Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I have a mining rig with 4 Sapphire 5830's running BAMT - air cooled.
Been running it for a few months at 65*C average.
Yesterday one of the card's fans died and the temperature on that card jumped to mid 90*C.

I've found few threads talking about similar cases here, but none offered "ultimate" solution.
It seems finding the replacement fan is not easy... and not very practical either.
Following suggestions in other threads I've placed a 90mm high speed fan on top of died one
and stuck 60mm fan on the front and another 90mm on the back of that card.
The temperature is hovering around ~80*C on that card now...

According to BAMT it's right on border of "being dangerous"... what do you think?
Should I:
- keep like this?  
- try to repair it? (cost effective?)
- turn it off and run without (eliminates the possibility of fire)?

Thanks  ::)

The card looks exactly like this:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41CnUGjwyoL._AA300_.jpg

Together with that hot-looking chick in goggles.

If it went to 90C for longer than 2 minutes, it's going to be trash.

Resistors are already damaged from debonding. Capacitors are already damaged as the gel altered chemical composition.

The card is junk. Sorry, man, but that's the way it is.

It might look good now, but resistance will have already increased, generating more heat, traces will be damaged, resulting in more resistance, capacitors will be functioning poorly.

It'll suffer slow cascading errors, but prepare to buy a new card.

Yeah, I thought it's kind of the end of it...

Believe it or not, that's actually not the worst this card been through...
That same night, the accounting girl "felt hot" in the evening and turn off the a/c... and left it off for the night!
In the morning the office was at 98*F and the cards were at running at 100*C+ !!!  :o

Right now, they are all still running at 300Mhs each with 2% dead... I guess, it's ok...

Be careful, because they can undergo some serious failure.

I had a videocard fail (my last iNvidia product) and jumped SLI, and pretty much bricked my whole system.

All I managed to rescue from that catastrophe was the case.

... I do not exactly have a case...  :D
... it's kind of thrown together type of of deal...
... before Bitcoin it was a wire-shelf... like this:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61TU3CJBvRL._SY450_.jpg

But, yeah, you are 100% right, I will be careful not to burn down the office.
Still need a real job after all...

Have you thought about an aftermarket cooler? Such as an ARCTIC Accelero TWIN TURBO II. I have one on my 5870 and temps are 51 c with fans 60%. The thing is very silent. Barley audible.

Humm... wasn't really thinking in that direction...

well, checked it out - these things are expensive!
~$60 on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186052 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186052)
probably can one one around $40... if will try hard...

But, I've bought these cards used for $80 each.
Would not really be worth it putting $50 in to $80 card.
yeh, these 5830 have seen the better days...

Monster-Art is right, I'll just run into the ground and hope that by the time they completely die I'll get my money back plus some.
Thanks for the advice!

Seriously, buy cases or design one. Number one, cases allow for controlled airflow and controlled thermal manipulation. Number two they allow realistic cooling systems that might be a bit more expensive but will actually extend the life of your components. Number 3, cases (custom or OtR) allow you to ensure that hardware failure doesn't damage other components.

Take some time on ACAD or just drawing it out, and design what you need. You'll thank yourself for it.

If nothing else, keep an eye on the military/government surplus sites and see if you can grab some old DARPA or USAF cases. I've got an old USAF case that I used for my server that I picked up for $5 at an auction that had refrigeration, room for multiple motherboards, and all kinds of good stuff.

Hell, if you're looking for infrastructure hardware (not computer components) I'd advise checking out the government websites.

Yes, for sure properly designed case with calculated airflow does extend components live.
Our main company has their own NOC. There we maintain proper everything...

But this thing was more of an experiment in Bitcoin mining.
I'm still not sure of the outcome of this experiment.
The rig cost about $600 to put together - using the most cost-effective components. ($/Mhs)
This is all just to see, if indeed it would be profitable.
It's sitting in one of our small offices, which is more like an apartment. (free electricity  ::) )
It'll break even in 1 month.
If I do decide to do some serious mining after that, yes I will for sure use your advice on DARPA, USAF cases and government auctions...

But again, who knows, maybe by then everything will change (ref: ASIC)

Hell, don't forget to do that. A local computer dealer went to an auction, bought a bunch of workstations he figured were junk, and when he cracked them open they had state of the art video cards (at the time), good CPU's, heavy duty power supplies, and loads of RAM. The hard-drives were crap (15GB) and the cases looked like something from 1985, but still, that's a lot of good hardware. God only knows what they were used for when the USAF owned them, but he managed to part out all that stuff for quite a bit of cash compared to his $50 investment.