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RIP 6970

T

tangoseal

[H]F Junkie
2FA
Joined
Dec 18, 2010
Messages
9,777
Sigh.....

Its dead. Everyone wish a big formal RIP to my Sapphire 6970. I water cooled it, it ran nice for a day, then suddenly quit on me. I guess it was running a bit hot so I removed the block, cleaned the grease, and reapplied. My dumb ass got lazy and should have worn my wrist strap. Oh well the dependent card was killed by the caretaker. I even baked her in the oven to no avail.

And my 6990 that has been purchased and placed on back order is apparently pushed from what had a date to now TBD. sigh ....

RIP my sweet brown little baby. Guess Frys will get another 349 tomorrow for a new XFX. I am hemorrhaging money lately.

Oh and there is no chance in hell to warranty the Sapphire. The thermal pads were ripped bad when I took the factory sink off. No way to replace those unless someone here can recommend something.
 
How would sapphire know you ripped the thermal pads? if they pulled the heatsink off maybe they'd think they accidently ripped it off themselves...
 
novadaemon said:
How would sapphire know you ripped the thermal pads? if they pulled the heatsink off maybe they'd think they accidently ripped it off themselves...
Click to expand...
this, at worst you are out the 20 bucks for shipping, at best they replace the card and you save 300, roll the dice and rma the card.
 
tangoseal said:
Sigh.....

Its dead. Everyone wish a big formal RIP to my Sapphire 6970. I water cooled it, it ran nice for a day, then suddenly quit on me. I guess it was running a bit hot so I removed the block, cleaned the grease, and reapplied. My dumb ass got lazy and should have worn my wrist strap. Oh well the dependent card was killed by the caretaker. I even baked her in the oven to no avail.
Click to expand...

I have never used those before and that hasn't happened to me yet.
 
xBanzai89 said:
I have never used those before and that hasn't happened to me yet.
Click to expand...

It's a fact that esd failures don't always happen immediately, sometimes esd damage just causes early failures. Ever had any parts fail earlier than you expected?
 
n3zyd said:
this, at worst you are out the 20 bucks for shipping, at best they replace the card and you save 300, roll the dice and rma the card.
Click to expand...

Sorry for your loss OP. Thank you for being an honest person and not postulating a way to take advantage of the RMA process when you clearly were at fault.
 
xBanzai89 said:
I have never used those before and that hasn't happened to me yet.
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Agreed.

I've been taking computers apart/building new ones for 20 years. never used an ESD wrist strap, and never had any damaged components.

(well, at least not from ESD. I've accidentally ripped components off and crushed CPU's in my day, but never any ESD damage)
 
Zarathustra[H];1037410161 said:
Agreed.

I've been taking computers apart/building new ones for 20 years. never used an ESD wrist strap, and never had any damaged components.

(well, at least not from ESD. I've accidentally ripped components off and crushed CPU's in my day, but never any ESD damage)
Click to expand...

Me too. I've bent pins removing an AMD CPU, bent pins on an LGA775 board (or they were bent and I didn't notice - either way, can't RMA), and I've managed to snap a few PCIe retainer clips. But I've never had any hardware failures, other than a hard drive here and there - so I can't say ESD has ever been a problem.
 
Hey, I one upped you, and I think I may have killed my entire pc. ;) I left my pc idling yesterday during a game, and after 10 minutes or so, my pc exploded. :( Next thing I know, a burned smell came emanating from the pc. Now, nothing works. :( I just pray that my power supply was bad and it didn't take down the whole system with it.
 
addictedto60fps said:
Hey, I one upped you, and I think I may have killed my entire pc. ;) I left my pc idling yesterday during a game, and after 10 minutes or so, my pc exploded. :( Next thing I know, a burned smell came emanating from the pc. Now, nothing works. :( I just pray that my power supply was bad and it didn't take down the whole system with it.
Click to expand...

That really sucks!
 
Sounds like you just got a bad card bro. Or you smashed something on the board or didn't affix your waterblock correctly. Confirm if you did any actual damage yourself before writing it off.
 
I dropped pc off at repair shop. Crysis averted! Turns out it was bad power supply and amazingly enough, nothing else on my pc was damaged! :D I'll pick up the pc after work and then test it to make sure everything is ok. But this is good to hear! I was going crazy fearing that my whole pc was wiped out! Because of this fiasco, I got a Corsair 1200 watt power supply to be on the safe side.
 
tangoseal said:
Sigh.....

Its dead. Everyone wish a big formal RIP to my Sapphire 6970. I water cooled it, it ran nice for a day, then suddenly quit on me. I guess it was running a bit hot so I removed the block, cleaned the grease, and reapplied. My dumb ass got lazy and should have worn my wrist strap. Oh well the dependent card was killed by the caretaker. I even baked her in the oven to no avail.

And my 6990 that has been purchased and placed on back order is apparently pushed from what had a date to now TBD. sigh ....

RIP my sweet brown little baby. Guess Frys will get another 349 tomorrow for a new XFX. I am hemorrhaging money lately.

Oh and there is no chance in hell to warranty the Sapphire. The thermal pads were ripped bad when I took the factory sink off. No way to replace those unless someone here can recommend something.
Click to expand...

Run something a good month to 6 weeks before tearing the stock cooler off. Always a chance a new graphics card (or any piece of equipment) will die very early. Does not by any stretch mean that your chanhges to the card caused its demise. More likely was it just had a serious defect from the factory.
 
It is highly highly unlikely that static electricity caused your card to fail.
It is only really critical when you touch the pins directly. Then it can cause a small spark which can etch the pin. This can lead the pin or the card to fail prematurely.

So stop blaming yourself about the wrist strap. Now you might blame yourself for modifying the card.
 
Sapphire will replace the card. I sent mine in with after market clear thermal tape and all was good.
 
solaris54 said:
It is highly highly unlikely that static electricity caused your card to fail.
It is only really critical when you touch the pins directly. Then it can cause a small spark which can etch the pin. This can lead the pin or the card to fail prematurely.

So stop blaming yourself about the wrist strap. Now you might blame yourself for modifying the card.
Click to expand...

yeah static isn't going to kill modern electronics
 
This is funny, I had a Sapphire 6970 die on me this weekend as well. I guess it wasn't what you'd call a good sign when I couldn't even get 900mhz stable on stock vcore. I decided if it was going to be such a wuss of a card I'd just run it stock. This weekend it croaked, it'll POST but hangs at the windows splash screen.

Meanwhile my open box Asus 6950 unlocked and does 900mhz on 1.1vcore...How smoothly Sapphire's RMA goes will definitely influence whose cards I look for in the future.
 
Yeah ill call and get RMA authorization tomorrow sometime. I have the card put all the way back together. I can turn on my PC, watch it boot up, watch the raid card initialize, get no alerts or warnings, the fan on the GPU is turning, but the entire time I cant get any video signal out of the card so.

There was no physical damage anywhere. I thought maybe the thermal paste was causing an electrical bridge between contact so I gave the card a good (electronics grade) alcohol wash with electronic grade q-tips and still didnt work. RMA time.

In the meantime I have an XFX 6970 I just purchased to replace it and if my RMA goes through I will return the XFX or just add another block and water cool it as well and have quad cross fire once my 6990 gets here if it ever does.
 
It is not uncommon for ati cards to die after user tries to install 3rd party cooling. The problem usually isn't static but physical damage to the bare die. Careless mounting of heatsink or waterblock can cause the gpu itself to crack or chip. 3rd party coolers with inadequate cooling on vrm section or improper installation of vrm cooling can also kill the card due to overheating of the vrm components.
 
butterfliesrpretty said:
yeah static isn't going to kill modern electronics
Click to expand...

In this case it's unlikely that ESD caused the failure, but ESD damage can cause partial failures, where a part doesn't perform as well as it should, or early failures, such as where the device fails in 2 years instead of 4. Just because you haven't seen a part completely fail from ESD does not mean it doesn't exist.


That being said, with consumer electronics such as computers it's not that big a deal if you slightly zap a card. Much bigger deal when dealing with instrumentation and such.
 
esd??? for all the years building computers I've never had a pc component die from such am issue. I never used those wrist straps. unless you were grinding on the carpet or went exercising before hand; I dont think it was caused by it. try the rma dept and see what happens.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037410161 said:
Agreed.

I've been taking computers apart/building new ones for 20 years. never used an ESD wrist strap, and never had any damaged components.

(well, at least not from ESD. I've accidentally ripped components off and crushed CPU's in my day, but never any ESD damage)
Click to expand...

I have had similar experiences. I've been inside hundreds of PCs over the last 15 years and never bothered with a wrist strap. Pretty much any surface I can rest a PC flat on is fair game, and I often end up resting various PC parts on random cardboard boxes while working. I worked in a PC repair shop for two years at one point, getting wrist straps never even crossed our minds.

I think it is much more likely that the OP crunched something while removing or installing the water block a second time.
 
I did notice a small rough spot on the top of the gpu die. Almost like a tiny piece of metal that was sticking upl It could have been doomed from day one.

Its okay I got an RMA today. I will be shipping it out tomorrow.
 
I doubt when you replaced the block like you said that static electricity killed it, obviously it's possible but seems a little unlikely unless you were wearing socks and rubbing your feet on the carpet. Just by touching the pc case when taking the card out you would have grounded yourself and dispelled any static build up.

Maybe you tightened the water block too tight? i know some blocks i have used if you over tightened them they would crush the gpu (not from personal experience), or possibly even it was overheating because it was allready partially damaged which could be from something as simple as overclocking or volting the card.

If there was a weak component on the card it could fail from normal use let alone from the overclocking i imagine you did under water, overheating is a big sign something wasn't right.

If you are too honest a person to try rma it then fine, but what do you have to lose? you refitted the waterblock so ask yourself if you think you damaged it by being rough.

Edit: didn't see last post, good to see you got a replacement.
 
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