290X Overheating Issue

[chrisface]

So almost two years ago I decided to buy a 290x and after a bit of research I ended up getting the MSI 290x 4G. It's a hot card and with the reference 290x hitting 290x up to 95c, I wasn't very pleased that my after-market card was getting similar temps. But then again I've been using 2 * 2560x1440 screens so put the temperatures down to that. Not every card is the same as well and I thought I was just a bit unlucky.

Fast forward to now, temperatures were getting worse and my card was starting to throttle itself quite badly. I thought it was maybe coming to the end of it's life which is quite early for a card to fail. Before I sent it in for an RMA, I decided to see if I'd get any luck out of re-applying thermal compound to the GPU.

That's when I saw this.

http://imgur.com/a/8pUxS

After fixing it all up and putting it back together, surprise surprise, my temperatures drop significantly and I'm now comfortably overclocking the card.

Not cool MSI...

 

[NoobCannon]

weird, looks like something that was maybe protecting the bottom of the cooler when manufacturing. glad you got it sorted tho

 

[Howling]

The **** is that? O.o That's like getting a human finger in your spaghetti or something, MSI should send you free burgers for life or something ;D

 

[nails666]

Wow that's pretty poor, does indeed look like one of the little covers you get on the thermal compound on a heatsink.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Wow, that's not good!
I've not been a fan of MSI for a while now (although my 980s are MSI) but didn't expect anything quite like that from them. Still reinforces my dislike of the brand.

Just seeing this though does make me wonder what sort of a mess the TIM is in on my cards. Now I want to re-apply the TIM on all mine...

 

[nashathedog]

MSI's Hawaii cards sucked, It's a simple as that. It seems QC sucked too.

Congrat's if that solved the problem for you, I did a paste change on mine but it still sucked.

 

[chrisface]

The **** is that? O.o That's like getting a human finger in your spaghetti or something, MSI should send you free burgers for life or something ;D

I'd be pretty happy if I got free burgers for life, but I'd probably settle for a Fury X.

It seems that all the issues I was having have gone away now so that's good. It does definitely look like protective plastic from a heatsink. I imagine thousands of those flying around like confetti at the factory.

At least it didn't land square bang in the middle, that would probably have been worse.

 

[fs123]

If your temps were the same as a reference cooler that should have rang alarm bells. Always check reviews to get an idea of what temps a particular card should be getting.