with ok temps and since the fans are at 100% regardless of the noise was the same.

TLDR

The RX5700 is a great card and the XT seems to be great aswell, just don't get a cheap model such as MSI MECH OC
 
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Also, I will post overclocked performance once I can figure a few things out.

Any clue how to set a static voltage and clock speed? When I try in wattman the voltage and clocks still fluctuate under load. Afterburner wont let me move the clock sliders and only the voltage slider.