Question about a comment on Newegg about ATI 5770

[xboxist]

Hi, I'm interested in a certain 5770 and someone left a 5/5 review but also went on to say this:

"PLEASE READ THIS!!! If you buy this card place a plastic insulator between the fan connector and heat sync. There is absolutely no clearance and when the heat sync gets hot it may melt the insulation resulting in a dead short on the fan power leads."

I'm not sure what to make of this. Makes it sound like horrible design? That, or this person is being WAY overcautious about something?

Thoughts?

Card in question:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CustomerReview

 

[Hey Zeus]

Powercolor sucks. Don't buy them

 

[happy medium]

Yes powercolor is more of a B class vender.
"A" class being Asus, XFX, MSI, EVGA.

 

[waffleironhead]

Powercolor sucks. Don't buy them

I've had absolutely the opposite experience with them.

 

[formulav8]

Theres nothing wrong with Power Color. They do alot of reference rebadging like many other 'high quality' companys. They put their sticker and at times a different hsf like many others...

I don't know about the question though. See if maybe others are having problems.


Jason

 

[CurseTheSky]

Wait, the heatsink is supposed to get hot enough to melt the plastic insulation on the fan wire?

After a very quick Google search, I came up with a estimate of 150C (302F) to melt the plastic insulation on electrical wires. Considering paper burns at 451F, that sounds somewhat reasonable to me.

So... is the heatsink supposed to be getting over 300 degrees? I don't know about you, but if I touched a heatsink that hot I would be sending whatever computer component it was back no questions asked. Considering I've touched a ~90C (~190F) processor heatsink before (to feel how hot it was before realizing it was overheating) and that felt quite hot.

In short... possible? Yes. Likely? I kind of doubt it.

 

[alexruiz]

I've had absolutely the opposite experience with them.

+1. I like their cards, the fans are usually bigger and quieter.

 

[soccerballtux]

Wait, the heatsink is supposed to get hot enough to melt the plastic insulation on the fan wire?

After a very quick Google search, I came up with a estimate of 150C (302F) to melt the plastic insulation on electrical wires. Considering paper burns at 451F, that sounds somewhat reasonable to me.

So... is the heatsink supposed to be getting over 300 degrees? I don't know about you, but if I touched a heatsink that hot I would be sending whatever computer component it was back no questions asked. Considering I've touched a ~90C (~190F) processor heatsink before (to feel how hot it was before realizing it was overheating) and that felt quite hot.

In short... possible? Yes. Likely? I kind of doubt it.

I would say basically impossible. That poster does not know that plastic can be molded/made for a specific temperature. All depends on the design. The heat sink will never get to 150C. It probably won't even get past 75C-- GPU would have to be COOKING an I mean 100C+ for the heatsink to be that hot.
I believe heatsinks have to be designed to not get hotter than...70C...to the touch...70C being the ~highest temperature that a human being can touch and pull away from (due to heat/pain) instinctively without having tissue damage. If I recall correctly. That might just be a voluntary limitation manufacturers put on themselves to save money in the legal department.

 

[edplayer]

I believe heatsinks have to be designed to not get hotter than...70C...to the touch...70C being the ~highest temperature that a human being can touch and pull away from (due to heat/pain) instinctively without having tissue damage. If I recall correctly. That might just be a voluntary limitation manufacturers put on themselves to save money in the legal department.

I don't understand that

How would a heatsink stop absorbing heat once it reached 70°C?

 

[CurseTheSky]

I don't understand that

How would a heatsink stop absorbing heat once it reached 70°C?

It wouldn't. But with how sensitive electronics are (and the fact that they DO NOT want to cause a house fire), I would imagine that they're designed to never go past a point such as that. If you get something hot enough to ignite dust, you have catastrophic a problem.

Think of the maximum temperature a CPU / GPU can go to before automatically shutting down or causing a BSOD - around 90C for a CPU and what, 110-120C for the average GPU? Additionally, the heatsink does not conduct 100% of the heat being produced (causes some losses), and heat is constantly being radiated. For a 100C GPU, I would imagine the heatsink would never get hotter than 60-70C or so.

Regardless, it should NEVER get hot enough to melt plastic. Even if you stuffed multiple hot GPUs / VRMs / memory ICs under the same heatsink, it would overheat the card and crash the system (thus cutting off the source of the heat and allowing it to cool) before it would melt something.

 

[Lean L]

Yes powercolor is more of a B class vender.
"A" class being Asus, XFX, MSI, EVGA.

this is one of those pulled out of ass statements.

The claim in the review holds no merit, unless this has been documented somewhere. The reviewer was saying in essence "I feel this way, therefore it is true".

 

[soccerballtux]

It wouldn't. But with how sensitive electronics are (and the fact that they DO NOT want to cause a house fire), I would imagine that they're designed to never go past a point such as that. If you get something hot enough to ignite dust, you have catastrophic a problem.

Think of the maximum temperature a CPU / GPU can go to before automatically shutting down or causing a BSOD - around 90C for a CPU and what, 110-120C for the average GPU? Additionally, the heatsink does not conduct 100% of the heat being produced (causes some losses), and heat is constantly being radiated. For a 100C GPU, I would imagine the heatsink would never get hotter than 60-70C or so.

Regardless, it should NEVER get hot enough to melt plastic. Even if you stuffed multiple hot GPUs / VRMs / memory ICs under the same heatsink, it would overheat the card and crash the system (thus cutting off the source of the heat and allowing it to cool) before it would melt something.

Yes-- thermal gradients. Huge gradients between the silicon transistor that record the temperature (Tjunction), the case of the chip (Tcase, as much as 25C from Tjunction), the heatsink, and finally the fins of the heatsink.

The top of the chip could be 100C, and the bottom of the heatsink the same, but because of the thermal gradient as heat is transferred through the fins and expended into the air, the parts of the fins you touch would be much cooler.

 

[xboxist]

lol... thanks for all of the comments. What I got out of this is that Powercolor is a horrible and awesome ATI vendor and the person on Newegg that left the comment doesn't know wtf they're talking about.

I think I'll get the card.

 

[NoQuarter]

The real question is, why would a plastic insulator protect the plastic insulator on the fan lead.

If you think the plastic is gonna melt use something you don't think is gonna melt.

 

[Occ]

"between the fan connector and heat sync."

-_-

Wouldn't worry about it...