RADEON VII no video output and no Clock

[AquaAngel]

Good day there, hope you guys are well?
I just got a Radeon VII from Ebay knowing that it was defecting. Sadly enough, the seller also bought it used before selling it. so i have no history about the card, but i would love to revive it if it is possible.

I took the card apart last night and there was some corrosion on the support bracket and the heat shield.

I have checked the coils and the power and i get about .8 volt on all coils except 2 that gives me a reading of 1.1 volt "the 2 at the bottom right, on the Plug side of it, not the bracket", but i doubt that would trigger a 0 Clock freq on GPU/memory/boost

i was able to reflash the Vbios as before, i had no UEFI enabled, temp was at 550deg C, no fan rpm. After flashing it? i was able to get the UEFI, rpm is now working and so as the Core temperature. all 3 fans are working.

Even after all of this? i still have no frequencies to the GPU, Vram and Boost.

I have tried different video cables and different port and of course, no signal output

Is there by any chance a way to bring that card back to life?

here is some pics.
Thank you all for your help

 

[Dr. Dro]

This sounds like a card that was used to the brink of death on a mining rig. It's quite unlikely it'll ever work correctly again. The ASIC is very sensitive due to the HBM and interposer, and it cannot take a lifetime of mining-level thermal/electrical abuse, nor any physical shock at all. I noticed that you're only getting a x1 PCIe link too, what's with that? Does the card have any damage on the PCB?

Anyway, this is the VBIOS I used on the one I had back in the day, it is the updated one that supports UEFI (for some reason, AMD shipped the VII without UEFI support by default, insane):

AMD Radeon VII VBIOS

16 GB HBM2, 808 MHz GPU, 1000 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

I miss the VII. It was a great card and I regret selling the one I had. I got an excellent price on it, which allowed me to buy the RTX 3090 I had before my current card... but the VII's always going to be my baby and one of my all time favorite GPUs.

 

[AquaAngel]

This sounds like a card that was used to the brink of death on a mining rig. It's quite unlikely it'll ever work correctly again. The ASIC is very sensitive due to the HBM and interposer, and it cannot take a lifetime of mining-level thermal/electrical abuse, nor any physical shock at all. I noticed that you're only getting a x1 PCIe link too, what's with that? Does the card have any damage on the PCB?

Anyway, this is the VBIOS I used on the one I had back in the day, it is the updated one that supports UEFI (for some reason, AMD shipped the VII without UEFI support by default, insane):

AMD Radeon VII VBIOS

16 GB HBM2, 808 MHz GPU, 1000 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

I miss the VII. It was a great card and I regret selling the one I had. I got an excellent price on it, which allowed me to buy the RTX 3090 I had before my current card... but the VII's always going to be my baby and one of my all time favorite GPUs.

That X1 PCIE is my PCIE riser card. since my pc won't boot with the GPU on the actual 16X slot, i have a riser card "adapter" that will allow me to use and test the card outside the motherboard while i can still use my original GPU "Geforce". even with the riser card, i still can flash the gpu and all. pretty neet little thing.

And that AMD link you posted? that is the one i flashed the card with. that is the on that gave me more info and somewhat brought back to life the GPU temp, uefi and fan rpm

 

[Dr. Dro]

I see, that makes sense. If the PC won't boot at all with the GPU on the slot, that's bad news. Anyway, I remembered that Igor has a great article on how the VII's power distribution works and I might have caught something that could be relevant. The voltages you measured at the coils seem to check out for the 0.8 part, but that 1.1 might be a problem. The coils that are closer to the PCIe power connectors and the AMD logo (marked in the picture) are supposed to be outputting 1.8 V. With some luck, it's the VRM that went bad and the GPU core + HBM stacks are fine. The VRM controller IC can be replaced and any damaged components as well... but the GPU core + memory is very fragile and completely unserviceable.

Hot iron in the test: AMD Radeon VII - with a lot of start and wind at eye level to the Geforce RTX 2080 | Page 3 | igor´sLAB

Monopoly is hollow. Such a one-sided skew ness in the graphics card market has never brought any real benefits and currently the enthusiasts among the players in particular are suffering from quite…

www.igorslab.de

 

[AquaAngel]

I see, that makes sense. If the PC won't boot at all with the GPU on the slot, that's bad news. Anyway, I remembered that Igor has a great article on how the VII's power distribution works and I might have caught something that could be relevant. The voltages you measured at the coils seem to check out for the 0.8 part, but that 1.1 might be a problem. The coils that are closer to the PCIe power connectors and the AMD logo (marked in the picture) are supposed to be outputting 1.8 V. With some luck, it's the VRM that went bad and the GPU core + HBM stacks are fine. The VRM controller IC can be replaced and any damaged components as well... but the GPU core + memory is very fragile and completely unserviceable.

View attachment 336076

Hot iron in the test: AMD Radeon VII - with a lot of start and wind at eye level to the Geforce RTX 2080 | Page 3 | igor´sLAB

Monopoly is hollow. Such a one-sided skew ness in the graphics card market has never brought any real benefits and currently the enthusiasts among the players in particular are suffering from quite…

www.igorslab.de

WOW, pretty detailed. very appreciated, thank you. Also forgot to mentioned that the GPU when powered on is emitting heat and so as the coils as i have watched some videos on youtube "not specific to this card model" so power is going in the card as most of them get the power. I will however take the card apart and do more testing. Like i said in my previous post. the rpm, temp and uefi are back on and used my hot air gun to heat up the card and glad to see that the temp was rising slowly. Correct me if i am wrong could the core be fine? i did put thermal paste on the die as whatever pads they use "factory" fell apart. =)

 

[Dr. Dro]

WOW, pretty detailed. very appreciated, thank you. Also forgot to mentioned that the GPU when powered on is emitting heat and so as the coils as i have watched some videos on youtube "not specific to this card model" so power is going in the card as most of them get the power. I will however take the card apart and do more testing. Like i said in my previous post. the rpm, temp and uefi are back on and used my hot air gun to heat up the card and glad to see that the temp was rising slowly. Correct me if i am wrong could the core be fine? i did put thermal paste on the die as whatever pads they use "factory" fell apart. =)

Hard to say. Core getting power is a good thing, but the Radeon VII (and other RX Vega/R9 Fury cards) are more difficult to ascertain because of the interposer and HBM. Any of that is bad, the entire core is done. That's why AMD stopped manufacturing HBM GPUs outside of the data center market, the yield is poor because they only work in a complete package, and there is no way to test individual components before assembly. Any of it is bad, and everything is lost.

 

[AquaAngel]

Hard to say. Core getting power is a good thing, but the Radeon VII (and other RX Vega/R9 Fury cards) are more difficult to ascertain because of the interposer and HBM. Any of that is bad, the entire core is done. That's why AMD stopped manufacturing HBM GPUs outside of the data center market, the yield is poor because they only work in a complete package, and there is no way to test individual components before assembly. Any of it is bad, and everything is lost.

it's to bad, they are great looking GPU, it is a good thing i didn't pay a lot of money for it. it will look great on my shelve with my GPU collection, but still gonna try to fix it up. project will be on a back burner until i get time to fix it up unless i am lucky to find a Core replacement for it.

If anyone needs this information about this card. just bumped into this by luck.

Radeon VII voltage and all
Radeon VII diagnostic/testing

 

[Outhawk]

me and a lot of other people got thet problem too. I saw in a mining forum a woman just flashed the bios a bit and it been working fine again.