R9 290 sudden death

P

Parak

n00b
Joined
Dec 15, 2005
Messages
31
Hey folks,

I bought a used Sapphire 290 two months ago, installing a G10 + H55 + Gelid v2 VRM sinks immediately. Temps were pretty amazing, 55c at full load on the GPU and about 60c max on the VRMs. Worked great with no issues at all at a minor overclock, then today just randomly keeled over while doing desktop work; black screen on all outputs. My old 5850 card works fine, but this one doesn't even show signs of heat anymore, with the vrm sink and the back staying cold to the touch.

Checked incoming voltages, which were all good. Leaving the card in the secondary pcie slot while using the old card as the primary doesn't even show the new card in device manager. Removed the cooler to check if the core got cracked somehow - nope, that's fine too.

If anyone happens to know where the issue might potentially be in such a scenario, I actually have some relevant tools that I can try to fix the problem with, knowing a bit of EE - multimeters, scope, rework stations. Obviously, I doubt that Sapphire would do anything for me as this was a second hand purchase :(
 
buying a used 290 is like playing a Russian roulette with half chamber being filled with bullets.
 
Sapphire does not transfer warranties to second-hand owners, so perhaps you could contact the original owner and get him/her to RMA it for you? This is assuming that the person you bought the card from is the original owner, of course.
 
TroyX said:
buying a used 290 is like playing a Russian roulette with half chamber being filled with bullets.
Click to expand...
Well, it depends on the vendor and there policy. Some AMD brands will transfer warranties because they are based on the serial, not the owner.

But buying used is hardly Russian roulette.

atp1916 said:
Sapphire does not transfer warranties to second-hand owners, so perhaps you could contact the original owner and get him/her to RMA it for you? This is assuming that the person you bought the card from is the original owner, of course.
Click to expand...

Yes, unfortunately he will need to contact the original owner to do an RMA. Hopefully that is possible, given the situation not sure what you can do. Maybe baking the card would help, but I'm not sure if that would do much good.
 
Shogon said:
But buying used is hardly Russian roulette.
Click to expand...

I believe he is referring to the fact that the reference cooling setup on the 290/Xs are quite crappy, and anybody that mined on them most likely ran the piss outta the cards..There isn't any way of knowing if the card was lightly used for gaming, or mined on 24/7, other then the seller's word.
 
Sapphire warranty does not transfer. You will need to contact the owner of the card to RMA it. Also is the card detected at all within the OS or another computer?
 
ccityinstaller said:
I believe he is referring to the fact that the reference cooling setup on the 290/Xs are quite crappy, and anybody that mined on them most likely ran the piss outta the cards..There isn't any way of knowing if the card was lightly used for gaming, or mined on 24/7, other then the seller's word.
Click to expand...

That's why you want to buy from vendors that warranty based on serial number. Those are generally transferable.

But yeah most GPUs today on eBay are probably heavily mined.

- The fans are usually the first thing to die on a GPU. Not sure what the MBTF of a blower is. Many non-reference coolers though are cheap PowerLogic sleeve bearing fans, which don't last long.

Other possibilities:
- The VRMs probably ran for 100% load for months on end at 90C+ temperatures
- Possibly the VRAM may have died as well (GPGPUs are very VRAM intensive)

The thing to keep in mind is that as a gamer, at most you're looking at a few hours of gaming. GPGPU operations, you're looking at months on end of 100% load that really stresses the GPU.

I think that now that ASICs are starting to flood the market, this whole mining phenomenon ought to start to be over.
 
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