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Help: Corrosion on GPU die

Associate
Joined
2 Jan 2007
Posts
673
Location
Nottingham
Hi all,

I recently purchased a GPU in the members market and I removed the heat sink to reapply thermal paste as normally do and as I was cleaning the old stuff off I noticed this corrosion on the GPU die.

uY3yaNUh.jpg

There was also a black mark on the heat sink that lined up with the corrosion (which I have since removed with some very fine sand paper).

Any ideas what this might be and whether I should be worried?
(The previous owner stated it has been used for mining in the past but has been used as a gaming GPU since with no issues)

Thanks in advance

-Aelred89
 
Soldato
Joined
23 May 2006
Posts
6,824
If it works it works. I would say no point worrying about it, highly unlikely seller would refund over it anyway so no point unduly stressing over it :)

That said it does look strange
 
Associate
OP
Joined
2 Jan 2007
Posts
673
Location
Nottingham
Thanks for all the input so far. The seller has been really good and has offered to take it back if I'm not happy.
That said, I ran MSI Kombustor overnight so it survived 8.5 hours at ~75 degrees.
I think our best guess is the stock thermal paste dried out and cracked and must have burned the die whilst mining, probably not helped by the fact one of the stock fans stopped working at some point.
I'll keep it as it was a good price (£130 delivered) but I think I'll always have it in the back of my mind.
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Jan 2010
Posts
4,806
Running it for 8.5 hours at 100% load can't have done it much good ether.

I expect it is much like you said, it's dried paste that has been cooking away while mining.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
2 Jan 2007
Posts
673
Location
Nottingham
Running it for 8.5 hours at 100% load can't have done it much good ether.

I expect it is much like you said, it's dried paste that has been cooking away while mining.
It's not overclocked so surely as long as it's not overheating it should run at 100% indefinitely, right? :eek: (imagine that's what it did in it's life as a miner)
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Jan 2010
Posts
4,806
It's not overclocked so surely as long as it's not overheating it should run at 100% indefinitely, right? :eek: (imagine that's what it did in it's life as a miner)
True but I wouldn't like to do it myself. Pinning a gpu to 100% for prolonged amounts if time is just asking for trouble
 
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