Bitcoin Forum

So, I stuck two MSI Twin-Frozr II 6870s in my main computer and ran them for about four months with the fan speed never rising above 90%. One of the cards started running really hot and I saw that one of the fans had seized up. Today, I pop my case open to shop-vac it out and see that the fan crapped out on the second card, and the remaining fan on the first one is stuttering.

What the fuck, MSI? Three out of four fans failing within six months? Out of curiosity, I played skyrim on one of them for about fifteen minutes till the frame rate started dropping...Afterburner say 117C...fuuuuuuu

90% fan speed.  brutal.  I try to keep mine below 70% and even there I am worried about long term reliability.  The average GPU probably spends less than 10% of its life under load and even then rarely will it hit 90% and the fan is the cheapest thing which will last 3 normal lifecycle.

I am curious if anyone else has run their fans that hard and how long the fans last.

I am saying it was capped at 90%. They ran 50-60% save for some ridiculously hot days. The first fan popped within a week...I am lazy so I haven't RMAed it yet. I have no idea when the second went or when the third started going. Either way, I run CPU fans at 12v 100% of the time for YEARS on my aquariums.

How MSI customer service over there?

I read from other forums they're really bad in US

i've had 4 XFX fans fail on me over the last 6 months, i'll compare 2 identical cards (5830s) bought on the same day, same batch numbers. one was run at 50% fan speed, the other 100%. both failed within days of each other after about 3 months

I haven't RMA'ed them yet because I can't contact them...it's not good...

ran my asus 6870 directcu @ 85% for 3 months and the fan started to make a slight noise. had to dremel and hack the back of the fan housing to get to the sleeve bearing (and that sucked a lot, its not a press fit plug, looked like it was glued in) to oil it. runs fine now (3 months later), still at 85%, and its (now) easy to re oil but I was not impressed.

didnt RMA it as I had already replaced the TIM with artic cooling MX2. that card runs hot overclocked, even with a slight undervolt - 1.174 vs stock 1.200 volts. closed case though. got to be cat proof.

Huh... I run all my fans at 100%.  I've had a few fail, but not too many. All but one were on 5870's, which got RMA'd.  The one other one was a 5970, which I fortunately had a spare shround/fan for.  If another one craps out, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do! Been doing this since April with nary a hitch besides those 3 or 4 fans.

GPU fan failure is just part of mining, IMO. Just have a strategy in place to prevent excessive down time.

I was thinking of getting together a bulk buy of 5870/5970 fans.  I use the ones I removed from my 4 watercooled cards as spares now but I would like some more spares "just in case".

Well, I'd be down for a few of both, DeathAndTaxes

I have 15 MSI twin frozen 6950s and have had to replace every one of them due to the fans crapping out. I was running the fans all out of course which didn't help but still.

On a good note, MSI is pretty responsive with RMAs and I have had no issues in dealing with them in this regard.

If only eVGA make AMD based cards.....
they are really good at RMA.

Yeah, I wonder why they don't.  Though I've had hassle dealing with eVGA's RMA from time to time.  Gigabyte seems to be fairly good RMA wise.

Looks like its the same cooler as my 5850 twin frozr II. After replacing the thermal gunk with some proper stuff, I run the fans at 40% and have 55C tops (@850 MHz). Still working fine after a few months, but if one of the fans ever die, it looks easy enough to slap some 80mms on that cooler. Aside from my ridiculous overkill and oversize 5870 Spitfire cooler, that twin frozr II is hands down the best cooler I have.