I had followed somewhat closely on the RX480 news, and almost bought one of the reference cards, but decided not to because I wouldn't had time to do so - sure enough, it was sold out when I got home that day. It was a good thing though, considering that not long after (either next day or the day after), there was a slow flurry of articles about the RX480 drawing more power from the PCIe slot than the allowable amount in the PCIe specifications.
I find it funny that AMD somewhat denied and/or brushed the issues off to the side for about a week before they did something about it, which was to release a new driver that shifted where the power draw came from. I was a bit surprised that they were able to do so with a driver update, considering the fault is based in the hardware - what works, works.
It wasn't long after the reference RX480 release that Sapphire announced their NITRO+ version of the RX480, and was even more excited, seeing that I've never had any problems with Sapphire (knock on wood). I closely followed the news and such about it, and I think it was a couple days after the release date announcement (or something similar), I put in my pre-order for the non-overclocked version of the 8GB card.
As a month slowly passed by, I was researching on when it would be released and about when I would be getting mine. Seemed like a couple people on Reddit had talked to Amazon's customer service and gotten an answer of "beginning of September" and "mid-September". I think it was the 6th when I somewhat lost it, and poked around Newegg, finding that they had stock of all three models, and I quickly ordered the overclocked 8gb version, seeing it was only a few dollars more than what I would be paying on Amazon. Sure enough, it was on its way the next day.
I also ordered some of the peripheral connectors and pins to update the 5 volt source for the soundcard switchbox, and paid extra for expedited shipping so that I would have it before the weekend, since I knew the RX480 would arrive before the weekend as well.
I received the parts on Thursday, and took what I needed with me to work on Friday, since it would be easier than taking the crimper home with me.
The parts before assembly, and after partial assembly.
Close up of the power take-off crimp end. I used some heatshrink tubing to cover the exposed shield "wire", I then used more heatshrink to cover the end of the cable jacket (as well as the remainder of the shield "wire"), and finally, I used more heatshrink tubing after crimping to remove future wire strain from the crimp end of the pin to the insulation and cable jacket.
The finished product. (A bit more on this later.)
Forgot to mention that the mono cable was actually another one I took home for whatever reason, and wasn't the one I spliced together.
Since the RX480 uses a 8-pin PCIe power connector, I was going to have to swap the PSU out for Lie-chan's old 750-watt. Sure I could find connectors and such, but since the 8-pin PCIe power connector on the 750-watt is not removable (like the 24-pin ATX cord), might as well use it than having to dig around for a possible adaptor (or spend almost an hour grabbing one from the "local" computer parts store.
Anyway I started working on Melty the next morning, taking out the HD 6770, the Sound Blaster card, and the 500-watt PSU. After swapping the PSU (and I think installing the RX480), I did a bunch of cable management, considering Melty is nearing her "final form".
Too bad I didn't take a picture before the clean up. I used red ties where it would be visible (or possibly visible) from the window, since I didn't have any black ties. I also realised the weird loop things in the metal were tie-down points. I found that I could swap the EPS extension cable around to make it look much nicer from the window. I ended up wasting two sticky tie-down square things, but no one's going to see that unless the open the panel.
I also found that I was able to re-route the cord for the PCIe extension thing so that it wasn't blatantly obvious, and the interior looks much nicer.
Much nicer than it used to be. I might eventually reroute the fan cord to the PSU, but we'll see.
I also had flipped the side fan again, so that it would blow air in instead of out (I decided out would be the best way with how the HD 6770 was), and decided to put a tie-down point on the door so that the wire would be more cooperative.
I used a twist-tie so that I'm not wasting zip-ties when I remove the fan for cleaning.
Oh, right. I also did a bit of deep-cleaning as well before I installed the RX480. Anyway, Melty was now ready for driver installation.
Direct window view and angled window view.
Here's where I really ran into problems. I wasn't able to boot into Manjaro or Windows, for completely separate reasons. I noticed the Sound Blaster card was flashing and thought I might have killed something when I used the vacuum cleaner on it, so I just disconnected the power and was able to get Manjaro to boot... without X.
I was about to install
amdgpu-pro (or whatever the package is called), but found that it conflicted with mhwd-gpu, and after a bit of poking around on the internet with my phone, I found the correct way to install the driver I needed. Once I rebooted, I was in business, and excitedly grabbed the spare monitors to test out quad-screening.
"T" configuration (ignore the bottom left and bottom right corners), and "grid" configuration.
It was a bit wonky at first, but eventually it worked with me and I was able to experience the awesomeness of native quad-screening. With that, I rebooted into Windows, which was still giving me problems. I poked around the internet more to try to figure out an easy way to fix the driver issue without having to put the HD 6770 back into Melty.
I forgot when I started shuffling the GPUs around, but I do know after lunch, I decided the best course of action was to use the HD 6450 from Lie-chan (which was going to the Dell) instead of the HD 6770. Once I rebooted, I got mostly to Windows, enabling safe mode before rebooting into the desktop to uninstall the driver. I actually tried to install the driver I needed for the RX480, but I wasn't able to, so I gave up and shut down to re-install the RX480.
I turned Melty on afterwards and she didn't post. I was somewhat stupefied, considering the RX480 was working not long ago. I opened up the door (or maybe it was already open?) and saw that I hadn't plugged in the PCIe power cable. Derp.
After that, I was able to boot fine into Windows (with the crappy resolution). I then installed the driver (which then appeared in the AMD install manager thingy), and then proceeded to test out quad-screening again. I think Windows was also slightly wonky with the settings, but I did get it to work, and then I promptly put the extra monitors away as I transferred Phantasy Star Online 2 files from Triela (since it would be much faster than downloading from the internet). I also remembered about the updated stand-alone character creator and proceeded to download that, since I couldn't find where I had previously downloaded it to.
I'll mention here before I forget again, that GRUB2 looks much nicer, since it's able to output a higher resolution. A bit sad that I've already gotten used to the sharpness now.
Once I was done installing and whatnot, I ran the benchmark within the character creator and got 21000 something as a score on max settings. I realised I should've ran the benchmark with the HD 6770 to get a point of reference, but it was obviously too late. I also updated and logged into Mabinogi to maximise all the graphical effects, but I think I didn't do much else with Windows before I went back to Manjaro.
At some point while in Windows, I set the LED colour to red to match Melty's theme (I used the onboard button to turn it off, since none of the presets matched the theme), and luckily, it stayed when I rebooted.
It was a mixed day. I was happy about the awesomeness of Melty, but was kinda upset with the loss of the soundcard, especially considering all the money/effort I put into the switchbox. (I was also kinda upset that it was kinda dark in Melty's case.
Sometime while winding down, I remembered that I was going to check the voltage going into the switchbox earlier in the day, but I had forgotten completely. I pulled the plug out and measured it to be 12 something volts. There's the reason why the soundcard wasn't working properly, because it was being under-volted. I debated whether I wanted to shower or poke around and fix the problem, and I figured I might as well.
I pulled Melty out again (she's pretty heavy, and the space she's under is awkward, so it's no joke), and poked around with the connectors, grabbing something to compare my custom harness to. Sure enough, I had flopped the pin order on the housing side (the side with the male pins), so instead of 12v - ground - ground - 5v, I had 5v - ground - ground -12v. I double checked the plug side (the ones with the female contacts) to ensure that it was correct, and it was. After swapping the pin order of the housing, I re-connected the harness, re-routed the PCIe extension cable thingy (I removed it since I had thought the soundcard was dead), and then put Melty back.
After I booted her up, the LED was steady and I booted into Windows to reinstall the driver and software thingy. I also checked the voltage with my bad multimeter (something happened to it and it gives a reading of roughly 25% more) and got 6 something volts, which was correct (so 5 something volts). I was quite happy that I didn't kill the soundcard and that the case glows like it used to.
Poor shot of the glow because of the phone's camera.
Oh, right. I was debating on staying up to fix it or not since there was going to be the usual birthday party gathering the next day, which usually means that I relax with my younger niece and nephew playing video games. While it only took about 30 minutes to fix, I would've been able to fix it the next day, since my nephew wasn't over.
The only "damage" was that the relays got over-volted a couple times (according to the datasheet, it can only handle an over-volt of 125% or maybe 150%), but it was only twice for a brief moment, so they still work just fine (if anything, I have extras).
As usual, learned a couple things:
- Check housing/plug orientation on top of pin/wire sequence
- Check hunches immediately, regardless of situation.
Melty's HD 6770 went to Lie-chan, Lie-chan's HD 6450 went to the Dell, and the Dell's X1950 Pro (or whatever it was) went to the 820 (which I still need to name and such). Since the Dell is a BTX motherboard, the heatsink of the HD 6450 is facing upward, so I decided to go with the intended passive cooling design (there's also the Wi-Fi card plugged into the PCIe x1 port above it, so I can't put a cooling fan there anyway).
Melty's much quieter now that I don't have to listen to the Vantec fan card thing, and it took me a while to get used to, since if I came back after the screen turned off, I couldn't tell if she was on or not.
The Dell's a lot more quiet as well, mostly at boot, where it would spin all fans at 100% momentarily before the actual boot (or for a minute if the PSU needed to "catch up"... I really should replace the PSU at some point...).
Beside the soundcard switchboard, Melty will have one final upgrade. Well, not entirely an upgrade, more of a downgrade. Anyway, Melty will probably get a RX460 whenever I build something to replace her, since I'm not going to buy another RX480 for the new build.
The AM4 Zen-series FX CPUs are very tempting for numerous reasons (DDR4, PCIe 3.0 support, 14nm manufacture processes), but I'm not ready to spend the needed money, considering Melty does all that I need her to do. I'm thinking the soonest I might replace Melty is AM4+, but we'll have to see.
Whenever that does happen, Melty will stay in her case, considering the modifications I did to mount the PCIe extension thingy. That's it for now, since I'm up past my bedtime...
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