HELP: Replacing SMD Capacitors on a Radeon 7970

[AndrewK]

I just have pics off the web... But I have seen a bunch of different cards from different generations and this is definitely out of the ordinary. I think once I get a picture up, some of the people with EE/ECE backgrounds can make a more educated guess.

[AndrewBUD]

RMA RMA RMA

[beekeeper]

The small caps belong to pcie lanes, they should be 78 nf if i recall it right. The big caps should be part  of power circuit. Anything over 22 uf should work there. 100 uf should be the best.

However, chip may have got some cold joint if it ran to hot for a long time. If this is the case you nedd to resolder it (hard job).

[AndrewK]

Here is a pic of the actual card with burnt caps.... I will be adding a better picture tomorrow evening.

[philips]

Someone asked about mining with the card. When it is in the second 16x slot windows and RBE identify it. GPUz identifies it incorrectly, but it will not mine and I cannot install drivers on it.

I asked you to try mining with it (in a PCI-E x1) because I have a similar situation.
The card is a 5870 and has a fine crack at the same distance from the PCI connectors as yours but more in the middle.
The crack disrupts some of the circuits and a couple of components are simply missing (they fell off).

Used alone the card is dead as a brick, but when placed in the PCI-E x1 slot using an extender, cgminer is able to see it and mine with it along with the other cards.
It runs at a slower speed (422Mh/s instead of 431Mh/s like the others) but this could be because of the PCI-E x1 slot.

If placed in a normal PCI x16 slot the card is again dead.
Cannot say if in Windows you can do this, I am running BAMT.

 GPU  0:  66.5C 4013RPM | 431.1/430.2Mh/s | A:237 R:0 HW:0 U: 5.97/m I: 8
 GPU  1:  66.5C 3578RPM | 432.7/429.2Mh/s | A:245 R:0 HW:0 U: 6.17/m I: 8
 GPU  2:  66.5C 3716RPM | 422.5/422.8Mh/s | A:201 R:0 HW:0 U: 5.06/m I: 8
 GPU  3:  66.5C 3145RPM | 430.1/429.7Mh/s | A:238 R:0 HW:0 U: 5.99/m I: 8
 GPU  4:  66.5C 4008RPM | 370.7/372.3Mh/s | A:203 R:0 HW:0 U: 5.11/m I: 9
 GPU  5:  64.5C   0%       | 370.5/371.8Mh/s | A:192 R:0 HW:0 U: 4.84/m I: 9

[fcmatt]

Sapphire rmas any card under warranty. Just pay the 20 dollar fee and send it to them. Make sure the card looks like it was not totally messed with.

[AndrewK]

^^ Hey man, sorry I understood what you were saying... My reply didn't address it though... I will try with a 1x extender... I havn't had much luck with these yet but I'll give it a shot (I think I got two faulty ones... they deffinitely don't work on my 1x slots on board with 2 cards in the 16x).


^I am working on RMAing it but sapphire is pretty specific about warranty being non transferable  (I don't have a receipt or invoice and I'm not sure I feel comfortable completely making up a story)... Plus the card has been taken apart and thermal paste has been reapplied several times.... Also one of the thermal pads for the ram chips was missing so I used a razor to cut extra from around the other pads and applied it to the missing pad.

Thanks guys. If I hear back from athlonmicro and they say I can't RMA I will be desoldering one of the functional looking caps around this area... Checking capacitance and then replacing it with a functional cap of equivalent capacitance from another board.

[philips]

At least you knew it was broken before buying it, I bought mine as a good one.

Wish you good luck man 

[Codie289]

AndrewK I've got an XFX 6870 with a bad smd capacitor dealing with the power phase controller. Board location for the capacitor is called ac20. Could you point me in the right direction of specs or part numbers, I cant retrieve anything off the previous capacitor as it is ceramic and blown.