Had a MOSFET blow on my GTX 260

M

Monkeypillow

Gawd
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
880
I was playing a game, then all of a sudden, my computer crashed. It cycled itself and began to boot, then a "plink" sound followed by a small burst of flame and a puff of black smoke -- scared me half to death. I would late come to find that the "plink" sound was the heatsink hitting the case floor after being blown off of the MOSFET.

I don't see any damage to the card other than some slight blackening of the fan header. Anything else (on other components) that I should look for? I'd be pretty upset if it damaged my classified. If it did, do you think EVGA would cove it since their card was responsible?
 
ShuttleLuv said:
Evga is an awesome company, should be no problem.
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Yeah, no kidding. The customer representative I spoke with was very polite and got everything set up in no time.

Their email said that I needed to upload a copy of my invoice to their website, but I did that when I registered the card. Is it just an automated email, or do I need to send it again?
 
Kantastic said:
Highly doubt EVGA would cover anything, bad company in general IMO.
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Has to be a joke. EVGA, XFX and BFG are all top notch. I bought a HIS this go round and have not had any problems, but I hate hearing the horror stories. I think BFG is still my number 1 pick
 
Syndicated_Death said:
enough of this bullshit of feeding the troll. what everyone seems to have forgotten is to ask for pictures of this very interesting explosive video card
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Yes. Pics. Can you try to recreate it? I'm sure the nice EVGA guys will not mind if you set fire to your card.
 
EVGA will take care of you, but most of the time under these rare occurances, they will request you email photos to one of the tech's to review before submitting an RMA, just to get an idea of what happened.

If the card did explode and damaged your classy in the process, the classy has a lifetime warranty as long as it is registered. ;) No worries there!
 
Syndicated_Death said:
enough of this bullshit of feeding the troll. what everyone seems to have forgotten is to ask for pictures of this very interesting explosive video card
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If I can figure out a way to steady this camera without a tripod, I'll get some pics.

one30eight said:
Yes. Pics. Can you try to recreate it? I'm sure the nice EVGA guys will not mind if you set fire to your card.
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Yeah, no. :D

vengence said:
Pics please before you send it off. (I'll ignore the troll)
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Marcam923 said:
EVGA will take care of you, but most of the time under these rare occurances, they will request you email photos to one of the tech's to review before submitting an RMA, just to get an idea of what happened.

If the card did explode and damaged your classy in the process, the classy has a lifetime warranty as long as it is registered. ;) No worries there!
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The motherboard appears to be fine. It's not nearly as bad as I was afraid of.
 
My question is:

How would a MOSFET cause the heatsink to fall off?

For those that don't know what a MOSFET is, it's this:

mosfet1.jpg


but there is no brackets screwed to/through any mosfets, as far as I know, in the world. (other than the small holes at the top of each chip, occasionally there's a screw there)
 
RADEoN said:
My question is:

How would a MOSFET cause the heatsink to fall off?

For those that don't know what a MOSFET is, it's this:

http://www.electronicrepairguide.com/mosfet1.jpg

but there is no brackets screwed to/through any mosfets, as far as I know, in the world. (other than the small holes at the top of each chip, occasionally there's a screw there)
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any decent video card has the mosfets under the main heatsink. so if it had enough force it might have ripped the whole thing off. indeed it is strange though.
 
Syndicated_Death said:
any decent video card has the mosfets under the main heatsink. so if it had enough force it might have ripped the whole thing off. indeed it is strange though.
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If that thing had enough force to break through 4 metal screws and an X-Clamp, I'm afraid to use a video card due to fire-hazard.
 
RADEoN said:
My question is:

How would a MOSFET cause the heatsink to fall off?

For those that don't know what a MOSFET is, it's this:



but there is no brackets screwed to/through any mosfets, as far as I know, in the world. (other than the small holes at the top of each chip, occasionally there's a screw there)[/QUOTE]

I have 2 theories:

1) He doesn't know what a mosfet is
or more likely
2) he had an aftermarket cooler on and it blew off one of the smaller memory heat sinks.
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vengence said:
I have 2 theories:

1) He doesn't know what a mosfet is
or more likely
2) he had an aftermarket cooler on and it blew off one of the smaller memory heat sinks.
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Or the aftermarket cooler wasn't properly mounted and it fell off and something got smoked.
 
RADEoN said:
My question is:

How would a MOSFET cause the heatsink to fall off?

For those that don't know what a MOSFET is, it's this:

but there is no brackets screwed to/through any mosfets, as far as I know, in the world. (other than the small holes at the top of each chip, occasionally there's a screw there)
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I was using a GPU-only water block along with individual heatsinks for the RAM and MOSFETs. No, the entire stock cooler was not blown off, though that'd make one hell of a story.
 
RADEoN said:
Or the aftermarket cooler wasn't properly mounted and it fell off and something got smoked.
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Everything was secure. The thermal pads were whatever 3M variety Enzotech provides with their heatsinks. I ran the setup for a day or so on my desk, loading and idling to heat the pads. They were on there snug. That's the only one that went.

Each board had 28 heatsinks. If it were an installation problem, I'd think more than one would fail. MOSFETs are pretty tolerant of high heat (some with operating ranges reaching 150°C), and they were supplied with good airflow. I don't think they overheated.
 
The photography isn't the best, but it shows what went wrong. The last picture is the working card. I'm pretty sure I cooled everything adequately. ;)

 
MOSFET = Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor.
 
Zero82z said:
I said a MOSFET is a transistor, not a transistor is a MOSFET ;).
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sorry i misread your quote first, but all good :)

man all this talk about transistors makes me want to break out the old electronics box. :D
 
Monkeypillow said:
Whatever it was, it made one hell of a fire ball. :D
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You'd be surprised, silicon and germanium can go ballistic when it over heats, I've made some pretty dumb mistakes before and accidentally short transistors/diodes, horrible smell then.. *POP!*. Did that recently on a ZVS driver for a flyback actually.. man the smell..
 
I would find some better sinks for the next one, maybe ones with better coverage instead of individual coverage. Better yet, a full coverage block.
 
horrible smell
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The smell is bad, although I'm really never sure if the smell is worse or it's the knowledge of what that smell that really upsets me :(
 
Kantastic said:
Highly doubt EVGA would cover anything, bad company in general IMO.
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You know that may or may not be true. However one thing to keep in mind is you can almost always replace a company name with anything about some consumer being screwed over by the company, but you know what never changes is the consumer says something like, "one day the motor in my car just stopped running." When the truth is he added some aftermarket cam shafts or something and didn't install them correctly or something else. Then he tries to claim warranty and gets denied. Then the dude goes and starts some thread on superhonda.com, evolutionm.net, 6speedonline.com, etc.. saying how the manufacturer screwed him over.

Yep the same threads pop up all over car forums and other consumer product forums all day long. The company name changes just the customer excuses stay the same.


I hope your card is replaced and all goes well.
 
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