Card for 5760x1080 gaming

[Confused Stu]

A few days ago I decided to change the Twin Frozr cooler on my primary 7970 to an Accelero Hybrid cooler as £75 was too good a deal on them not to, and I had a shim kicking around anyway. Worked perfectly for 24 hours, silent and much cooler, then the screens stopped getting a display. Have spent all day swapping bits between my 3 PC's and the conclusion is BOTH of my cards are shot and neither give any display to a screen! Can't explain how I managed to take out both my cards by fiddling with 1, but I can't argue with the facts - they're both dead.

Anyway, I'm going to sell both cards on eBay as faulty, sell my LAN gaming PC to raise funds, and buy a new card.

I game at 5760x1080 and have a fourth display (1600x1200) that shows monitoring software, emails, etc. I am torn between the 290X or a 7990, but I'm open to other ideas. As frame rate pacing hasn't hit Eyefinity yet, a single GPU is currently preferable, but a driver is rumoured to be coming in the next month to fix this. I am also worried that the tech improvements in the 290X will mean little further improvement in the 7000 series, but the 7990 has more raw horsepower to start with. It's so confusing for my little brain!

Any advice or suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

[almighty15]

Why can't you RMA the cards and continue to use them? You sure you didn't short anything out on you 7970's?

 

[Spudbrains]

Why can't you RMA the cards and continue to use them? You sure you didn't short anything out on you 7970's?

I was gonna say, That's got to be the most expensive way around a problem that might not be there.

 

[Confused Stu]

I've changed coolers on both cards so I assumed warranty was void on both.
My first one I bought in Jan 2012 so I guess it depends how long the warranty period was on that as to whether it's covered or not. The MSI card had a "warranty void if removed" sticker on a screw so I think the warranty's gone on that one.

Right now if I could have 2 working 7970's, I'd be so happy, but as I've messed with the cards, I didn't think RMA was possible.

 

[Spudbrains]

I take it you've tried googling the issue?

You seem pretty damn sure that it's definitely broken. :/

 

[Drangueos]

Usually MSI cards comes with 3 years warranty... also some retailers allow you to change the cooler.

I think you should put the default cooler back and try to RMA.... the worst you can get is a NO, that you already have.

 

[Confused Stu]

Nothing is displayed on any output of either card, but I can hear Windows startup normally. I've tried each card separately in 3 different PC's, each with the same result, tried my backup GPU (5770) in each PC and it worked perfectly. I've spent all day trying different configurations as I can't explain what happened, but the only conclusion that fits what I'm seeing is that both cards are unusable/dead.

I wish there was another conclusion, but I've honestly tried everything I can think of.

 

[Spudbrains]

What thermal paste did you use?

 

[Confused Stu]

Usually MSI cards comes with 3 years warranty... also some retailers allow you to change the cooler.

I think you should put the default cooler back and try to RMA.... the worst you can get is a NO, that you already have.

That's true. I suppose I've got nothing to lose apart from a few weeks and the cost of postage.

What thermal paste did you use?

Arctic Silver 5 on the Accelero I fitted to the VTX3D card last year (it's not been off since), MX-2 on the Accelero Hybrid I fitted to the MSI on Thursday, and MX-4 to the Twin Frozr cooler I refitted today.

 

[Spudbrains]

Just trying to determine if the paste was conductive and if it had shorted something.

This is quite the predicament, it could've been all manner of things, the one I suspect most now is that you might've statically shocked it. Were you grounded when you changed the coolers and the cards? Or were you wearing Nylon socks on carpet?

In all seriousness, that probably isn't the case I swap parts in my PC around all the time, I try and make sure to touch a radiator before I do it, most of the time I don't though. Just a possibility as all.