Vega 64 blower edition heatsink/vapor chamber splitting apart, any fixes?

[Suspenders]

Hello everyone, long time listener, first time caller here I was given an RX Vega 64 blower edition recently that was overheating constantly but would otherwise work fine if severely clocked down (as in, I can run it fine at -%50 power settings). I decided to take it apart to clean it out and do a re-paste job on the GPU die, but taking it apart I've found that the heatsink has separated from the copper vapor chamber! It looks like part of the vapor chamber has bubbled out and pushed up on the aluminum heatsink fins making a really poor contact (and therefore hurting the cards ability to cool down).

Has anyone here seen this issue before? Any tips on how you fixed it, or where I could source a replacement heatsink/vapor chamber assembly? The Vega's don't seem to have that much aftermarket cooler support, at least not anything that doesn't cost more than the entire card is worth at this point.

 

[3x0]

Wow, can't say that I saw something like this. I'd check ebay or your local used market sites for anyone selling a stock Vega cooler. There's probably plenty of broken Vega cards that are sold for parts only.

 

[AsRock]

Wow, can't say that I saw something like this. I'd check ebay or your local used market sites for anyone selling a stock Vega cooler. There's probably plenty of broken Vega cards that are sold for parts only.

For sure, although i would complain to AMD too just to see in or out of warranty and there is always social media too.

 

[eidairaman1]

I think there is Rajintek, Arctic Accelero, Gelid Icyvision, and ofc aio cooling you can get to toss the Stock blower away.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I think there is Rajintek, Arctic Accelero, Gelid Icyvision, and ofc aio cooling you can get to toss the Stock blower away.

I removed the crud cooler from my PNY GTX 1080 and replaced it with a Raijintek and am very happy with the result. However consider that it will be a 4-slot card afterwards and you still need to supply 2 fans (I used a pair of Arctic low-profile ones).

 

[VuurVOS]

Can't you use small cable ties on the corners? If yes even after some modding to keep the cable ties on place. Put some thermal paste between the heatspreader and the vapor camber to fill the gap. Make sure the cable ties are tighted enough.

 

[Dr. Dro]

View attachment 295829
Can't you use small cable ties on the corners? If yes even after some modding to keep the cable ties on place. Put some thermal paste between the heatspreader and the vapor camber to fill the gap. Make sure there is cable ties are tighted enough.

It's not going to work, there wouldn't be enough thermal transfer in there. Not even if it was soldered back together. The only fix is replacing the heatsink assembly entirely, by pulling one from a dead card or by purchasing an aftermarket cooling kit. Personally, I don't think 6 year old RX Vega GPUs are worth a big investment at this point, so I'd try to find a (very cheap and beat up) dead card, take the heatsink assembly from it, and reassemble the card with the shroud OP already has. It'd be good as new.

 

[VuurVOS]

It's not going to work

It depends on the surface contact between the vapor camber and the heatsink. If there are no mayor gaps, I think it will work with thermal paste but the fin stack must stay in place.

Not even if it was soldered back together.

The liquid in vapor chamber will expand too much and chamber will be misformed. Watch the first 3 minutes of this video since some already try that:

@Suspenders
You also try to use thermal adhesive tape, but the thermal conductivity is (far) less than thermal paste like Arctic Cooling MX-4
Like the others already said, proper repairing the heatsink is nearly impossible. Replacing the card or cooler is a beter solution

 

[maxfly]

Holy crap. I've never seen anything like that... it's giving birth!
Seriously tho, If you can find an aftermarket heatsink for it. That thing will last forever, if it hasn't already been damaged from overheating.

 

[pavle]

A very high quality made cooler by Adios My Dineros, no doubt. Looks like they've put either too much liquid in there or more likely too thin copper to hold it. Vapor does have its pressure and the more the too thin copper started to warp, the less cooling the vapor got and more pressure it produced. You could drill a hole, let small amount of liquid out, straighten the copper plate and solder it with high temp. solder (brass), but less work is buying an after-market cooler mentioned above.

Can't you use small cable ties on the corners? If yes even after some modding to keep the cable ties on place. Put some thermal paste between the heatspreader and the vapor camber to fill the gap. Make sure there is cable ties are tighted enough.

Thermal paste is an insulator, at least at the huge amount you'd have to put on it, so no go. High temp solder would work, but it's better to make the copper part straight again and perhaps lower the pressure in it a bit.

 

[VuurVOS]

Thermal paste is an insulator, at least at the huge amount you'd have to put on it, so no go. High temp solder would work, but it's better to make the copper part straight again and perhaps lower the pressure in it a bit.

Thermal paste is a conductor since it improves the conductivity. If it is an insulator, it would conduct the heat less than it already did!

 

[maxfly]

Thermal paste is a conductor since it improves the conductivity. If it is an insulator, it would conduct the heat less than it already did!

Pavle is right. When applied, (as it would be in this case) far to thick it can in fact act as an inadvertent insulator, due to the fact that its trapping large amounts of air. The air is the insulation. When it's being applied properly, between two flat surfaces. With as thin a layer as possible, there is little to no air.
I forget who did the work but it was shown long ago that excess paste acts as an insulator around the edges of the IHS (where excess paste is naturally pushed to)for the same reason.

 

[Suspenders]

Thanks all, appreciate the responses. Some updates for everyone: I sent messages to both AMD and Sapphire (since Sapphire seems like the biggest AIB partner for AMD) about this, and both told me that they unfortunately don't keep spare parts for cards this old. No extra heat-sinks laying around sadly. The Sapphire guys also told me that the stock Vega heatsink/vapor chambers were basically custom made for that series of GPUs and aren't interchangeable with any of their other cards, limiting me to salvage Vega's only for swapping a heatsink assembly.

Repairing my damaged one seems dicey, although I might try the suggestion of using gobs of thermal paste. Funny enough, even at running at -50% power the Vega is still outperforming my old RX 570 which the Vega was meant to replace, haha.

I looked into aftermarket coolers, but the only one that explicitly lists support for Vega is the Raijintek Morpheus which is fairly pricey unfortunately. Mostly uneconomical unless I can find it for a very good price. Also seems like hardly anyone even makes aftermarket GPU coolers anymore? They used to be a lot more popular.

A stock heatsink from a salvage Vega seems the best option, so I'll keep the ol' eyes peeled for one. Ebay shows dead Vegas going for almost $100 though? Why the hell are dead ones so expensive? lol

 

[VuurVOS]

Pavle is right. When applied, (as it would be in this case) far to thick it can in fact act as an inadvertent insulator, due to the fact that its trapping large amounts of air. The air is the insulation. When it's being applied properly, between two flat surfaces. With as thin a layer as possible, there is little to no air.
I forget who did the work but it was shown long ago that excess paste acts as an insulator around the edges of the IHS (where excess paste is naturally pushed to)for the same reason.

You are assuming what Pavle ment. Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.
Regardless the amount of thermal paste, it doesn't change the property of conducting heat (W/mK)!

When wrongly applied like you mentioned before with a tick layer of thermal paste and some air bubbels, it will perform worse than a tight fit without some air inbetween.
if you read my previous posts, you will see I mentioned to keep it tight a possible and no major gaps between the vapor chamber and fin stack.

A stock heatsink from a salvage Vega seems the best option, so I'll keep the ol' eyes peeled for one. Ebay shows dead Vegas going for almost $100 though? Why the hell are dead ones so expensive? lol

You may also encounter a card which had the same issue before it died. Maybe it is beter to sell it and mentioning the issue with the cooler?

 

[eidairaman1]

Pavle is right. When applied, (as it would be in this case) far to thick it can in fact act as an inadvertent insulator, due to the fact that its trapping large amounts of air. The air is the insulation. When it's being applied properly, between two flat surfaces. With as thin a layer as possible, there is little to no air.
I forget who did the work but it was shown long ago that excess paste acts as an insulator around the edges of the IHS (where excess paste is naturally pushed to)for the same reason.

Ive started to press and twist the hsf to reduce any potential airpockets

 

[Suspenders]

An update for you guys.

I got lucky and managed to find a friendly fellow locally with a Vega 64 heatsink he was willing to sell me ($20 total). I installed it onto my Vega 64 with some of that Honeywell PTM-7950 phase changing thermal paste/pad over the GPU and HBM (a real PITA to work with btw), and everything is running well again! All running smoothly, and no signs of severe thermal throttling or the driver whining about overheating

If you are in the market for a reference blower Vega, I'd pay particularly close attention to the heatsink and if there is any warpage present in it. Shine a flashlight through the back and take a good look, warpage will probably be visible if the problem was as bad as mine was even when you don't disassemble the card completely. The Vega 64 is surprisingly simple to disassemble actually, you don't even need to worry about thermal pads or anything if you are just removing the heatsink assembly, but finding parts is a problem. There are no new stock heatsink assemblies out there from my searches. I would stick to an aftermarket AIB card, as those don't suffer any heatsink warpage problems as far as I can tell.

 

[delshay]

Hello everyone, long time listener, first time caller here I was given an RX Vega 64 blower edition recently that was overheating constantly but would otherwise work fine if severely clocked down (as in, I can run it fine at -%50 power settings). I decided to take it apart to clean it out and do a re-paste job on the GPU die, but taking it apart I've found that the heatsink has separated from the copper vapor chamber! It looks like part of the vapor chamber has bubbled out and pushed up on the aluminum heatsink fins making a really poor contact (and therefore hurting the cards ability to cool down).

Has anyone here seen this issue before? Any tips on how you fixed it, or where I could source a replacement heatsink/vapor chamber assembly? The Vega's don't seem to have that much aftermarket cooler support, at least not anything that doesn't cost more than the entire card is worth at this point.

Glad you got it sorted by replacement.

The second picture in first post with bubble looks like someone has placed the cooler in an oven. When you place a vapor chamber in an oven & you heat it up to over 150c it will show a big bulge.

The first photo still in the first post, I'v seen the before on a Radeon VII, ie factory defect poor soldering. Again if you overheat it, it will bulge on both sides of the vapor chamber leading to that gap.

In any case I don't think it's possible for a GPU die to cause a big bulge, I think it's done by some external heat source.