Bitcoin Forum

2 of my 6870's seem to work ok but when I mine the temp just goes thru the roof. I tested them playing games and they work fine. I know one overheated because the fan died so I put a new fan on. I have no idea why the other one isn't working.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can possibly save them. I put new paste on both. And have tried more fans. It's definitely a problem in the card. I also tried different power supplies and fresh windows installs. They seem to draw too much power or something because one just fried my brand new 550 watt power supply.

I am going to take them apart again and look for something wrong. I didn't see anything before. I am also thinking of trying the oven trick. I bought these cards for bitcoin when it was like 130 so I feel like I have 1000's in them and really want to fix them. They are only like 6 months old but I used bitspend and cant find my receipts for the warranty. Because they seem to work ok under light loads it makes me think they can be saved. Maybe someone knows what part is bad. Any help is really appreciated, thank you.

Sounds like a dodgy VRM section, my 7970 had one and it ran 10 degrees hotter before dieing. Not much you can do about it tbh. More fans?

Sounds like you might be right. Thought I fixed one by switching the heat sink and fan. Temps stayed normal and stopped climbing for like 30 minutes. But all of a sudden the gpu load went down as soon as I took my eyes off it for a second, and by the time I heard it and got back, the gpu load went up and the pc shut down. Another brand new power supply. Good thing I buy them on sale. The cards are toast. So weird I wish I knew how it happened. Thank you!

There is a max "temp-cutoff" command in cgminer it would help protect your hardware?
I have mine set at 85c but some people set it higher. Lead free solder starts to go brittle at 90c.

Is the warranty still valid if you have been "bashing"  the cards doing mining? The  card manufacturers must have seen a big increase in returns since mining started.

I am sure they do.
If you do not overclock your card, changed BIOS, or changed card normal voltage you did not violate anything. I think manufacturer still sure honor the warranty.

How many miners don't overclock their cards?  ;)

My 7970 died after 7 months of running at 85C overclocked as high as it would go, ever since I ran Furmark for few hour stress test the temps had been far higher and I think that was the culprit tbh, still mined fine with no hardware errors but games would crash after minutes, odd.

Still got a full £315 refund the week after the R9 series were announced, nice one amazon!

Could they prove you have been overclocking? If not, its a winner every time!!!

If you overclock within the limits of what Catalyst Overdrive recommends you probably won't kill your card and it should still be covered by warranty. Some people just push the envelope too far and melt the VRMs and that's easy to spot and refuse replacement.  :P

Fair enough, the only card I've had to unlock afterburner for is my 5830 which is worth it as I get 325khash from it at 1000/1300.

Well, until I say so, you can not prove I did overclock the card, right?

That's what I'd be telling the place I bought it from :)