I'd love to flash them but I'm somewhat paranoid as there's just 1 BIOS on XFX cards, no BIOS switch. The thought of bricking a 30 day card somewhat scares me more than the heat issue.

I'm going through the same thing, I now have 2 fire extinguishers and 2 smoke detectors next to my rigs. Doesn't bring comfort when I'm not home though. I've been fortunate in that the first time I just had a spark and second time I had a small fire but in both cases it was when turning on the rig. So if I come home and find the rig off and it wasn't a power failure, my heart just races at trying to turn it on and hope it doesn't blow up. Not what I had hoped for when I got into mining. It does seem that the mobo or PSU does power down the rig when there's an electrical fault however, I just have no idea how to fix it other than turning it on and hoping for the best.

I'd buy them too.

I would love to know the fault as well but there's no way I'm trying to plug this back in again, its going back for sure as a full out fire started in the card. There's visible damage on the actual card of where the flames burst out from. Really scary situation and I'm grateful it happened when I was home.

I just bought the largest industrial fan I could find (its twice as big as the crate), and not a single degree temperature change. I'm pretty sure the airflow could be considered a mild hurricane by most standards, I have a hard time believing this couldn't lower the temperature.

I'd undervolt the card but Trixx and MSI Afterburner won't let me mod the changes and since there's just 1 BIOS (they decided to leave out the BIOS switch), that's not something I'm willing to try since I've never flashed the BIOS before.

I mentioned this in the other thread we both posted to, but thought I'd add it here too:

The fire I had recently happened from off-state to when I turned it on, just 5 weeks old, definitely no dust and no pets/hair, with open rig and external fan. I'm almost certain its not a dust issue as it was really new. The rig I have was running at 82c and was 2 XFX 7950's Double D's, from what I've read they aren't a good miners card, but they should not be catching fire. I've stopped overclocking and brought the temp down to 79c and will be RMA'ing the one that caught on fire as that thing is not going near my PC ever again!

I do like the idea of putting tin foil around the PC just in case but as you mentioned as well, its also a great electrical conductor, gonna have to find something else that can prevent a fire.

The fire I had recently happened from off-state to when I turned it on (although it shouldn't have been off, it seemed to have crashed or powered down and not due to a power failure). Just 5 weeks old, definitely no dust and no pets/hair, with open rig and external fan. I'm almost certain its not a dust issue as it was really new. The rig I have was running at 82c and was 2 XFX 7950's Double D's, from what I've read they aren't a good miners card, but they should not be catching fire. I've stopped overclocking and brought the temp down to 79c and will be RMA'ing the one that caught on fire as that thing is not going near my PC ever again!

Can you hear the HD spinning for 1-2 minutes as it normally does to boot into Windows? How about RDC/VNC once its booted (assuming it does)?

Did you find the source of the fire? I recently had one on my 7950 XFX DoubleD catch fire on startup (power on) and can't really figure out what happened, my temps were 80-81c which doesn't seem too bad.

How are you providing the ability to earn LTC faster than any other pool?

Try removing the 270 and putting the 290 in its place, is it detected then? If so, then its either the riser or the PCIe slot.

I've cut all OC out and running at stock settings, its running at 79c with the external fan, saved just 2 degrees by not OC'ing and lost 100kh/s.

CGMiner has temperature monitoring through aticonfig and I setup cgminer temps to 80 (target), 83 (overheat), 85 (shutoff). It never exceeded 82c while running and I regularly monitor temps.

Can you tell if you're making it into windows (or if the rig isn't booting past the BIOS)? If its the latter, I'm guessing a riser or slot isn't working. Are any of the risers powered? You might be overloading the mobo if they're unpowered.

I'm guessing you're using a linux based OS? I frequently get no video feed when I go from 1 GPU to 2+, BAMT, Xubuntu, etc. I went nuts trying to figure out why and simply gave up. I ended up installing SSH/RDC and after 1 GPU, I connect to the rig remotely to do everything else. Not sure why this happens, but every rig I've setup had the same issue.

I'm on Xubuntu so MSI won't work (I think?)

I don't have many ways to check the temps other than the first reading when starting cgminer, in this case its around 40c. The GPU's were just 5 weeks old, very clean room, no dust, no pets. I also wanted to add that my rig is in a milk crate and very well spaced out with risers.

I cannot for the life of me get the temperature lower than 80c even with an industrial fan (identical temperatures without or with the fan). I always assumed their temperature was calculated by fan RPMs and not actually measured at the source.

I've backed off on intensity and OC a bit on the other GPU but temperature is still 79c, not much cooler.

Are you planning on doing all this on a single rig? You'll need 2 PSU's to handle 6x 290's. RAM I generally see the rule is 1.5GB/GPU but I don't think you really need that much RAM, I'd start with 4GB and if you have issues add another 2-4GB, especially on BAMT you shouldn't need it. CPU, just pick entry level, Celeron or Sempron depending on what chipset your mobo is. You'll probably need to buy a custom case to handle 6 GPU's, I use milkcrates which can handle 4 without problem, but for 6 you'll need something bigger. You'll also want something sturdy to handle the weight of some expensive GPU's. Maybe openrigs? They're pricey but considering what you spent on your GPU's, probably not that much extra. Enjoy, that's some sweet hardware.

I have a small LTC rig with 2 XFX Double D 7950's (Black Edition), they run at 81c, slightly overclocked but runs well with an external fan. Great hash rate for a 7950, 730k/card. I came home on Friday to find my rig off. Not sure why (wasn't a power failure), so I went to turn the rig back on and bam, fire started in one of my 7950's. I turned off the power immediately and blew on the GPU until it went out. Scary as hell.

After I let things cool off, I wasn't able to turn on the rig, I was able to restore it when I removed the GPU that caught on fire. The other GPU seems ok, has anyone experienced something like this? I'm petrified to mine again if another fire happened when I'm not home. I have no explanation what happened or how it would catch on fire from turning the power on.

I realize XFX doesn't have a great reputation among miners but I'm stuck on what to possibly do.

Rig specs:
2 XFX Double D, 7950 (Black Edition)
1000W Gold PSU
ASRock Extreme 4
4 GB RAM

Anyone have advice?