3 Month Old 7950 Burnt Out (LTC Mining)

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SlipperyPete

Gawd
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Jul 30, 2004
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I had my XFX 7950 i bought in October in a second rig I built as a secondary LTC miner / future media server. It was chugging along nicely for a couple of weeks with good temps with my old Mushkin XP 800W PSU. Then one night I woke up and it was off. Turned it back on and thought nothing of it.

This morning it happened again and it would not turn on. I held down the power button and then hit it again...saw a flash inside the case with a !POP! and smelled smoke. Uh oh...had to go to work though.

Swung by MC on the way home and picked up another EVGA Supernova G2 1000W figuring the old PSU died. Plug it in with bare essentials (one mem stick, video card with power cables, cpu cable, mobo cable, no usb, no adapters, no fans drives or anything else). Flip the switch on PSU, then off again (did NOT press power). Press power with PSU switch flipped OFF and smoke is coming off the 7950, and that horrid smell.... :confused:

Go get a 290X out of my main rig and it boots fine. 7950 = toast. Did LTC mining kill it that quickly? Had a 120mm Panaflo on the side panel blowing directly on it. Tempts never went over 80.

I did notice I foolishly had the switch on the PSU set on Quad Rail instead of Single Rail (what an idiot I didn't even check when I got it out of storage). Could this combined with it's 5 year age have killed the card?

TL;DR I know but if anyone has any comments I'd love to hear them.
 
Yes... mining while good at one point now sucks to the point of no pay off.

Running that card 24/7 at 100%, which these were NOT build for, probably weakened components enough to cause this.
 
Mining for 3 months at 80C shouldn't have killed it. Did you ever check your VRM temps though?
 
What I found with scrypt mining (LTC) is to keep a keen eye on VRM temps. Mining puts an incredible strain on the power delivery.

With fan speed set to auto on my sapphire 7950, I hit 98C+ on VRM1 shown in GPU-Z. Core temp never went above 78C however. I have to manually set fan speed to 65%+ to keep VRMs under 80C.

Edit: Beat by Rizen :p
 
I clicked on the thread thinking "I bet the OP has an XFX card".

I wasn't surprised by the fact after reading. I still can't believe AMD let XFX get away with that turd of a card design for their 79xx DD cards. And yeah, VRM temps were (and still are) the big issue with the 79XX DD cards.
 
xoleras said:
I clicked on the thread thinking "I bet the OP has an XFX card".

I wasn't surprised by the fact after reading. I still can't believe AMD let XFX get away with that turd of a card design for their 79xx DD cards. And yeah, VRM temps were (and still are) the big issue with the 79XX DD cards.
Click to expand...


What's wrong with their design? (sorry i'm newb)
 
I had a 7950 Vapor-X mine me about 7BTC from late 2012 to early 2013..

And I mined some more on it earlier this year. It never had any issues or significant degradation. (Required a few more mV on the core to be stable at certain clocks though)

I would consider xoleras theory that it was the fact it was a DD. XFX coolers (sucked? 290 ones seem good)

Bad fans poor heatsink assembly overall.
 
I killed a 7950 by mining... the OC Boost.. Rma'd it and received a 7970 back which I subsequently sold off. Sold both cards for $700 which almost entirely paid for my 290 CF purchase.
 
XFX has a habit of changing designs from the reference to use cheaper components. I have seen a lot of older XFX (6950/70) cards which are generally not upto the mark as far as component selection goes. You must udnerstand that the die comes at a fixed price from AMD, depending on the quantities. The AIB's can only change the other components around it and most often than not its the VRM setup which faces the price axe. XFX has a habit of using cheaper components on the VRM side and this probably led to the demise.
 
Thanks for the input guys. I wouldn't be mining if I didn't have free electricity. Can't pass up easy $$.
 
SlipperyPete said:
I did notice I foolishly had the switch on the PSU set on Quad Rail instead of Single Rail (what an idiot I didn't even check when I got it out of storage). Could this
Click to expand...

No. Multirail overcurrent protection does not kill cards... it's like the circuit breakers in your house. The whole unit shuts down when you exceed the trip point.

SlipperyPete said:
Thanks for the input guys. I wouldn't be mining if I didn't have free electricity. Can't pass up easy $$.
Click to expand...

That makes two of us :D
 
On the plus side... As long as there's no "residue" (don't ask me how they define it) on the card XFX seems to be pretty decent with RMAs.
 
intekmdma said:
What's wrong with their design? (sorry i'm newb)
Click to expand...

As others have touched on, they don't cool their VRMs very well with their coolers. And by "don't cool very well" I mean more along the lines of "Basically at all." They're known for having temps in the high 70s for the core while the VRMs, which deliver the power to the core, are baking at 105C.

As loud as reference coolers are, my 7970 always has much lower temps on the VRM than the core.

My msi 270x is usually about 5C hotter on the VRMs which isn't bad, considering it mines between 60-63C core
 
Hey SlipperyPete,

Have you started your support ticket yet? PM me the ticket # and ill get your RMA emailed over.

As far as our fans our concerned and currency mining... We get a fair amount of fan failures on this model because crypto-currency miners are using these cards for the security of the XFX Lifetime warranty. If its any consolation, we do send out replacement fans free of charge (as long as we have stock).
 
SlipperyPete said:
I had my XFX 7950 i bought in October in a second rig I built as a secondary LTC miner / future media server. It was chugging along nicely for a couple of weeks with good temps with my old Mushkin XP 800W PSU. Then one night I woke up and it was off. Turned it back on and thought nothing of it.

This morning it happened again and it would not turn on. I held down the power button and then hit it again...saw a flash inside the case with a !POP! and smelled smoke. Uh oh...had to go to work though.

Swung by MC on the way home and picked up another EVGA Supernova G2 1000W figuring the old PSU died. Plug it in with bare essentials (one mem stick, video card with power cables, cpu cable, mobo cable, no usb, no adapters, no fans drives or anything else). Flip the switch on PSU, then off again (did NOT press power). Press power with PSU switch flipped OFF and smoke is coming off the 7950, and that horrid smell.... :confused:

Go get a 290X out of my main rig and it boots fine. 7950 = toast. Did LTC mining kill it that quickly? Had a 120mm Panaflo on the side panel blowing directly on it. Tempts never went over 80.

I did notice I foolishly had the switch on the PSU set on Quad Rail instead of Single Rail (what an idiot I didn't even check when I got it out of storage). Could this combined with it's 5 year age have killed the card?

TL;DR I know but if anyone has any comments I'd love to hear them.
Click to expand...

I mined bitcoins for 16+ months and been mining litecoins now for 6 weeks. The wear and tear is mostly on the fans assuming good temps, none of my 17 cards died from mining but i did have to replace fans / turbines on a few.

I was never overvolted/overclocked while mining though.
 
XFXSupport said:
Hey SlipperyPete,

Have you started your support ticket yet? PM me the ticket # and ill get your RMA emailed over.

As far as our fans our concerned and currency mining... We get a fair amount of fan failures on this model because crypto-currency miners are using these cards for the security of the XFX Lifetime warranty. If its any consolation, we do send out replacement fans free of charge (as long as we have stock).
Click to expand...

this is legit. always good to see reps on the forums.
 
buttons said:
I mined bitcoins for 16+ months and been mining litecoins now for 6 weeks. The wear and tear is mostly on the fans assuming good temps, none of my 17 cards died from mining but i did have to replace fans / turbines on a few.

I was never overvolted/overclocked while mining though.
Click to expand...

Have you even banked anywhere close to paying for those 17 cards?
 
ekuest said:
this is legit. always good to see reps on the forums.
Click to expand...

Having a CS presence on forums doesn't make up for creating a product that was poorly designed from the get-go, IMO. The 79xx DD cards are ticking time bombs if you do heavy mining loads like that - the VRM cooling on those cards is inadequate.
 
My 7950 has been mining for a over a month at 77C no issues however, it is well known the XFX is the crappiest brand.
 
Its funny how everyone says XFX is the shitty brand, when I've had 3x more problems with MSI cards. I've replaced 4x MSI cards in the last 2 months and I have 5 XFX cards that run great. I have a XFX 6970 card that does 515khs all day, since day one and my MSI 6970s struggle to hit 480, (and I've had to replace 2 of the 4 I have running). I don't hesitate to buy XFX cards, I've had to replace one in the last 3 years (6870 card) and they sent me a replacement 7870 in less than a week.
 
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