5970 Overheating

[Sant001]

This a Gigabyte 5970 that's overheating. I have disassembled to investigate it...











I can't see anything wrong with it, but then I'm not very familiar with this stuff, anybody cares to comment?

[cmg5461]

I can't see the pictures, but if you took it apart, you need new thermal pads and paste.

[Sant001]

Wondering why you can't see them, it's hosted on Imageshack

For all I know, there's plenty of thermal paste and the fan seems in good condition, no idea why it's heating... Beginning to think it's something external like the summer here and the design of the case I'm using.

[Gabi]

Define "overheating" please, what temperature?

Also how old is the card? Maybe the dissipator is epic full of dust?

[cmg5461]

Wondering why you can't see them, it's hosted on Imageshack

For all I know, there's plenty of thermal paste and the fan seems in good condition, no idea why it's heating... Beginning to think it's something external like the summer here and the design of the case I'm using.

Imageshack is blocked at work :c

And once you take it off, it needs new paste as the bare minimum.  Air pockets in paste and pads can be viewed as an insulator.

VRM temps up to 125C are fine, but the lower the better.

GPU temps up to 85/90 are ok, but I like my cards hovering around 70.

[swissmate]

Change thermal paste and undervolt it.

[Dargo]

How many cards do you have in the case, and where was this card located relative to all the others? It might be overheating simply because you have too many cards in the case, and this card is taking in heat from the others. I don't have experience with this myself, but from what I've read, it is very difficult to cool a bunch of 5970s in a case.

[Luceo]

Underclocking the RAM, and undervolting the card, is often helpful when your card overheats, but if the heating is significant you'll probably have to invest in a case fan or a new case with better airflow dynamics.

[Sant001]

The cards are crashing and rebooting the system like all the time, I have even under-clocked them but they're still crashing. I assume it's due to high temp, and indeed they usually hover at 80-90 moments before crashing

Now is late here, I will try some of the suggestions tomorrow

[cmg5461]

The cards are crashing and rebooting the system like all the time, I have even under-clocked them but they're still crashing. I assume it's due to high temp, and indeed they usually hover at 80-90 moments before crashing

Now is late here, I will try some of the suggestions tomorrow

You make have flaky GPU's.  If new thermal pads and compound does not fix it, ask for refunds.

[rjk]

Wow, that is a large amount of glopped on paste. Typical peanut butter application from the gorillas in charge of the paste machine at the factory. Clean it off with some Artic Silver ArctiClean 2 part cleaner, and then put on some good replacement paste.

[Sant001]

My rig is an open case, have just 1 big fan blowing air through all card

It has 3x 5970 + 1x5970

I bought my cards 2nd hand from local market

[Dargo]

My rig is an open case, have just 1 big fan blowing air through all card

It has 3x 5970 + 1x5970

I bought my cards 2nd hand from local market

That's a lot to have packed in a case, but if it's open with a fan blowing it should be alright. You might have a bad card. I'd put it back together, with new thermal paste obviously, and see if that helps. If not, I'd try undervolting to 0.95v and see what temps and hashrate you get. I have a Gigabyte 5970 in a case undervolted to 0.95v, and I get about 640 Mh/s on it. If you get decent hashrate and temp at lower voltage, it's still a decent mining card IMO, even if it is defective.

[luffy]

My rig is an open case, have just 1 big fan blowing air through all card

It has 3x 5970 + 1x5970

I bought my cards 2nd hand from local market

That's a lot to have packed in a case, but if it's open with a fan blowing it should be alright. You might have a bad card. I'd put it back together, with new thermal paste obviously, and see if that helps. If not, I'd try undervolting to 0.95v and see what temps and hashrate you get. I have a Gigabyte 5970 in a case undervolted to 0.95v, and I get about 640 Mh/s on it. If you get decent hashrate and temp at lower voltage, it's still a decent mining card IMO, even if it is defective.

how you pass below 1.0 volts? Afterburner has 1.0v limit!
do you have clocks 725/300 at 0.95v?

[crazyates]

My rig is an open case, have just 1 big fan blowing air through all card

It has 3x 5970 + 1x5970

I bought my cards 2nd hand from local market

That's a lot to have packed in a case, but if it's open with a fan blowing it should be alright. You might have a bad card. I'd put it back together, with new thermal paste obviously, and see if that helps. If not, I'd try undervolting to 0.95v and see what temps and hashrate you get. I have a Gigabyte 5970 in a case undervolted to 0.95v, and I get about 640 Mh/s on it. If you get decent hashrate and temp at lower voltage, it's still a decent mining card IMO, even if it is defective.

how you pass below 1.0 volts? Afterburner has 1.0v limit!
do you have clocks 725/300 at 0.95v?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0

[Dargo]

My rig is an open case, have just 1 big fan blowing air through all card

It has 3x 5970 + 1x5970

I bought my cards 2nd hand from local market

That's a lot to have packed in a case, but if it's open with a fan blowing it should be alright. You might have a bad card. I'd put it back together, with new thermal paste obviously, and see if that helps. If not, I'd try undervolting to 0.95v and see what temps and hashrate you get. I have a Gigabyte 5970 in a case undervolted to 0.95v, and I get about 640 Mh/s on it. If you get decent hashrate and temp at lower voltage, it's still a decent mining card IMO, even if it is defective.

how you pass below 1.0 volts? Afterburner has 1.0v limit!
do you have clocks 725/300 at 0.95v?

725/150 at 0.95v using CGminer - no need for Afterburner or anything similar. If you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend CGminer. I haven't even tried (yet) going above 725, so I might get a little more, but it's super stable at 725.

[Aseras]

This a Gigabyte 5970 that's overheating. I have disassembled to investigate it...



I can't see anything wrong with it, but then I'm not very familiar with this stuff, anybody cares to comment?

See the thin white strip with the 3 squares at the bottom? That's 99% of the problems.

Use a razor cut the thinned part out where the squares are and put the thick part directly back onto the little tiny shiny VRMs that alingn there with a tiny dot of regular heatsink goop to hold them there. DO NOT overtighten the card. Just snug it.

[jcgeny]

if i were you i would at least replace all the pads with some new from koolance :

http://koolance.com/image/cache/data/products/acc-vid001_p1-700x700.jpg

http://koolance.com/video-card-cooler-thermal-padding

this is how i used pad for water-cooling :

http://a1.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/143/202c61102a394be0ba5b2e4a4fa3e101/l.jpg