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Asus 7950 directu cu II Heat?

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I bought a pair of these cards, noticed some artifacts at stock settings just playing SWTor for an extended period. I thought I was seeing things but no... There it was.

Did a search for this model and found it's rumored on a few sites Asus may not have enough tension on their mondo heatsinks to keep the cards attached correctly. I can post up some links but just search faulty asus 7950 and you'll see plenty of talk on the matter.

I just dumped 1k on this for my multiple monitor setup, I'm a little disappointed. I bought these for the quiet factor even though they're hogging all my pcie slots up, wanted something good enough for high res eyefinity for a couple years.

So while it hasn't happened again, wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem. My cards are actually upside down so the heatsink is resting gravity down cooler on pcb and many peoples hunches are the problems are coming from the more common configuration.

I know first obviously solution is tighten the screws. The cards idle at 52 C which seems a wee bit high for a custom cooler application.

Buy a back plate? Shims? They're non returnable, I just want a couple few years out of em and really don't want to lose a bunch of money ebaying them and buying something else.

If you've had good or bad experiences either way with this card love to hear about it. I'd post up links to other sites but I don't think this site'd care for it
 
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I've heard bad things about them as well. Really, not returnable? That's horrible. I guess my next step would be to take them apart and see what kind of contact you have between the GPU and the cooler.
 
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I thought those card's had a multi year warranty? They definately have 1yr warranty. Do as erocker suggested and remove the HSF's clean & apply new TIM and try again :eek:
 
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I've heard bad things about them as well. Really, not returnable? That's horrible. I guess my next step would be to take them apart and see what kind of contact you have between the GPU and the cooler.

Yeah can do that but only so much you can see really. My 5850 toxic got torn apart trying to identify a problem but it looked flush, couldn't ever figure out why it ran hot.




I thought those card's had a multi year warranty? They definately have 1yr warranty. Do as erocker suggested and remove the HSF's clean & apply new TIM and try again :eek:

Don't mean to imply they don't have a warranty, it is 3 years. I just would rather re-sell them than deal with warranty issues. Before anyone jumps me for selling crappy cards, I gave full disclosure on the 5850 toxic I sold on this board being hot . I'd certainly mention the reason for the sale. Could probably just sell the boards alone for someone water cooling and the heat sinks alone for someone willing to take the gamble or just wanting something quieter. I'm pretty sure it's a reference board.

The 7970's come with a back plate in this series, wondering if that'd be enough extra pressure on em.

I'll pull em now, and reseat em and see how that does.b
 
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You may also want to try a custom fan profile, goodluck!
 

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I guess I got lucky with my HD7970 DCUII

Runs 27-30 on idle and 60c under full load in Battlefield 3 and other high-end games.

It's overclocked and +20% on the power control settings in CCC.
 

cadaveca

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I guess I got lucky with my HD7970 DCUII

Runs 27-30 on idle and 60c under full load in Battlefield 3 and other high-end games.

It's overclocked and +20% on the power control settings in CCC.

Sounds like you're running 1 monitor. The OP has three. His temps are normal for running multiple screens, no matter the card. Only way to get lower temps like running a single card is to run watercooling.

It's actually not very likely the cards are overheating, unless the coolers are not seated properly. Bad SYSTEM ram can cause video artifacting, too.

Heck, maybe the cooler was slightly dislodged during installation, and after some heat-up time, it's thinned out and fixed itself.

Until the problem is recurring, it's hard to actually call it a problem. :laugh:
 
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The 7970 version is totally different, uses a shorter, better cooler. That said it's had it's own problems. Asus is notoriously bad with screws. I've had boards from them missing a few on the heatsinks, and saw one guy who got no screws on any of his boards sinks. Of course to complicate things there's been many complaints of driver issues on crossfire setups with these news cards. So it's harder to track down issues like this.
 
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Ok, I know one of them was running at 52, I honestly didn't look at the other one.

For clarification, after putting new material on it, it's now having one idle at 53 and one at 35.

So I didn't improve much, however I am amazed after cracking it open there's nothing cooling anything but the main chip itself. I wish I'd known before buying, bought into the hype.

SWTOR is not a visually demanding game, even at extreme resolutions this pair of cards should not overheat.

Now the sad news. This is a poor smart phone clip but it shows you how little tension is on the main gpu chip. I can move it away from the card while it's attached to the card. Cinching down all the screws still has play. It moves freely back and forth on the chip. I honestly don't think the screws are right for the card, wondering if they're made for the 7970 with the back plate.

Lazy design, there's plenty of holes on the main pcb that could support keeping the cooler put and none are used. To clarify, If I hold the base and the video card vertically and move the top of the gpu cooler, it will literally move back and forth fully cinched.

Not a recommended purchase. I just hope the re-seat runs better.
http://youtu.be/pyp9FaqFrX4

 
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A lot of people reported this problem on Hard Forum, sorry to hear you have one with this issue, ASUS really dropped the ball on the 7950. No idea why they had to change it so much compared to the 7970 DCUII design, which apart from the VRM I now love the design, turns out my just recently replaced CM690 had horrible airflow compared to my new Carbide 300R.

Edit: If you're up for it, perhaps you could find shorter screws, or cut the existing ones?
 
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Fitseries3

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i have a 6970 dcuII and it acts funny sometimes. certain games just close and disappear without any explanation.

odd thing is, with the DCuII cooler, my 6970 runs cool but its VRMs are hot as shit. not sure whats up with that. i just keep good airflow across the card but VRMs are still hot. was wanting to upgrade to the gtx580 DCuII card but im not sure now perhaps going with a reference design card would be better?
 
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The DCII are very good cards, awesome PCB arrangement and over the top VRMs but they strangely have this passion for passive cooling on VRMs, they only get some airflow coming down between the GPU heatsink :(
I hope you can solve your problems man. :toast:
 
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