AMD’s $25,000 GPU: Instinct MI210 Tear-Down ft. Level1Techs

Sponsor: Fractal Pop Air RGB Case on Amazon
Wendell from Level1Techs brought an AMD Instinct MI210 video card to our office to tear-down! Our understanding via Wendell is that this is an AMD MI210 GPU (meaning that the shroud lists the MI200 series, maybe because it’s an older shroud, but the GPU core itself is the MI210 — so the silicon would be the MI210, according to Wendell). He’ll also be taking it back to his own studio to perform advanced testing on it, but while it’s here, we get to look at the assembly, cooling solution, and PCB layout of this unique card. We filmed this before the Radeon 7900 XTX & 7900 XT announcements, so we weren’t sure if the MI210 would have chiplets or not. You’ll get to find out with us in the tear-down!

Wendell noted that the ‘street price’ for these cards is about $25K. Neither of us is keeping it – it’s on loan for benchmarking at Level1Techs.

Subscribe to Level1Techs: (you can also find his benchmarks here!)
Find Wendell’s tour of our office on his channel:
Watch our other video with Wendell, featuring a server tear-down (the one that had these cards):

The server chassis this came in can be found here:

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Wendell’s AMD Instinct MI210 GPU
01:35 – Screws Come Out
03:15 – PCB Manufacturing Marks
05:31 – HUGE Springs
06:33 – Opening the Shroud
08:35 – Revealing the GPU & HBM
09:26 – Wendell Covers the Specs
13:45 – Conclusion

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Hosts: Steve Burke, Wendell of Level1Techs
Camera, Editing: Andrew Coleman
Video Editing: Mike Gaglione


You should water cool it Water cool the whole thing yeah I'm gonna boil off a pond outside the Office So he looks just Central Park right There yeah the Bronx it's worth Rossman's shop is right there Hey everyone so we're back this time With a tear down of an AMD Instinct Mi 210 and we just did a tear down sort of A really high-end super cool server Wendell from level one Texas joining me And we are going to take this card apart And can you explain to me why this Particular card is so interesting it's Probably uh Is it one of them it's probably one of The most expensive cards but it is cdna So you know the great great grandchild Of Vega right but it turns out that it's Really good for computing and everything Else and the Instinct mi-200 family is The one where amd's really embraced Chiplets so they've gone completely Absolutely bananas with chiplets at the Higher end instincts I can't remember if The mi2 this is mi210 I think this one's Triplet base but we're gonna find out a Minute before that this video is brought To you by fractal and the pop air cases The fraxel pop did well in our recent Review performing admirably thermally While also offering unique color Variations for the chassis body the

Fractal pop air is a relatively compact Mid Tower while still offering ease of Installation features and it even has Optional five and a quarter inch mounts For those who still use front panel Hardware like Optical drives learn more At the link in the description below This I feel relatively confident and the Server however I was worried about we're Going to start with just the ones that I Can tell are securing the cooler so These to me are clearly for the cooler Assembly I'm going to track them on the Mod mat we actually have these the mod Mats are arriving now and shipping out Way ahead of schedule so you go backward On one or you want to place one soon It'll ship this week But let's start with these now I'm going To track these screws very specifically Because Wendell has informed me that There may be varying lengths I think one Is different It looks like out of these there is These are different yeah these These are That one's shorter and that one's Shorter let's I'm at this point I'm Actually just going to loosen everything About half a turn And then we've got our ESD grounding Plugged in as well this time because Oh boy those are expensive yes this is Where you really don't want to take Chances like chance of electrostatic

Event uh greater than zero yes Cloudy With a Chance of corrupt floating point 64 results Excellent weather man All right so the back plate is coming Off first some of these are going Through I feel going through the PCB not Threaded into it of course uh and into The cooler and Wendell once we get down To the actual card I want you to tell me What's going on it might be covered it Might be bare I don't know All right Okay it should be the back plate off There you go simple enough And no thermal connection no thermal Pads however this is one that's been Force-fed air yeah so I would also like Normally the way the pcbs are Manufactured you probably notice this But sometimes you can see a little bit Of a water stain especially around Larger components it's literally because They go through a dishwasher like device They're washed but look how clean this PCB is that's a sign that this thing Costs a lot of money Sometimes you see grease leaching too Where it'll actually like leak out of The pads and stuff a little bit right There of something but off thank you Yeah Look at this Look at all those capacitors it's

Capacitor City there's a lot of Filtering That's uh I can see Central Park in the Middle oh wait no that's Most of the like the people that are Doing machine learning and stuff are Just like yeah does it run my stuff Faster great it's just like aren't you Excited about this yeah if it runs my Stuff faster but I don't care about Anything else yeah top side I want to Get this screw out of here that's Holding The The Shroud together there's another one On the bottom holy That one's different there's a radiator Screw Technically it's a radiator I guess All right well I don't think we're gonna Have trouble figuring out where that Goes it's nice to have the security Blanket of uh ESD grounding for Something like this yeah and the mod mat To track the screws because good Lord It's a good amount of screws Do you want to make the first attempt Oh it doesn't even want to wiggle Like Pro tip just wiggle it yeah it will Help break the bond from the paste you Get that like suction have you ever seen A I have never seen like a leaf spring That size yeah which I guess is what

That is uh and this this footprint also Suggests how enormous this GPU is going To be right Yeah this is uh The the Mlcc's on the back is actually insane uh First rossman's shop is right there Yo wait wait what's that what's that oh He's screaming at Apple Those are huge do you see those Springs Yeah yeah There's a preview of what we're getting To this is why I'm being a little Careful it's like let's make sure those Aren't still secure then they might be To that I'm not sure oh yeah the Springs Come to this so you might have to remove Them we are gonna have to take the Shroud off yeah Maybe the Shroud Just Clips on I think this might come out see that oh Yeah you're right it definitely does That might clip here too I see an accessible screw right there oh That's sneaky That's very Stealthy I think it's intentional though yeah Yeah now it'll then we can take the four Screws out and it'll be good Can you go through the hole Oh right here hey that's cool Access channel that one actually was not In all the way they grab that thank you

Yes okay now it makes more sense that Wasn't too bad But also you get an idea for it's like That looks like basically a server Heatsink that's CR yeah I mean it might Literally be right uh if they're able to To reuse it and then just retool the Mount yeah oh we might not have even had To take this this off well I mean this Will be nice to get a look at it but Yeah look at the power so much power and Then this is a heat sink like how crazy Is it that the CPU doesn't get vrm Heatsinks yeah but the GPU does yeah and This is all like we were saying before This is all force fed power or of air so That's why you have such a it's crazy Right you think about a 3090 TI yeah Where yes it's got three fans mounted to It but The heatsink is like a slot and a half Taller And it's it's longer than this too and It's taller this Dimension yep so air is A powerful thing Very loud too another video you were Talking about how this you would need Like hearing protection to operate in Here so yes we have uh this is over the Fats there's inductors down there this Is probably over more fats I'm assuming And maybe some at the front here too is This hbm it may be it's all right it's Yeah it's going to be the memory and

Everything's all in one package okay so Yeah yeah should we take this off yeah Okay that's what I figured that that Would reveal the chiplets that is Torx Which like oh like a post buzzer it Might be well it could also be a Humidity sensor that would be Interesting that is interesting That'll work Do you want to do it or you want me to Do it yeah if anyone in the audience You're ever working on like components Of this price With Sprint tension this High you should Uh just just take the extra time and Walk them all back I'm guessing it is We're free Moment of Truth Gamer's Nexus exclusive I think we could pull the whole thing Off if we want We won't there you go Nice hey oh fancy okay yeah this is the Uh Hitachi I forget I think it's called The hmo1 that pad So these pads we did a whole thing on Them they're fairly thick Um They are familiar in some ways like the Graphite contact pads that one's made by Hitachi uh AMD uses it for the Radeon 7 Also Those these they use these because Um although the throne performance is

Good it's not as good as paste but they Had pressure issues we're getting even Pressure distribution across the die so As for you want to talk me through what You're seeing on the GPU so it looks Like we've got our four hbm memory chips And then a single Giant Die for our actual GPU humongous and the Larger version of this is a multiple of Those on one card so the for the word Density well they did two yeah they Would do two wow and that's going to Produce more heat and blah blah but for Our maximum density per watt you know The bathtub curve this needs to be on The side of efficiency and not power Right so that makes sense why this would Be that then that's why it's you know The 210 as opposed to like the 240 251 Right and so there's four uh hbm modules I guess yep Is this I guess it must be hbm2 or Something I guess chpme or something Also yeah I think we look it up real Quick so I don't screw it up if you want It's like I don't remember What we're looking at is absolutely Insane 64 gigabytes of hbm2e We've got it's a 496-bit Memory bus 104 Compute units across uh oh 6656 stream Units across 104 uh compute units so That's like 181 teraflops of floating Point 16. so you figure we got six of These in the chassis that's over a

Petaflop in two U's of floating Point 16. yeah that's it's it's crazy and we Were looking at this too Where it sounds like you you think this Is just used to kind of hold it in place Because it's massive yeah for for wave Soldering sometimes you see this kind of Thing because with wave soldering you Need it to not move around and these These components will self-center when The solder reflows but this is a little Different yeah and did you notice this Uh just rubber yeah damper Normally we would say that's for Vibration but in this case I think it's Just for leveling out the amount Yeah as it comes down under torque may Be also useful for assembly because this Is probably a two-step assembly process One group probably affixes this to the PCB and then somebody else populates all The other components right which also This glue preventing this from moving Around probably also helps with that Yeah because it'll be reflowed a second Time yeah it looks I mean it's they Reused a lot of components but there's You know three components here and then Two on the ends that are a little Different you know multiple sets here And the cooling in the front was The Boba fetts Maybe how about the back it has Bridges Here yeah

No idea Yeah so you're right on this it's You could take it out we're not going to But I guess you would need to unscrew These and they're probably yep oh no you Just push out but we'll leave it in Anyway yeah it's not not glued which is Nice yeah and then these are the this is The infinity fabric link there's a 3X Infinity fabric so you can cross connect Your gpus what about unveiling So just for the actual package size Counting all this metal which by the way This alone is like An intense amount of reinforcement or Whatever uh Package size is 64.8 565 by about 50. That's enormous approximately maybe 25 Or so on that dimension Most people don't even have 64 gigabytes In of memory in their computer By 30. yeah and we each this this super Micro system has 64 gigabytes times six Just for the gpus that's it's crazy and It's high speed or high bandwidth yeah 1.6 gigabytes per second gigabytes Terabytes per second don't insult it Like that 1.6 terabytes per second That's crazy You should water cooler Water cool the whole thing yeah I'm going to boil off a pond outside the Office

It's like what are you doing I'm just Trying to build the next stable Diffusion don't mind me If it's some kind of capture and return System and have free energy Cool I don't have anything else to add Here I feel like everything I had to add Was mechanical is this is this a beep I'm pretty sure this this is either a Beeper or like a humidity or a Environmental sensor it could be Humidity if you look up the component But I've never seen a GPU with a beeper Although maybe that would be useful in Diagnostics because sometimes In a Server Chassis because it doesn't Have a fan it needs to let you know hey I'm overheating Yeah especially if um if it's in a noisy Environment with a bunch of other blades Or whatever running I would imagine Putting a a louder Audio audio signal on it would be useful Yeah It is it is nice also to know that you Know Radeon 7 lives on sort of kinda Sort of yeah In a useful way well yeah that's yeah That's uh a sad statement for Radeon Seven but at least the engineering was Is being put to use And yeah the supercomputer people are Very happy with this uh compute Architecture from what I understand

Here's the by the way the rest of it so There's not much talk about here but Some fins for just heat dissipation Across the right half of the board from Our perspective larger fins as we talked About for brm components and on the back Side there are some one millimeter uh Thermal pads that just sit on all the Mosfets basically really simple stuff Cool anything else you want to add on This one no it's it's mind-blowing Because oh my gosh and I can't wait for You know consumer cards to have this Level of engineering but uh I feel like That is going to be quite a while yeah Yeah years yeah I can't have my four Kilobits of memory bandwidth or four Kilobit wide memory interface that's no One wants to do that why did anybody Want to do that or 64 gigabytes of HP is That what it was yeah hbm2e 64 gigabytes Totally nuts so check out Wendell's Channel level one text for more stuff Like this uh he's going to have a video On these components in the server at Some point coming up the software setup Side instead of tearing it down and Doing all this it's like let's run Software how it's supposed to be used And we'll have more videos on this Channel with Wendell as well so Subscribe for all that as always if you Want to buy a mod mat that we use during This you can go to

Store.camersaccess.net they are back in Stock this week so they're shipping Shortly thank you for joining me no Thank you for having me this has been a Lot of fun plus also you know ridiculous Hardware is pretty good stuff it's Pretty cool we'll see you all next time

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