Far Cry 3 killed my 560ti

[Markbnj]

So I've had this EVGA GTX560ti for about 15 months, purchased new from Newegg. A few days ago I bought Far Cry 3 on sale and started playing, on fairly high settings. All was well.

After a few days of play I began to notice faint sounds of fan death from within the case. I assumed it was just dust clogging crap up, and eventually I'd pop the case and vacuum it out.

Tonight while playing the graphics performance all of a sudden slowed to a crawl, then the monitor went black and the system gave a long and three short beeps (Asus, code for graphics card).

I pulled the system out and took it into the kitchen, popped the side panel. Not really that much dust. Vacuumed out what there was, then pulled the 560 and popped the shroud to clean the heatsink. While I had it open I noticed that the heatsink was pretty discolored. Might be normal. On a whim I gave one of the fans a spin and it hit one of the crossbars on the top of the shroud. Uh oh.

Took a close look and found that the heat of the card had warped the thin plastic 'Y' brackets that mount the fans to the shroud. One was so warped that the fan hit the crossbar, the other was warped but not as badly.

I made a little spacer out of cardboard to lift the fan clear of the crossbar then reassembled everything and powered up. Neither fan spun up. Occasionally they would make a couple of revs then stop again. I guess the heat cooked them.

Going to call EVGA in the morning, but until then, no more games /sob. Never had anything like this happen to a card in twenty years of PC gaming. Btw, the case is a coolermaster with four 80mm case fans, a 80mm blowhole fan, and a 120mm side fan. There are no other cards on either side of the GTX. Not like it wasn't getting air.

 

[2timer]

WTF?

The "y" brackets should never have gotten that hot to melt in the first place. Sounds like a faulty card design.

 

[amenx]

Tip. In future, consider temp monitoring programs like RealTemp, which includes the option of sounding an alarm or shutting your PC down when the CPU or GPU reach temp thresholds you have set. Minimal resource usage and sits in your taskbar tray.

 

[Markbnj]

After thinking about it last night I decided the order of events was probably that the fan or fans have been failing, allowing the card to get hot, and warping the brackets. A temp monitor would have been useful, for sure.

 

[Markbnj]

So I call EVGA. No problem, card's dead after 15 months. I can either hand over $200 and they'll cross-ship and credit my account when they get the old one back, or do an RMA and they'll ship the replacement when they get the old one. Even the cross-ship option takes 2-3 business days to approve and ship, so I said the hell with it, requested an RMA, and picked up an Asus GTX660 from Newegg. Hopefully will be here tomorrow.

Anyone interested in a new-in-box GTX560ti?

 

[Arkadrel]

a few days ago there was a thread about 570's killed by Crysis 3.
This kinda reminded me of this.


Strange GTX570 SLI failure - 2 cards die simultaneously - Crysis3?

My brother's rig just died. Both GTX 570 cards died completely, 24 hours after installing crysis3.

He sent the following pic, which is apparently representative of both cards. I've never seen anything like this before.

Any ideas what could have caused this? This doesn't look like overheating to me, maybe some sort of corrosion, but the comp is in a closed case, with filter mesh over all openings.

<removed picture>

Is it just my imagination or do nvidia cards die more often than AMD ones?

So I call EVGA. No problem, card's dead after 15 months. I can either hand over $200 and they'll cross-ship and credit my account when they get the old one back, or do an RMA and they'll ship the replacement when they get the old one. Even the cross-ship option takes 2-3 business days to approve and ship, so I said the hell with it, requested an RMA, and picked up an Asus GTX660 from Newegg. Hopefully will be here tomorrow.

Evga has good service.

 

[Dankk]

Anyone interested in a new-in-box GTX560ti?

AFAIK, the RMA-replacement cards manufacturers send out are usually refurbished, not new. (Not that it really makes any difference, but you shouldn't advertise it as "new".) I'm not sure if EVGA is any different.

 

[Markbnj]

AFAIK, the RMA-replacement cards manufacturers send out are usually refurbished, not new. (Not that it really makes any difference, but you shouldn't advertise it as "new".) I'm not sure if EVGA is any different.

Good to know! Of course, I would not have advertised a new card if it turned out to be a refurb, but at least now I know what to expect.

 

[Markbnj]

Is it just my imagination or do nvidia cards die more often than AMD ones?

This is the first time I've had one die, so from my own experience I would say no... but I haven't owned an AMD card.

And yes, I've heard EVGA has good service. I'll take it at face value. To me good service is what I got from Logitech when my G500 mouse died last week: shipping you a new one, throw the other one away, have a nice day.

Of course, people don't overclock mice, as far as I know, or bolt aftermarket coolers to them.

Edit: I forgot to mention the other thing that bugged me. The first time I called into their support they told me I had to go to their website and create an account, then register the product before they would process an RMA. U.S. consumer protection laws are explicit, as far as I know, about warranty protection not being dependent on product registration. I had the Newegg invoice, could easily have emailed it to them, but instead I had to hang up, go to evga.com, create an account, validate the account, register the product, then call them back.

So basically they got all of the benefits of forcing me to register before honoring their warranty on a 15 month-old $225 card.

 

[amenx]

a few days ago there was a thread about 570's killed by Crysis 3.
This kinda reminded me of this.


Strange GTX570 SLI failure - 2 cards die simultaneously - Crysis3?





Is it just my imagination or do nvidia cards die more often than AMD ones?

I would say they are about equal with AMD. Here are findings based on a much larger statistical base than a few forum posts:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-5/components-returns-rates-6.html

Statistics involved 100's of GPUs (see p1 for criteria).

 

[thilanliyan]

I definitely see more "my nV card" died threads.

For cards, 5 of the 6 cards with >5% failure rate were nVidia:
- 7.97% MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition/OC HD 6950
- 7.89% Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "Phantom" 3072MB
- 5.95% Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti OC 1024 MB
- 5.91% PNY GeForce GTX 560 1 GB
- 5.82% Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Ti "Golden Sample" 1024 MB
- 5.14% MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II OC 1 GB

But then for GPUs it's about even:
- Radeon HD 6870: 2.00% (as against 2.4%)
- Radeon HD 6950: 4.08% (as against 4.0%)
- Radeon HD 6970: 5.85% (as against 4.7%)
- GeForce GTX 560 Ti: 3.77% (as against 1.3%)
- GeForce GTX 570: 2.49% (as against 2.5%)
- GeForce GTX 580: 5.68% (as against 1.7%)

Maybe the sheer quantity of nVidia cards sold, which is probably higher than AMD, has an effect on the "cards failed" vs the "GPUs failed" numbers.

Ironically, I have the highest failure rate card, the MSI 6950 TF3, and one of the fans is crapping out, so I am RMAing that, but the card itself works fine.

 

[Arkadrel]

I would say they are about equal with AMD. Here are findings based on a much larger statistical base than a few forum posts:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-5/components-returns-rates-6.html

Statistics involved 100's of GPUs (see p1 for criteria).

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=+1]returns rates[/SIZE][/FONT]

Doesnt mean cards breaking down (it can mean that, but also other reasons for return).
Ive read many times where nvidia users try a AMD card, keep it a week and get fed up about drivers, and return cards and that sort.

I think that type is more common on AMDs side than nvidia's.
Nvidia has very loyal customers, that are used to nvidia's software (how it looks, is setup ect) and are easy to jump to blame, on AMD's drivers ect. Then go back to a nvidia card.


What I refured too, was the hardware aspect.
I just have a "feeling" looking at forums that nvidia cards usually dont last as long and have more breakdowns, than those from AMD generally do.

 

[amenx]

I definitely see more "my nV card" died threads.

For cards, 5 of the 6 cards with >5% failure rate were nVidia:
- 7.97% MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition/OC HD 6950
- 7.89% Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "Phantom" 3072MB
- 5.95% Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti OC 1024 MB
- 5.91% PNY GeForce GTX 560 1 GB
- 5.82% Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Ti "Golden Sample" 1024 MB
- 5.14% MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II OC 1 GB

But then for GPUs it's about even:
- Radeon HD 6870: 2.00% (as against 2.4%)
- Radeon HD 6950: 4.08% (as against 4.0%)
- Radeon HD 6970: 5.85% (as against 4.7%)
- GeForce GTX 560 Ti: 3.77% (as against 1.3%)
- GeForce GTX 570: 2.49% (as against 2.5%)
- GeForce GTX 580: 5.68% (as against 1.7%)

Maybe the sheer quantity of nVidia cards sold, which is probably higher than AMD, has an effect on the "cards failed" vs the "GPUs failed" numbers.

Ironically, I have the highest failure rate card, the MSI 6950 TF3, and one of the fans is crapping out, so I am RMAing that, but the card itself works fine.

I think a big factor in card failure as well is the AIB partner, where they may cut costs, use less robust parts or have poor quality control. Look at the figures again. Gainward. Now when you get back at the overall Nvidia/AMD models it evens out. All I know from this is that I will not be buying anything from Gainward, lol.

 

[Cloudfire777]

Why do people assume its the GPUs fault?

OP say he heard some noise from the fan. He also found discolouration on the heatsink and that the heat had cause some plastic to bend.
All of this point toward malfunctioning cooling system not properly cooling the GPU down. If this is the case then,

it have nothing to do with the silicon from Nvidia at all. Its the OEM, this time EVGA, who people should blame, who made the cooling system and the PCB and everything

 

[Markbnj]

Why do people assume its the GPUs fault?

OP say he heard some noise from the fan. He also found discolouration on the heatsink and that the heat had cause some plastic to bend.
All of this point toward malfunctioning cooling system not properly cooling the GPU down. If this is the case then,

it have nothing to do with the silicon from Nvidia at all. Its the OEM, this time EVGA, who people should blame, who made the cooling system and the PCB and everything

Yeah, I am convinced the fans failed and caused the card to overheat, and that's what warped the brackets. The fans are incredibly flimsy little things that look like they cost maybe a buck each.

 

[Obie327]

Not sure what you have...I have an Evga 560 ti 448 classified with the twin fan setup and know how cheap and flimsy those fans are..One of them shattered from rubbing against the plastic ribbed cross members. I was gonna rma it but found an old intel cpu fan cooler and just popped off the heat sync and placed it on the top where the bad one once was. If it was gf 110 chipset then then it probably burned up at this point. I like the aftermarket twin or more fan solutions for maximum cooling efficiencies. I have a regular msi 560 ti twin frozr oc and realize how hard that card is working on newer games. I gotta start turning down my settings for longevity sake! lol.

 

[Markbnj]

I might have done something similar if the card hadn't been under warranty. Does sound like we have the same fans, flimsy things mounted to a 'Y' bracket that fastens to the shroud. The brackets are really thin and flimsy too.

 

[svenge]

I definitely see more "my nV card" died threads.

Since NVIDIA has a ~60.7% long-term market share* in the discrete graphics sector, you should see 50% more threads like that, assuming that the reliability of both NVIDIA and AMD cards were equal.

*Source: Steam Hardware Survey, 9/2011 - 2/2013

 

[thilanliyan]

Since NVIDIA has a ~60.7% long-term market share* in the discrete graphics sector, you should see 50% more threads like that, assuming that the reliability of both NVIDIA and AMD cards were equal.

*Source: Steam Hardware Survey, 9/2011 - 2/2013

Yes, that could be the case also...from my original post:
"Maybe the sheer quantity of nVidia cards sold, which is probably higher than AMD, has an effect on the "cards failed" vs the "GPUs failed" numbers."

 

[svenge]

I was just elaborating on your point with hard data, that's all.