Sager 8690 dead ATi GPU from OC? Help!

Hi all, i have a fairly new 8690 from prostar that died on me. i'm not new to sagers and overclocking etc but im a little baffled here. i had a small GPU OC going on the ati 5870 @ 840/1070 which ran fine in benchmarks, stress tests etc, how ever during a long gaming session it blew. I pulled the heat sink, and it looks like its a burned capacitor. My question to you folks here, is this b/c of the OC? i thoight in order to pop a capacitor, you would need to be messing with voltage and not just GPU or Memory settings? Was this a faulty capacitor or did i cause this, need to know so i can try and RMA.

 

It could be.
There no way of knowing for sure, just call PRO-STAR and tell them it died of natural causes
They should cover it if you DONT tell them you OC'd.
Just remove all incriminating programs and features before sending it in.
Good Luck!

 

ok, well id also like to know for future overclockings.

 

i'm willing to bet Soviet Sunrise will give you an answer, if he comes in, he may also call you a turd -=]

 

My question is, why do you need to overclock that GPU. And thats such a mild overclock its not really worth having, you wont see a performance increase in games.

 

^^^^^

Thats not a bad OC, about 10%.

 

But should a mild OC like that cause temperatures high enough for it to burn??

 

i think the question is, would a mild oc, or at all cause capictors to die? GPU, memory yeah......but not sure.

 

ye mild is around 10% lol, weak would be lower. so I wasnt disputing the OC. Just that on a card like this it isnt needed unless you benching.

And no I doubt that OC should of burned out the GPU.

 

While the OC could have contributed to the death of the video card, I would say it is not necessary your OC that should be blamed. It is more likely that you had an unlucky ATI card that just died out sooner because you pushed it a little bit further. Just relax and call your reseller, they will fix it, but be advise (although you probably know this already)that if they discover that you have tempered in any way with your card then they will be entitled to void your warranty.

 

yup, will do. Also, should i not try another OC? part of the reason i went with the 8690 is for its excellent cooling for a gpu OC. Any thoughts?

 

Unless you want to be benchmark king there's really no need to.

 

i think your wrong on that one, i saw a frame jump in a few games. and when running at max settings, 10% more is 10% more.

 

Well it’s possible, but doubtful the overclock killed the capacitor. The main reason for capacitor failure would be exceeding for prolonged period of time the ripple current rating or exceeding the temperature rating. I would hope the type of caps they use would be way overrated to give a good margin.

 

All i'm saying is it will run most games very well at stock settings.
Of course you'll see FPS go up with a gpu OC but I personaly don't think it's necessary, but to each his own.
Opinnions vary widely on this subject.

 

yup, just wanted to see if anyone though re clocking the new card would be a bad idea.

 

Go for it.If you dare.
Most likely the new card will handle OCing much better.

 

I highly doubt that a capacitor was blown. Like othonda said, the possibility is still there though. Failure from current rippling is due to a bad choke being unable to maintain a consistent current output to the capacitor. Again, the possibility of this is very low. Also, the overclock that you applied isn't exactly aggressive, which is safe to assume based on other users will not kill the card.

Can you recall exactly what you applied, what you were running, and what you observed when the card gave out on you? Also, do you recall what temps you were seeing when the card died?

steadfast9661 is a turd.

 

hi SS, i can.

Temps, im, not sure about. I was in the middle of a long WoW raid. The machie shut down off instantly, and the room filled with smoke that shot out of the gpu heat sink vent and stunk up the whole place. The Card exact clock was 855/1190, i know this bc i had written it down and just found the post it. Everything else ran fine for hours, no problem. capacitor on board was definitely burned out with a small black burn on top.

So with the above, am i good to try again?

 

PRO-STAR reads these boards

 

Okay, I see. That helps narrow it down a bit. The capacitor overheated and started to combust, which resulted in the rubber smelling smoke that exhausted from your vent. Linear capacitors don't pop like "cylinder" ones so it's not a total loss. It's most likely due to an overheat or a short. Nonetheless, this is still a definite defect with your card so just like what everyone else strongly suggested, send it in for replacement. You can usually just request to send in the card and the heatsink to save on shipping. Just have all the observed info documented and ready to present to them.

In my M570TU cooling overhaul, there is a second purpose to lining all of the exposed silicon components with thermal pads, and that is to help prevent them from overheating as well as use the thermal pads as a warning sign for possible overheating. Thermal pads will burn before silicon or ceramic shell silicon components, so you would notice the thermal pads burning before the actual silicon does, which should give you enough time to shut down the system.

 

thanks SS. So you recon this would have happed with or with out the OC, wondering if they will give me a hard time on the RMA, and i'm not going to lie to them -=/ Assuming i get this RMAed SS would you say it would be safe using the above specs to re OC new card?

 

It still would have occurred whether or not you overclocked or not. The overclock only got you to that point quicker.

If you do get your RMA approved and you receive your new card, running the same clocks as before is perfectly fine. It's a fairly mild overclock and is very safe providing that your temps don't get out of control. ProStar is a good company. They won't leave you hanging if your GPU was smoking on you.

 

sweet, thx dude. Thats good info SS. I assume this can happen on any part of the system, like MB?

 

fitting OP name

 

The whole world and their pet probably reads these boards. As most here know, this forum always comes up very high in any Google search.

 

This is way anonymity is imperative on this forum .