Random black screens after upgrading to RX 480

Rom Hook

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Apr 16, 2015
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Hi! So I've upgraded from r9 270x to Power Color RX 480 Red Devil recently and started getting random black screens and choppy audio that sounds like it stuck in a short loop. When the black screen happens the only thing I can do is to hard reset my computer. This only happens while playing Witcher 3, never on idle or while watching videos. On the AMD forum I've read that undervolting to 1050 mV in Wattman might help, and it did. The random black screens are much less frequent now but still happen once every few days. Should I undervolt it a little more?
Here are my specs:
Asrock H97M Pro4 motherboard
Intel i7 4790k CPU
8 gigs of some low profile Kingston RAM
A 5 years old Chieftech 700w psu.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
Solution
The components used to construct the card are low quality. In my opinion, it looks like everybody showed up to work drunk and decided on a game plan for the card's design before the engineering team even got there. I still can't believe PowerColor built something this low quality, I used to trust them for quality graphics cards until they pulled this RX series crap on us.

As for the BIOS update, it may help somewhat but I doubt it will eliminate the problem altogether.
Red Devil from PowerColor is terrible. They used worse quality components than reference. I think that model is tied with the Gigabyte G1 Gaming model for worst RX 480 on the market.

It doesn't matter what you set the software to do, the card is simply terrible.

The Asus STRIX version and XFX GTR versions are the best as far as I've seen. There are others that are more competitively priced and will get you steady performance without these issues, but of course they don't carry the outstanding quality of the two I just mentioned.

I have compiled a YouTube playlist which shows the best and worst RX 480s seen on the market.

Compare XFX GTR and Asus Strix RX 480s.

Compare my more budget friendly RX 480 recommendations.

However, the graphics card is only part of your problem. Your power supply is junk, a potential fire hazard. I recommend replacing the unit immediately. I'm afraid there are no good power supplies for overclocking that are very budget friendly. The Seasonic M12ii 520w Bronze EVO Edition is one of the few I found that can handle overclocking for under $80.
 

Dutchpixel

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Feb 26, 2016
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Asus STRIX cards are way overpriced beter go with Gigabyte or MSI or XFX as you said.
 

Dutchpixel

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Feb 26, 2016
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Try to Uninstall all graphics drivers and reinstall them with the latest. They may got corrupted.

 


I'm aware. I was just listing the best of the best. Note that I specifically included a more budget friendly link for that exact reason. The cards in my budget friendly link will offer stable performance at a more competitive price, but fail to live up to the extremely high build quality seen in the GTR and STRIX versions. This doesn't mean they're bad, far from it, they're good cards at a good price. Not the absolute best, but far from the worst.
 

Rom Hook

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Apr 16, 2015
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Power Color also offers a BIOS version for this specific card. Can it fix the issue or is it only ment for overclocking?
I don't think this problem is a good enough reason to return this card. I'll try to reduce the voltage to 1000 mV and see what happens. It's hard to diagnose this problem because it only happens once every few days.
 
The components used to construct the card are low quality. In my opinion, it looks like everybody showed up to work drunk and decided on a game plan for the card's design before the engineering team even got there. I still can't believe PowerColor built something this low quality, I used to trust them for quality graphics cards until they pulled this RX series crap on us.

As for the BIOS update, it may help somewhat but I doubt it will eliminate the problem altogether.
 
Solution


I'm aware that thermals are not a problem on that card. The main issue is the power delivery systems that feed the GPU core. Unsteady power means unreliable performance, it's pretty much that simple.