XFX 7950 Double D Caught on Fire

[PeerMedia]

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.

Fires are caused by dust balls building up in the PSU, CPU and GPU heatsink and fans. Buy a can of compressed air and clean them out once a month. Put a smoke alarm near your equipment and never place equipment where fire can spread, near curtains etc.

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.

[atp1916]

Undervolt that card by modding using bios using the VBE07 bios editor. 

Worked like a charm to bring my xfx 7950 volts down to 1.09.  I lopped off 10c from the top-end doing that cause the card came stock @ 1.256v which is way too much.

[PeerMedia]

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.

[Smellbad]

I am running 4 XFX 7959 Double D's on one of my rigs.  They run hot and like crap with the stock bios.  You can download your bios and go to the litecoin fourm.  Stilt will optimize it for a donation.  Memory is bottle necked on the cards with the stock bios.  With the newly fixed up bios, the cards are monsters.  My cards now run at 615 kh/s and at 70-72c, no external fans.  Rig is pulling around 1075w from the wall.

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=12369.0

[PeerMedia]

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.

[Wipeout2097]

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.

You will brick it sooner by mining at gamer/overclocker settings. People forget that these are Windows direct3d devices that come with useless (for mining) Crossfire connectors, multiple monitor outputs and Battlefield 4 coupons, ffs!  While gaming, accept shitloads of commands, have pauses, interrupts, perform diverse operations, there's some sort of load balance. In other words, at gaming nothing bangs the card 24/7 on the same transistors and components.

At least, please post Gpu-z screenshot of the "Sensors" tab, a few minutes after start mining ..

Edit: your cards core reached 81 ºC in the winter?? Perhaps the fan was at low speed or the VRM's went above 110ºC

[PeerMedia]

I'm on Xubuntu so I only have the temp settings that CGMiner spits out which is 81c. There was no difference in temps between the desktop fan I had and the industrial sized fan. I backed off the optimal settings to intensity 17 and removed all OC settings to lower the temps a bit further to 79c, but I lost 120kh/s for just 2 degrees. It seems like its almost not worth the savings.