Dead RX 470 - double check your OC before applying!

[CryptoWeasel]

So I purchased a used 470, flashed it the same way as my 480 and all was fine. I then undervolted and overclocked it in RaveOS with the same settings as the 480 but a little less on the power down to 850mV and again all was fine. I noticed a day later the rig was rebooting a lot and then I noticed a temp spike to 200c which must have been an error with a sensor. After this temp spike the fan stopped spinning after 30s so I first ran over the GPU with a hair dryer and the card worked again but only for a day or 2 and I then heated it again. As the hair dryer is half as hot as a heat gun I assume it's a silicon issue and not any cracked solder joints as I couldn't see any.

I'm sure I caused the issue as when I checked my OC settings I saw I had mistakenly entered the memory voltage as 1900 which was supposed to be for the memory clock so I'm sure I've caused a short in VRM and it's sent 12v straight to core.

On another note. Do you really need to flash a bios using RVN?

[7deadlyBTCIN]

You don't need to flash any bios to mine ravencoin using rx470, my 470 4gb all did 11mh each on kawpow algorithm and that's the safest hashrate for this cards, no need for bios flash

[elda34b]

Luckily there's no other damages and you don't catch any fire. Did you use afterburner to OC your card? Sounds like they need to add a warning before applying the setting to prevent something like this. That being said, the menu is clear enough as long as you paid attention (whether it's memory or core overclock).

[adaseb]

Did you by any chance change the thermal paste recently on that GPU? Because i'd had this issue of yours usually after changing thermal paste. It doesn't happen right away, usually a few days or weeks. I think when the GPU is old, the thermal paste is glued to the heatsink, so when you break it apart, you can damage the solder joints. And at first it might work but there can be a small micro-crack. And then the more heat cycles you go thru, that crack will keep spreading and become bigger and bigger.

And you will notice that one day, say your rig runs for 30 days straight, no issues. And then you do a fan cleaning job, and it starts up but you get stability issues for some odd reason. Then you narrow down the GPU. Put it in a regular desktop for testing and you find that when you start windows, you get a BSOD.

But you can actually get the GPU to work if you heat it up for a few minutes, and then when it starts to mine, it'll run until you shut it off again.

[batsonxl]

Again what are you doing with hair dryer?

[FP91G]

Warming up the video card with a hairdryer is done for diagnostic purposes.
I've heard about miners who do this several times a month
If problems with the video card appear again, then it is easier to sell it for spare parts. After constant warm-ups and loads in mining, the video card will quickly die

[CryptoWeasel]

I didn't realise you don't need to flash mining raven. That's handy to know.

Batsonxl. Usually you'd use a heat gun to reflow. Basically if there are any cracked solder joints, heating them to 300c will melt the solder and create a connection again. However, the reason I used a hair dryer is because they run about 140c and I wanted to check if the GPU itself responded to heating on a low heat as the silicon has a lower melting point than lead free solder. If it didn't do anything I could then try and heat gun over it and see if it fixes any solder issues. Sadly if it works again with lower heating temps over the GPU then 9/10 times it needs to be sold off for spares. That said if you always use the same cards then they are useful to salvage parts from.

[batsonxl]

I didn't realise you don't need to flash mining raven. That's handy to know.

Batsonxl. Usually you'd use a heat gun to reflow. Basically if there are any cracked solder joints, heating them to 300c will melt the solder and create a connection again. However, the reason I used a hair dryer is because they run about 140c and I wanted to check if the GPU itself responded to heating on a low heat as the silicon has a lower melting point than lead free solder. If it didn't do anything I could then try and heat gun over it and see if it fixes any solder issues. Sadly if it works again with lower heating temps over the GPU then 9/10 times it needs to be sold off for spares. That said if you always use the same cards then they are useful to salvage parts from.

People please STOP! stop heating gpus it will do things worse you killing your gpu.
Dont heat card with hair dryer or heat gun. If you know how to do reball do it if you dont know then take it to master who knows.

[batsonxl]

Reballing is not easy task that all people can do, because you need special equipment and its expensive. but if you need your card then you must do proper repair.
Heating the card = killing the card with your own hands.

[FP91G]

Reballing is not easy task that all people can do, because you need special equipment and its expensive. but if you need your card then you must do proper repair.
Heating the card = killing the card with your own hands.

In Russia, the price of a professional IR soldering station is about $ 3,300, but reballing masters use homemade soldering stations that cost no more than $ 500 and they solder no worse than professional ones.

https://www.chipdip.ru/product0/9000317310
This is one of the best professional soldering stations. If it is more expensive in your country, consider buying this one.
Many foreign companies give authorization to service centers that have this soldering station.

And a stencil for a chip costs no more than a few dollars.

[adaseb]

I had a bunch of Tahiti (7950/7970/280x) GPUs throughout the years that all needed to be reballed. Basically if you somehow could manage to get Windows to boot, it would mine until the GPU got cold again. But eventually with enough heat cycles it would stop working all together.

Had a hot air station already so just needed the stensil and solder balls. Bought all that stuff on Alibaba for $10. The issue was removing the old GPU chip for PCB. I kept heating and heating and heating it up and couldn't get it to move. Couldn't go higher in temp because it would burn something. Eventually gave up. Basically you can easily remove something like an iPhone chip because the area is small. However for a large GPU chip you need a special workstation like they used to repair Xbox's back in the day.

Basically not worth the hassle to fix a GPU worth maybe $100.

[batsonxl]

Reballing is not easy task that all people can do, because you need special equipment and its expensive. but if you need your card then you must do proper repair.
Heating the card = killing the card with your own hands.

In Russia, the price of a professional IR soldering station is about $ 3,300, but reballing masters use homemade soldering stations that cost no more than $ 500 and they solder no worse than professional ones.

https://www.chipdip.ru/product0/9000317310
This is one of the best professional soldering stations. If it is more expensive in your country, consider buying this one.
Many foreign companies give authorization to service centers that have this soldering station.

And a stencil for a chip costs no more than a few dollars.

Yep it is correct.

[batsonxl]

I had a bunch of Tahiti (7950/7970/280x) GPUs throughout the years that all needed to be reballed. Basically if you somehow could manage to get Windows to boot, it would mine until the GPU got cold again. But eventually with enough heat cycles it would stop working all together.

Had a hot air station already so just needed the stensil and solder balls. Bought all that stuff on Alibaba for $10. The issue was removing the old GPU chip for PCB. I kept heating and heating and heating it up and couldn't get it to move. Couldn't go higher in temp because it would burn something. Eventually gave up. Basically you can easily remove something like an iPhone chip because the area is small. However for a large GPU chip you need a special workstation like they used to repair Xbox's back in the day.

Basically not worth the hassle to fix a GPU worth maybe $100.

You can remove gpu if you add under the pcb heating station but always measure temps or test with dead gpu 1st.
this will do the job :
https://www.amazon.com/Preheater-Rework-Station-Preheating-Infrared/dp/B07QKBQ717
After heat applied then with hot gun you can remove gpu.

[FP91G]

I had a bunch of Tahiti (7950/7970/280x) GPUs throughout the years that all needed to be reballed. Basically if you somehow could manage to get Windows to boot, it would mine until the GPU got cold again. But eventually with enough heat cycles it would stop working all together.

Had a hot air station already so just needed the stensil and solder balls. Bought all that stuff on Alibaba for $10. The issue was removing the old GPU chip for PCB. I kept heating and heating and heating it up and couldn't get it to move. Couldn't go higher in temp because it would burn something. Eventually gave up. Basically you can easily remove something like an iPhone chip because the area is small. However for a large GPU chip you need a special workstation like they used to repair Xbox's back in the day.

Basically not worth the hassle to fix a GPU worth maybe $100.

You can remove gpu if you add under the pcb heating station but always measure temps or test with dead gpu 1st.
this will do the job :
https://www.amazon.com/Preheater-Rework-Station-Preheating-Infrared/dp/B07QKBQ717
After heat applied then with hot gun you can remove gpu.

With the help of this device and a soldering hair dryer, you can probably dismantle the chip from the motherboard, but it will be very difficult, or almost impossible, to install the chip back properly.
I've seen reballing with a household electric oven, but it's similar. On a homemade soldering station, you can set the required temperature on both sides for good chip soldering.

[adaseb]

I think reinstalling the chip would be the easy part. You already have it disassembled and you can easily use a solder wick to remove all the excess solder from GPU and PCB.

Then all you need to do is recall it which is easy if you got the adapter that goes with the stencil. It makes it easier. If you don’t have it then it will be a pain putting a single solder ball per pin and sometimes you will bump it somewhere and have to start over.

Then when done you just put it into the PCB , align and heat again until it melts into place. Then plug it in and pray that it boots.

Not really that difficult if you got the right equipment. However these days I don’t think there are too many dead GPUs out there which would make it worth investing all this equipment.  How many dead GPUs are there on eBay? Not that many and most of the dead ones you can’t repair because they are dead because they are burnt and you can’t fix a GPU if there is a large burn mark on the PCB.

[batsonxl]

I think reinstalling the chip would be the easy part. You already have it disassembled and you can easily use a solder wick to remove all the excess solder from GPU and PCB.

Then all you need to do is recall it which is easy if you got the adapter that goes with the stencil. It makes it easier. If you don’t have it then it will be a pain putting a single solder ball per pin and sometimes you will bump it somewhere and have to start over.

Then when done you just put it into the PCB , align and heat again until it melts into place. Then plug it in and pray that it boots.

Not really that difficult if you got the right equipment. However these days I don’t think there are too many dead GPUs out there which would make it worth investing all this equipment.  How many dead GPUs are there on eBay? Not that many and most of the dead ones you can’t repair because they are dead because they are burnt and you can’t fix a GPU if there is a large burn mark on the PCB.

On bearmarket for dead gpus people asked 20-40$ now they asking 100-120$ which is crazy. Im buying them because some of them i can bring back to life. And its good to have spare parts.Only memory and GPU chips are valuble. Im looking for gddr6 memories i dont have them.

[adaseb]

On bearmarket for dead gpus people asked 20-40$ now they asking 100-120$ which is crazy. Im buying them because some of them i can bring back to life. And its good to have spare parts.Only memory and GPU chips are valuble. Im looking for gddr6 memories i dont have them.

In a bear market I found that the best deal is to buy ones with a dead fan. You will see a few which are dead GPUs for like $20 but a few GPUs with bad fans for $30. So its better just paying the $10 extra and just having a bad fan to deal with rather than the entire GPU.

However this was last bear market not this one. So right looking looking at eBay gpus are never a good deal, even ones with dead fans. However maybe in a few months try and score some deals with some GPUs with bad fans. Gamers for some reason never buy them because they think its difficult replacing a fan when there are youtube videos everything and you just need some basic screwdriver tools.

[batsonxl]

On bearmarket for dead gpus people asked 20-40$ now they asking 100-120$ which is crazy. Im buying them because some of them i can bring back to life. And its good to have spare parts.Only memory and GPU chips are valuble. Im looking for gddr6 memories i dont have them.

In a bear market I found that the best deal is to buy ones with a dead fan. You will see a few which are dead GPUs for like $20 but a few GPUs with bad fans for $30. So its better just paying the $10 extra and just having a bad fan to deal with rather than the entire GPU.

However this was last bear market not this one. So right looking looking at eBay gpus are never a good deal, even ones with dead fans. However maybe in a few months try and score some deals with some GPUs with bad fans. Gamers for some reason never buy them because they think its difficult replacing a fan when there are youtube videos everything and you just need some basic screwdriver tools.

hehe im looking forward with bad fan