Hi there,
today my new 6990 LCS from Powercolor with water cooling came.
While I was unpacking, a phone call came in by the shop where I had ordered yet another watercoold 6990 LCS from Powercolor. The guy told me that he can't deliver since they ran out of stock and - what's more important - they probably would not get new ones, having way too many burnt cards and warranty work is getting a problem for them. They could, of course, send me a do it yourself watercooler kit, but then without warranty for the card, and actually, they would recommend against it and suggest the air cooled one.
So I told him to put the order on hold and I would be back to him as soon as I had some more experience with the just-unpacked card.
There I went, putting together the new cooling circuit, leakage test, filling, test run and all that stuff. When I finally booted with the 2 cards (one water cooled 6990 and one air cooled 6990), Win 7 started to do some reconfiguration and driver installation on its own when all of a sudden there was this funny sound like spraying water, followed by buzzing sound. Screen went blank and air went smelly.
...and there it went the 6990 LCS from Powercolor.
The card is still completely dry, not a single drop of coolant. There was no leakage or stuff, but the sound and the smell spoke a clear language, as did a slightly brownish color.
Now I understood: What they guy on the phone meant was not an overclocking fatality but a burn-for-no-obvious-reason fatality. I did not even get so far as to have the drivers installed completely. Only thing which caught my attention and surprise was that device manager only showed 3 GPUs instead of 4 = 2x2.
Any similar experiences regarding Powercolor ?
It took me a while of configuring to get the air cooled 6990 workign again. Initially control center reported 0 clock frequency and the card did not show up properly.
