Author Topic: AMD Radeon R9 Nano  (Read 8063 times)

tle

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AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« on: June 02, 2020, 11:17:06 pm »
I've just replaced my AMD Radeon Vega 64 with the old AMD Radeon R9 Nano. I was considering the Pro WX 7100 card but decided not to go with that because of $.

The R9 Nano is much smaller in form factor and thus produces less heat. R9 Nano does not support H265 decoding. For now I could live with that as long as I could watch YouTube and play 3D open sourced games.

The card is fully compatible with amdgpu driver if the kernel is compiled with 4k pages (CONFIG_PPC_4K_PAGES=y in KConfig). However it is known to have issue with kernel which has 64K pages (CONFIG_PPC_64K_PAGES=y in KConfig), from my finding the 5.6.x, 5.10.x (from 5.10.7), 5.11.x (from 5.11.12) are the only two that have no issue with 64K page size.

Because Fedora Linux ships with 64K page size kernels. It has become common issue that the community is proposing to Fedora team to prepare 4K page size kernel for Fedora 35

I have to disable the onboard VGA and remove the AST GPU Xorg config snippet and let the Linux driver auto-detect my screen settings.

As you could see in the photo, the 8X PCI-E NVMe adapter card is so close to the GPU fan, I don't think it is ideal for heat dissipation. 

EDIT: 5.19.4 with 64k or 4k pagesize works fine

UPDATE: 6.0.6 with 64k or 4k pagesize works perfectly
« Last Edit: November 02, 2022, 10:16:17 pm by tle »
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tle

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2020, 12:26:07 am »
I also tested to see if Fiji firmware could be loaded correctly under Petitboot. The good news is it works when the Petitboot kicks in. However I did not get any video output in the earlier stage. Wondering if anyone could point me to where I could find more details on that issue?
« Last Edit: June 03, 2020, 12:28:41 am by tle »
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q66

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2020, 12:29:55 pm »
any reason to have your CPU fan blow hot air straight down into the GPU?

ClassicHasClass

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #3 on: June 03, 2020, 06:03:34 pm »
Masochism?  :D

tle

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #4 on: June 10, 2020, 08:53:08 am »
any reason to have your CPU fan blow hot air straight down into the GPU?

Thanks for pointing that out. I am still learning how to change the fan direction.
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MPC7500

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #5 on: June 10, 2020, 09:11:50 am »
Remove the black housing. There is only one screw. Flip the fan, mounting the black housing back.

tle

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #6 on: June 10, 2020, 10:27:38 pm »
Remove the black housing. There is only one screw. Flip the fan, mounting the black housing back.

Yes, I have done that. However I am still not happy with the outcome. Now all the hot air from the GPU gets suck into the CPU fan.
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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #7 on: June 11, 2020, 01:56:59 pm »
doesn't really matter, it's still better than blowing hot air down only to have it instantly rise up and linger

tle

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #8 on: June 12, 2020, 01:53:16 am »
doesn't really matter, it's still better than blowing hot air down only to have it instantly rise up and linger

Yes, it is.

I am going to live with that setup for now. My plan is to find someone locally who could do laser cutting service so I could design some sort of compatible adaptor to mount water cooler heatsink.
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surf

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #9 on: June 12, 2020, 11:26:45 am »
My plan is to find someone locally who could do laser cutting service so I could design some sort of compatible adaptor to mount water cooler heatsink.

There is a thread about water cooling:

https://forums.raptorcs.com/index.php/topic,110.0.html

The heatsinks sold by Raptor have IBM part numbers.  I wonder if they can get the water cooling blocks from IBM also.

helen

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #10 on: June 13, 2020, 12:16:16 pm »
...

The heatsinks sold by Raptor have IBM part numbers.  I wonder if they can get the water cooling blocks from IBM also.

That would be great, I want one too  :)

While it`s probably not too difficult to make a custom adapter for an off the shelves block. I fear it won't provide the proper pressure to ensure reliable contact on all the cpu pins over time.

Btw: My first post here, hello all! Great forum  :)
« Last Edit: June 13, 2020, 12:48:30 pm by helen »

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Re: AMD Radeon R9 Nano
« Reply #11 on: June 13, 2020, 01:01:58 pm »
Welcome, helen.