The sparks / fires are usually caused by ripple capacitors for the VRAM exploding on startup :] I've had 2 Gigabyte 7950's do this so far, however, they both still work fine.
It's always the same... the rig shuts down without warning, then when you turn it back on... BOOM...
The good news is I never had an issue (so far) with rigs exploding while running.
I've had it happen on both powered and unpowered risers... usually the issue is just poor PCB layout in that not enough cooling air gets to this part of the board.
I've also destroyed 1 Mobo when this occurred and the other Mobo lost a PCI-E slot so be careful...
Ok one more spark and now I can see that a 280x has a capacitor blown .. I can see the carbon !!
Now the problem is that the other 2 cards (one 7950 and one 280x are plugged in ) .. both are showing in GPU-z :
GPU Core Clock : 300 MHz
GPU Memory Clock : 150 MHz
This is clearly not what it was earlier. However the sapphiretrixx shows proper clocks for memory and core clock readings that had come with the cards.
Are the cards dead ? Should I still try to mine with the cards ? Why the discrepancy between GPU-z and sapphiretrix ? Or is the PCI-e slot gone ?
Now I'm really scared about the cards , don't have the courage to even try mining with the remaining 2 cards .. what should I do ? All cards and mobo are under warranty.
Please Please Please help !!
