The ultimate way to mod your RX460-590 cards & newer (GUIDE) + consulting with all kinds of rig issues

[Freshbrewed]

Spoiler: Not so efficient way to do mod your cards

These are stats for my own custom made ROMs for all of my RX580 cards. My brands varies: 3x Red Devils, 1x Red Dragon & 1x Sapphire Nitro. Some take in lesser volts with more clocks, some just don't. If you guys need help with tailoring your ROMs on specific cards just contact me, I'm more than happy to help and fiddle around. I'd rather tinker individual roms from the scratch than post generic roms, since silicon lottery plays an important role with the quality of the PCB on the card. I'm also open to answer all kinds of questions regarding rig building/troubleshooting stability issues or optimizing them as I've built couple of rigs in the before.

Here's my latest one:
View attachment 188428
View attachment 188427
EDIT: I accidently deleted my old pictures. My highest hashrates I achieved using old technique was 30.5MH/s with a typical power consumption of 110-115 watts. System's total power draw was around 560-570W.

A mix of generic and my personal, card specific roms. I take no responsibility if you fail to take safety measures before flashing a modded rom onto your card and end up bricking it. Always backup your stock rom and check if the memory type and rom size matches your card.

Generics:

• MSI_RX580_8GB_Samsung
• SAPPHIRE_RX580_8GB_Hynix
• RED_DEVIL_RX580_8GB_Hynix_Low-Clocks
• ASUS_DUAL_RX480_8GB_Samsung_30mhs
• SAPPHIRE_NITRO_RX480_8GB_Samsung-Generic
• SAPPHIRE_NITRO_RX590_8GB_Hynix-straps

Card-specific, tinkered roms in my personal use..generally not stable for others but if you're lucky, then they'll work for you

• ASUS_DUAL_RX480_8GB_Samsung_30.5mhs-99w
• XFX_RX580_8GB_Samsung_31mhs
• SAPPHIRE_NITRO_RX480_8GB_Samsung_30.5mhs
• RED_DEVIL_RX580_8GB_Hynix_31.4mhs
• RED_DRAGON_RX580_8GB_Hynix_30.5mhs

Don't hesitate to post your stock rom under this thread. I'll either hit the sweet spot with the first try or with couple of iterations given that you're ready to flash your card a few times.

It's fascinating knowing you can always learn something new . So I've hid my old post above (you can check it out for reference) about me offering tuning help for people with their individual roms, be it a stock rom or an already modded rom to squeeze the cards juices even further. Although the technique of modding BIOS with PolarisEditor is widely used and it seems to do wonders, there's a big fat BUT with it. Let me share you what I've learned so far:

1) Use PolarisBiosEditor only to edit your card's Memory Straps, be it Ubermix v3.1, v3.2, v3.3, Hynix GOOD, Hynix Universal or your custom made one.

2) Do not use PolarisBiosEditor to edit Core Clocks, Memory Clocks or Voltages of the graphics card.

3) Use OverdriveNTool to configure voltage, core and memory clocks.

4) Don't use mining software to tune your card (-cclock, -cvddc, -mclock, -mvddc arguments) because it's not stable. It may or may not work. I did some testing and while it worked on some cards, sometimes my voltages were not set correctly.

Why?

I've noticed that I am unable for example, lock the voltages of the graphics cards via modding the roms implying that voltage control (in the rom itself) might be relative, not absolute. While I haven't done excessive research about modding cards using PolarisBiosEditor, I've noticed that it's really hard to tune down power consumption and lock the voltages to desired levels. Furthermore, if you downclock your card way too much or undervolt it while seeking the absolute best values, there's a risk of rendering it obsolete (Yes I've done that to meself a couple of times and I had to bypass Windows corruption checks on the boot by short-circuiting two pins in the graphics card's chip to get into the desktop and flash stock rom back). Sounds painful and time consuming flashing the card all the time to check whether hashrate and power consumption improved by a tick or not. Don't forget about stability and stress tests, too! Which brings us to the point of having a lot of iterations on the rom before it's perfect for mining. But there's a better way to do it!

Let me show you my results with the new technique so far and compare them to my previous ones hidden under SPOILER button above.

Pretty insane, right? I've managed to lower my power consumption and increase my hashrates even further! The trick was to use OverdriveNTool which did lock my desired voltages and core/memory clocks on the graphics cards. The best thing about it is that you don't have to reflash anything over and over - if you undervolt or underclock your card too much, it's just gonna crash. You get back into the OverdriveNTool and just increase voltages or decrease clocks. Easy as that!

Here's how you can do it yourself:

1) Read this guide to learn how to use OverdriveNTool. Skip to chapter 9 "Overclock/Undervolt". Also download the tool, do GPU profiles as instructed in the guide and make a .bat file to reset and reapply the clocks on the fly which is also instructed in the guide.

2) Have your card modded with better memory straps using PolarisBiosEditor v1.7.5 which offers newer and tighter straps than v1.6.7. Do it yourself or post your stock rom under the thread so I'll mod the straps for you. REMEMBER TO SAVE YOUR STOCK.ROM. If you are using Navi cards like RX 5600/5700 or newer ones, refer to their respective memory strap modding guides (Red Bios Editor on Igor's Lab).

3) Set your OverdriveNTool profiles and start with Core Voltage and Memory voltage of 800V to 900V, setup your desired clocks and start testing. You may want to have HWInfo64 to scan for any memory errors during mining. Have a google sheet open and type in all of your iterations so you'll be able to keep a track of hash/W ratio, which of the settings were the most stable and providing best value in terms of hash and power consumption.

Spoiler: Here's an example of my autistic iteration table

4) If one of your cards crashes, check which one was it, get back to OverdriveNTool, select profile of the crashed card, load it again and increase it's voltage or downclock it's memory clock, overwrite your old profile with the new values (save it) and see whether it stays stable. Do this until you are satisfied with the results. You may test cards for 30min-1h or longer to see if they produce rejected/incorrect shares or they crash. You'll find your own method you're gonna be comfortable with.

5) Congratulations, you're done! Should you have any questions, just feel free to shoot me with anything. I'm still offering troubleshooting help with unstable rigs or any problems related to it. Post me your before and after results!









If you're satisfied with the results or help given, I'm more than happy to accept any kinds of cryptodonations

ETH - 0xf4314b010b7a8dc7e8a1cf7229ff5b835759e04a
BTC - 34cioo432B2MpWN5oWx8V2164A3SEGHcaW
XMR - 42d3qkQdKpa7MTR1dkdtKx4N2nvjC5kLfP5DZZv5MT1nXSGehZJABcC3D9RtfKSCDVNckiWv5m3znfx3BeLq778iQ3Ay17H



For reference, I'll let these modded roms stay here. You may use all of these roms the old fashioned way (all of the modding done with PolarisBiosEditor) if you're lazy to clock the cards yourself with the OverdriveNTool. Again, remember to backup your stock roms.

 

[W1zzard]

We will allow this, because OP claims in private message that this is not a commercial offer and he's here to help the community.

Feel free to reach out to me personally if you feel this is not true and his support is tied to payment

 

[xkm1948]

Oh boy mining surely is booming again. Still not putting Mining in your GPU review @W1zzard? It can add to the value part of conclusion since the cards can pay itself haha

 

[rcruz]

Are you able to mod a Strix 580 and RX 5700 XT?

 

[Freshbrewed]

Shoot me with your RX 580 stock bios, or if it's modded I can try to get more juices off of it. Tell me current average hashrate and power consumption while mining. I'll fiddle around. I can't mod RX 5700 unfortunately.

 

[rcruz]

I don't think i get get more on the 580, I'm getting 30.72/mh/s. But I know that my 5700 i can get more as I'm getting only 50mh/s

 

[Freshbrewed]

I'd stick with your 30.7mh/s if it's stable. General rule of thumb is that never fix anything that's not broken But if you want, I can try raising the clocks on it if you don't care for the power consumption. Post me your RX 5700 stock rom also, I'll try to atleast put a better memory straps on it. I don't know the safe and sweetspot values of RX 5700 so I won't me modding voltage control nor clocks at the moment.

 

[Lucky007]

Good day . I'm very sorry to contact you, but I'm at the end of my mind. I have an XFX RX 580 8 GB card (samsung) and I am not able to get over 29 MH with a reasonable card consumption. Someone would be kind enough to help me with the bios. I've seen that there are cards where you drive over 31MH with reasonable consumption. Thank you very much for your help. Have a nice day. Luke.

 

[Freshbrewed]

Post your current rom, I'll take a look.

 

[Lucky007]

Good day. I have an XFX RX580 XXX 8GB and an MSI RX 480 Gaming X 8G both with SAMSUNG MEMORY. I am not able to fine tune the proper mining bios. I am sending original bios and thank you very much for your help! Have a nice day.Lukas

 

[Freshbrewed]

Check these out, I've put a bit aggressive clocks on the memory, we'll see if your samsung is able to push it.

 

[Lucky007]

very very thanks. I will try it !!!what kernel and memory frequency do you recommend ??? Now I have set the core to 1150, the memory to 2125 and the voltage to 850mV..Is it o.k ???

 

[Freshbrewed]

Don't set anything, I've taken care of core and memory clocks. Just let it run by the strenght of the rom. Tell me the results afterwards. If the power consumption is too high with 1200core, you can put it to 1150core. 850mV might be too low for such memory clocks, let it run with 950mV as set on the rom file and monitor for stability.

 

[Lucky007]

I have the first results..XFX bios is great so far, mining has risen from 26MHs to 31 !!! But bios for RX MSI 480 unfortunately does not work, mining has dropped from 26MHs to 18MHs..Could you please apply yet ??? Thank you

 

[Freshbrewed]

26Mh/s to 31Mh/s is quite good! What's the power consumption for your XFX card? Does it produce memory errors? (Use HWINFO64 program to check for memory errors)

As for the MSI RX480, I've attached new rom with lowered clocks, increased memory voltage and changed memory straps.

 

[Nonpossible]

For the first time in three years I'm really scratching my head over this newest rig I built. It's got 3 Sapphire Nitro RX 570s and 3 XFX RX 580s.
I get it to run for about 24 hours and then it crashes and I have to completely reinstall drivers. I'm not even doing any crazy overclocks or anything. I set -cclock to 1150 and mclock to 2000
-I disabled windows update and disabled dev mgr from auto-updating drivers.
-I run DDU twice every time I need to reinstall drivers
-Using the 17.3 blockchain drivers
-I look at the log file every time it crashes and I can't even find a good indicator or error on there to point me toward anything.
-I've checked and re-checked my power supply, cables etc.

It just appears to be fine and then shuts off. I just don't get it. I feel like it's prob ONE bad card that screwing up the whole system but can't seem to pinpoint.

 

[P4-630]

For the first time in three years I'm really scratching my head over this newest rig I built. It's got 3 Sapphire Nitro RX 570s and 3 XFX RX 580s.
I get it to run for about 24 hours and then it crashes and I have to completely reinstall drivers. I'm not even doing any crazy overclocks or anything. I set -cclock to 1150 and mclock to 2000
-I disabled windows update and disabled dev mgr from auto-updating drivers.
-I run DDU twice every time I need to reinstall drivers
-Using the 17.3 blockchain drivers
-I look at the log file every time it crashes and I can't even find a good indicator or error on there to point me toward anything.
-I've checked and re-checked my power supply, cables etc.

It just appears to be fine and then shuts off. I just don't get it. I feel like it's prob ONE bad card that screwing up the whole system but can't seem to pinpoint.

PSU?

 

[Nonpossible]

PSU?

Corsair RM850x Not using SATA connectors for the risers. I have two separate molex cables powering 4 risers (2ea.) and a 6(2)+6(2)pin cable powering the other two risers.

 

[Freshbrewed]

For the first time in three years I'm really scratching my head over this newest rig I built. It's got 3 Sapphire Nitro RX 570s and 3 XFX RX 580s.
I get it to run for about 24 hours and then it crashes and I have to completely reinstall drivers. I'm not even doing any crazy overclocks or anything. I set -cclock to 1150 and mclock to 2000
-I disabled windows update and disabled dev mgr from auto-updating drivers.
-I run DDU twice every time I need to reinstall drivers
-Using the 17.3 blockchain drivers
-I look at the log file every time it crashes and I can't even find a good indicator or error on there to point me toward anything.
-I've checked and re-checked my power supply, cables etc.

It just appears to be fine and then shuts off. I just don't get it. I feel like it's prob ONE bad card that screwing up the whole system but can't seem to pinpoint.

What does the log file say, really nothing useful? Why do you have to completely reinstall drivers, what gives? In my experience rig can crash if

• Albeit GPU's may seem not overclocked 'much', some just tend to be evil and crash the rig or even worse, hard freeze whole rig. It may help to pin point which of the GPUs is weak and hold it almost on stock clocks with just stable memory straps. I myself didn't pay attention to this fact until my recent rig which was experiencing random crashes and mostly those damn hard freezes. The culprit? 1 weak GPU!! I fixed it by flashing really mild overclock and more stable straps.
• Connections, cables, risers..same old story everywhere. Or even changing PCIe Riser connections on the motherboard to different ones, helps in many ocassions
• Overheating PSU or GPUs, cooling the system may help tremendously, even if we talk about 60C temperatures. Try to get as low as possible.
• Insufficient PSU power, wattages may be too low
• Windows Virtual Memory Size too low, try 12GB, 24GB, 32GB or 64GB
• On motherboard BIOS setup, switch between PCIe lane speed from Gen1 to Gen2 or from Gen2 to Gen1, depends on motherboard brands
• Sometimes rig can be stabilized by having 2x4GB RAMs instead of one stick. Also try running memtest to rule out defective rams.

 

[P4-630]

Corsair RM850x

Insufficient PSU power, wattages may be too low

I think that's the issue.

 

[Freshbrewed]

Corsair RM850x Not using SATA connectors for the risers. I have two separate molex cables powering 4 risers (2ea.) and a 6(2)+6(2)pin cable powering the other two risers.

Should be enough if your cards aren't pulling more than 150W per card. Your whole mobo/HDD/ram/CPU combo should pull max 150W so there's even some headroom. Of course, you may try daisy chaining another PSU and rule out the fact that your PSU is capable of running all those cards alone. Or trying bigger one if you happen to have one.

 

[Nonpossible]

What does the log file say, really nothing useful? Why do you have to completely reinstall drivers, what gives? In my experience rig can crash if

• Albeit GPU's may seem not overclocked 'much', some just tend to be evil and crash the rig or even worse, hard freeze whole rig. It may help to pin point which of the GPUs is weak and hold it almost on stock clocks with just stable memory straps. I myself didn't pay attention to this fact until my recent rig which was experiencing random crashes and mostly those damn hard freezes. The culprit? 1 weak GPU!! I fixed it by flashing really mild overclock and more stable straps.
• Connections, cables, risers..same old story everywhere. Or even changing PCIe Riser connections on the motherboard to different ones, helps in many ocassions
• Overheating PSU or GPUs, cooling the system may help tremendously, even if we talk about 60C temperatures. Try to get as low as possible.
• Insufficient PSU power, wattages may be too low
• Windows Virtual Memory Size too low, try 12GB, 24GB, 32GB or 64GB
• On motherboard BIOS setup, switch between PCIe lane speed from Gen1 to Gen2 or from Gen2 to Gen1, depends on motherboard brands
• Sometimes rig can be stabilized by having 2x4GB RAMs instead of one stick. Also try running memtest to rule out defective rams.

Nothing useful in the log file. Temps are all normal, I have target temp set to 72 in claymore. For some reason setting -fanmin in claymore causes instability.

I don't know why it makes me reinstall drivers. Like I said, I have 3 other RX 580 rigs and I've never had this problem. Basically after it crashes, Windows reboots and then claymore doesn't see the RX 570s anymore. When I look, it says drivers are on some beta version instead of 17.3. So I run DDU twice, reinstall 17.3, apply the pixel patch and everything starts back up in claymore just fine. I even tried really low memory clock speeds, like 1750 and the problem repeats almost exactly every 24 hours. I checked Windows power settings to make sure it's not messing with anything too.

I don't see why this PSU would be insufficient. I've run 4 RX580s on a 550W PSU in the past with no issue. I own 4 of these Corsair RM850x's and this is the only system I have a problem on. In fact, one rig has 5 RX 580s and a 2070 Super and even with the 2070S at 160W it all runs fine. I am pretty close to just adding my EVGA Supernova on this rig just to rule out the PSU being the issue. I just don't want to dedicate a whole 1800W worth of PSUs on a single rig.

I just upped the Windows Virtual memory from 32Gb to 64Gb last night. SO FAR it's still running fine, but I am nearing the time when it normally crashes, so we'll see.

I do think my BIOS was set to Gen 3. Should I have started on Gen 1?

All my rigs have 2x4Gb RAM and I ran the memory test in HWINFO64 and so far there are no errors.

 

[Freshbrewed]

For now try switching to Gen1 and if it doesn't help, then Gen2. If it won't work we'll think of something else. PSU should be enough. Try running memtest on an USB stick so you're sure your ram is fine, HWINFO won't help with that.

 

[Nonpossible]

For now try switching to Gen1 and if it doesn't help, then Gen2. If it won't work we'll think of something else. PSU should be enough. Try running memtest on an USB stick so you're sure your ram is fine, HWINFO won't help with that.

Roger. I'll give a go when I get home. I've been doing all this troubleshooting remotely the last few days.


I appreciate everyone's input. Thank you

 

[rcruz]

I'd stick with your 30.7mh/s if it's stable. General rule of thumb is that never fix anything that's not broken But if you want, I can try raising the clocks on it if you don't care for the power consumption. Post me your RX 5700 stock rom also, I'll try to atleast put a better memory straps on it. I don't know the safe and sweetspot values of RX 5700 so I won't me modding voltage control nor clocks at the moment.

Here is the stock BIOS of my 5700 xt strix.

https://we.tl/t-Uh1lCCIH3Tw

What do you think?