Question RX 580 Nitro+ too powerful for 550W PSU?

GuitarFreak87

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Feb 23, 2020
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I just recently bought a used Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+ and so far, I have had nothing but trouble with it. The card looks to be in great condition, and I have contacted the seller, and they assured me nothing was wrong with the card, and they have a great feedback rating on ebay. After installation, I didn't receive a signal to my monitor. I tried several HDMI cables, 3 different monitors, reseated the card several times, and nothing. It was getting late, so I called it a night.

The next morning, miraculously, the monitor picked up a signal on my first try. I installed all the drivers the card needed, and then restarted the PC. Upon reboot, I was met with the dreaded 'No Signal' alert on my monitor. For the past 3 weeks, I have only been able to get a signal on my monitor around 5 times. Whenever I put the PC to sleep, or restart, the problem recurs, and usually takes around 3 or so hours of turning of and on until the monitor picks up a signal again.

Today, I removed the card all together, and hooked up my HDMI to my motherboard. Straight away, my monitor picked up a signal. I have rebooted my PC a few times just to make sure it wasn't first time lucky, and sure enough, I received a signal each and every time.

So, I am led to believe that I either have a dodgey GPU, or the PSU can't seem to supply enough power to the card. I have a Corsair CX550M PSU, which previously powered a GTX 1050TI with ease. I have read several posts on different forums stating that you shouldn't need anything more than a 500 watt PSU to power a system with a RX 580 GPU.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I will list my specs below.

System Specs
I5 7500 Kabylake CPU
Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+ (prev 1050TI)
MSI B250M Mortar Motherboard
2X 8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 2400 DDR4 Ram
Corsair CX550M PSU
Western Digital Blue 1TB HD
Windows 10
 
SHOULD be fine. The CX550M isn't a bad PSU either.

I'm not sure if this would do what you need, but if/when you can get into Windows, try going to AMD Settings - Global WattMan, and setting the "Power Limit %" as low as it will go. That likely only applies once you're in Windows, but it's worth a try.

I also wonder if the previous owner had done any vBIOS updates/changes.
 
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GuitarFreak87

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SHOULD be fine. The CX550M isn't a bad PSU either.

I'm not sure if this would do what you need, but if/when you can get into Windows, try going to AMD Settings - Global WattMan, and setting the "Power Limit %" as low as it will go. That likely only applies once you're in Windows, but it's worth a try.

I also wonder if the previous owner had done any vBIOS updates/changes.
Many thanks for the reply!

I also thought that the PSU should be enough, and you and other people on different forums have echoed that.

Do you know if I can get into the AMD settings without the GPU seated in the system? I tried loading up the Radeon control panel while I had the HDMI hooked up to the motherboard, but the program wouldn't load. Is there another way to access the settings?

I will ask the seller about the Bios.

Your advice is greatly appreciated!
 
If you locate the text file which dictates the WattMan settings that are used, you can edit it that way. But again, I'm not sure if that's going to help since it doesn't get applied until Windows loads. What I'm hoping is that, you may have a black screen until windows loads and the AMD drivers start up, then MAYBE it comes to life. Still not an ideal solution, but at least it allows you to dig around and troubleshoot a bit. Hard to check vBIOS if you can't see anything on the screen.
 
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GuitarFreak87

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If you locate the text file which dictates the WattMan settings that are used, you can edit it that way. But again, I'm not sure if that's going to help since it doesn't get applied until Windows loads. What I'm hoping is that, you may have a black screen until windows loads and the AMD drivers start up, then MAYBE it comes to life. Still not an ideal solution, but at least it allows you to dig around and troubleshoot a bit. Hard to check vBIOS if you can't see anything on the screen.

So, I managed to get the card to send a signal again by turning on the computer and then turning it off at the PSU. I know this isn't recommended, but if it's a power issue, I thought this might just jig the card a little. To my surprise, it worked. I was able to get a signal when I powered on. So, there could be a power delivery issue somewhere, but I'm not really an expert on that kind of stuff.

While I had the computer working, I had look around for WattMan, like you said. However, I couldn't find anything to do with WattMan on my system. I read up on some forums that WattMan has been replaced by something else in the Adrenalin 2020 software. The only way to get WattMan was to install a previous driver that used Wattman. I installed the oldest driver I could find, but sadly, there was no WattMan to be found. However, while going through the process to install the older driver, I found some interesting things which might lead us closer to the reason why there's no signal.

I used DDU to delete the AMD drivers, and then had to perform a system reboot at least twice. In those two reboots, the monitor picked up a signal from the GPU without problem. However, after installing the Adrenalin 2020 software, drivers, and rebooting the computer for a third time, my monitor wouldn't pick up a signal again. So, could it be the Adrenalin software? The monitor picked up a signal without any drivers installed on the GPU, but then messes up when something has been installed. If it's Adrenalin, I don't know what I could really do.

Again, many thanks for your help! Sorry to make you read so much.
 
Yeah, sorry, it's now the "performance" tab at the top.
Jm8jSfW.png


I'm running driver version 19.9.2. It's stable for me. I've been hearing things about the 2020 drivers that has prevented me from updating yet.
 
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GuitarFreak87

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Yeah, sorry, it's now the "performance" tab at the top.
Jm8jSfW.png


I'm running driver version 19.9.2. It's stable for me. I've been hearing things about the 2020 drivers that has prevented me from updating yet.

Sadly, nothing has worked. I turned the power consumption down as low as it would go, and I managed to find the same driver you're running (19.9.2), and nothing. I'm really stumped by this. Really don't know what else I could try?