Little help /w HD 3850

[Xazax]

So after this big blow up with a guy from Amazon.com market place who sold me a faulty HD 3850 256mb(temps reached 90C!) fighting with him and amazon. Told me to send the card and he cover shipping. Well he ended up not liking how much it cost me to Ship to him and refused the package. So i have the HD 3850 256mb back in my hands and Amazon sided with me and refunded me money back.

Basically i have a near useless card, now i cant Test the card because my AMD abit 630a Southbridge Heatsink interfers with the stock cooling blocking the PCI-E from fully going in.

Now i can do a few thing but what i really like to do is see if i can RMA it. However since i bought it from a user at market place i have no idea the brand or who made it my only clue is it says "ATI" on the fan... so who do i RMA it too if i can and will they accept it?

one of my buddies told me i can get a cooler for it but with it being possibly faulty i dont really feel like wasting the cash, but if anyone has a good AIR cooler for an HD 3850 series and be willing to let it go for 5-10 bucks then be that great.

So any help is appreciated

 

[sneekypeet]

there is a couple of questions here...90*c isnt off that much if its warm and there are no drivers installed.

So I ask this...what did you test on and how, to arive at the temp. value you presented?

Can you present a Screenie or even a picture of the card to aid in its identity?

You can get other coolers for it, I doubt highly for 5-10 bucks though!

 

[Xazax]

Well i had drivers installed, and i was running Furmark to test it out and saw temps hitting 90C on Stock cooler/Stock Clocks with 80% fan speed.

As for pics i dont have any showing the temp i will post a picture of the card later.
But from my understanding HD 3850's shouldnt get that hot 70C~ is about the highest i would think it should reach, even my 8800GT 256mb only hits about 65C will full Graphics load OC'ed

 

[sneekypeet]

if the fan was actually set at 80% I have to agree with you here. Have you tried removing the cooler , cleaning it really well with alcohol, and reapplying the TIM...maybe the heatsink got jarred in shipping. Have you inspected the fins...are they clear of debris or fuzz?

This of course is all dependant on the mobo clearence issues. Fixing it to sell it or whats the plan here?

Found others reporting 80*C also...known to happen on some cards it seems!
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=76075

This is what I found!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=is+80+degrees+too+hot+for+a+HD3850

 

[Xazax]

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/4610/sta60154rr0.jpg

http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/8513/sta60155pu7.jpg

Some pics!

 

[Xazax]

Well found out its an HIS

HISH385F256NP

how is HIS RMA department?

 

[erocker]

Have you tried some new thermal paste? With my 3850, I threw some MX-2 on it, set the fan to 70% and it idles around 39-41c

how is HIS RMA department?

With my one experience with them, slow.

 

[Xazax]

I got some Arctic silver 5 would be just as good right?

 

[sneekypeet]

Carefull not to apply too much...AS5 is conductive...it will do what you want , but just be careful!