280X running at 1120/1650 1.2V, which is a rebranded 7970 I believe
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MSI response on Oil Fan Leakage!
- Thread starter Neil79
- Start date
280X running at 1120/1650 1.2V, which is a rebranded 7970 I believe
Associate
Let focus here ! are the fans the culprit or is it the used bearings ?
As I read it the fans themselves are fine, but the bearings are not..
As I read it the fans themselves are fine, but the bearings are not..
Yep
Soldato
That can't be true, you must've been mining at 100% fan speed. Msi says YOU LIE!
I know right, all this mining with GTX770 and no bitcoins as yet… oh wait....
MSI's Lightening Edition uses long life Dual Ball Bearing fans, unlike sleeve within Gaming Series fans. Can easily find tests on fan bearing design differences via Google search to show a sleeve bearing fan life expectancy is severely impacted when mounted horizontal, and not vertical, let alone the problem with these ones leaking.
You can move the fan blades easily up and down on bearing in some fans so if its upside down that going to be dangling by the bearing unlike say a case fan.
From working with fans/bearing in large motors I would say a bearing last longest if the fan is sitting on the bearing so fan is facing upwards.
From working with fans/bearing in large motors I would say a bearing last longest if the fan is sitting on the bearing so fan is facing upwards.
Caporegime
Ah, ok, as i say its a Tahiti LE, you have a Tahiti XT, its the same chip only you have the full fat 2048 SP enabled one.
I still think that's to hot at that fan speed for that cooling system
The LE's are notorious for running much warmer than their XT counterparts, but I've also seen instances of them actually performing better than XT's when overvolted... But of course the XT's clock higher, faster and probably produce more heat.
65 degrees, or even 75 is nothing for most AMD cards... With reference coolers my MSI 7950's used to happily sit @ 80 degrees with no fan problems or temperature related problems... Now using a non-reference cooler on a non MSI-7970 alongside an MSI 7950 TFIII my temps are not over 60 degrees most the time (running under volted, over clocked & mining). I could try running stock volts with my overclocks and see what happens, but I wouldn't expect any problems all the way up to 95 degrees under full load with these fans as... The MSI fans on the 7 series never had these problems (in my experience, I've had 4 MSI 7 series cards), the fans used on some of the 9 series do (but my 270 seems unaffected - yet!).
65 degrees, or even 75 is nothing for most AMD cards... With reference coolers my MSI 7950's used to happily sit @ 80 degrees with no fan problems or temperature related problems... Now using a non-reference cooler on a non MSI-7970 alongside an MSI 7950 TFIII my temps are not over 60 degrees most the time (running under volted, over clocked & mining). I could try running stock volts with my overclocks and see what happens, but I wouldn't expect any problems all the way up to 95 degrees under full load with these fans as... The MSI fans on the 7 series never had these problems (in my experience, I've had 4 MSI 7 series cards), the fans used on some of the 9 series do (but my 270 seems unaffected - yet!).
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Associate
MSI Statement RE: Fan Oil Issue
This has been posted elsewhere on these forums, but for those who may not see it...
Hi Guys,
Thanks to OCUK Staff members for bringing this forum topic to our attention.
We are aware that some customers have been experiencing issues with our latest AMD GAMING Graphics Cards, notably the R9 Series.
MSI takes this issue seriously.
What is the issue?
Some cards manufactured pre-January are experiencing oil leakage from the fans.
How is this caused?
Oil leaks from the fans hub when the fans are spinning at 100% over a long period of time under high heat conditions.
Why is this happening?
We have seen a huge spike in sales numbers since late November when the BitCoin-Cryptocurrency mining craze started to kick off. Thus, customers have been using our R9 Series of GAMING Graphics Cards since mid-December to mine coins over a 24-HR, 7 days a week period which these cards are not designed for.
The details...
Basically our cards are designed mainly for one thing.. gaming (the clue's in the name). They are not intended for use under "industrial" load conditions where they would be needed to run flat-out continuously day after day, week after week with potential high heat levels.
MSI HQ have been working on the fix since late December to make some changes to our Twin Frozr coolers to stop this from happening. At the centre of the fan there is a 3mm gap inside where a specially made gel is inserted to keep our fans running smoothly and quietly to give you the award-winning silent conditions during idle and gaming modes you have seen and/or heard about. MSI has since reduced this to 2mm. This doesn't sound much but has in fact solved one of the issues whereby there was extra space for air to squeeze inside the area alongside the gel to cause tiny air bubbles that (while at 100% fan load for a long period of time) forces the gel to leak out onto the fan shroud and surrounding area.
The final issue that was fixed was simply not to put as much gel inside the fans core. We intentionally put more gel into this area during production to ensure your cards would continue to run smoothly and that durability would never decrease. Sadly our good intentions came back to hurt us since many customers are using R9 Graphics Cards (and R7) to mine for coins jumping quickly onto the Cryptocurrency bandwagon. Our cards we're not designed for this. Under normal gaming conditions this would not happen (rare cases it may). MSI HQ wanted (yet again) to improve our award-winning Twin Frozr coolers further by solving any and all reliability questions of the running of our fans... hence more gel.
Unlike our competitors, our bearing is made from a special ring made from a mixture of pressed cooper shavings and oil – This unique design avoids the need of ball bearings so the fan can run quieter.
Those customers with Graphics Cards pre-January that are worrying about oil leaking in the future causing harm to the fans.. don't worry. The oil leaking is from the fans hub and not from the bearing, thus will not impact the lifetime running of the fans.
Is it safe?
Yes. The gel which has since turned into an oil like substance during high heat conditions will not harm you, nor your surrounding components in your PC. This gel is harmless, it is non-conductive and will not harm components on the motherboard – The gel is designed to work up to 140C so it will not burn out.
What do I do now?
As mentioned, HQ knows about the problems you have been experiencing and recommends you RMA your Graphics Card to our RMA centre for a replacement card with the new fixes.
Can you not just send some replacement fans or coolers?
No. While there are 0 issues with the PCB's, we cannot send you replacement fans and/or Twin Frozr coolers to do it yourself. One reason is we want to ensure you do not damage the PCB or cooler during installation (and thus voiding your warranty), but another reason is due to how we design the Twin Frozr coolers. You may not know this, but unlike many of our competitors who simply use the same cooler for every batch of cards, we engineer our coolers differently per each graphics card to ensure each cooler we place onto each GPU can handle the thermals produced from that very GPU since every GPU is different (silicone lottery).
We are very sorry if you have been affected by this issue. We hold our hands up, however we did have good intentions. Please RMA the Graphics Card back to us for a swift replacement.
This has been posted elsewhere on these forums, but for those who may not see it...
Hi Guys,
Thanks to OCUK Staff members for bringing this forum topic to our attention.
We are aware that some customers have been experiencing issues with our latest AMD GAMING Graphics Cards, notably the R9 Series.
MSI takes this issue seriously.
What is the issue?
Some cards manufactured pre-January are experiencing oil leakage from the fans.
How is this caused?
Oil leaks from the fans hub when the fans are spinning at 100% over a long period of time under high heat conditions.
Why is this happening?
We have seen a huge spike in sales numbers since late November when the BitCoin-Cryptocurrency mining craze started to kick off. Thus, customers have been using our R9 Series of GAMING Graphics Cards since mid-December to mine coins over a 24-HR, 7 days a week period which these cards are not designed for.
The details...
Basically our cards are designed mainly for one thing.. gaming (the clue's in the name). They are not intended for use under "industrial" load conditions where they would be needed to run flat-out continuously day after day, week after week with potential high heat levels.
MSI HQ have been working on the fix since late December to make some changes to our Twin Frozr coolers to stop this from happening. At the centre of the fan there is a 3mm gap inside where a specially made gel is inserted to keep our fans running smoothly and quietly to give you the award-winning silent conditions during idle and gaming modes you have seen and/or heard about. MSI has since reduced this to 2mm. This doesn't sound much but has in fact solved one of the issues whereby there was extra space for air to squeeze inside the area alongside the gel to cause tiny air bubbles that (while at 100% fan load for a long period of time) forces the gel to leak out onto the fan shroud and surrounding area.
The final issue that was fixed was simply not to put as much gel inside the fans core. We intentionally put more gel into this area during production to ensure your cards would continue to run smoothly and that durability would never decrease. Sadly our good intentions came back to hurt us since many customers are using R9 Graphics Cards (and R7) to mine for coins jumping quickly onto the Cryptocurrency bandwagon. Our cards we're not designed for this. Under normal gaming conditions this would not happen (rare cases it may). MSI HQ wanted (yet again) to improve our award-winning Twin Frozr coolers further by solving any and all reliability questions of the running of our fans... hence more gel.
Unlike our competitors, our bearing is made from a special ring made from a mixture of pressed cooper shavings and oil – This unique design avoids the need of ball bearings so the fan can run quieter.
Those customers with Graphics Cards pre-January that are worrying about oil leaking in the future causing harm to the fans.. don't worry. The oil leaking is from the fans hub and not from the bearing, thus will not impact the lifetime running of the fans.
Is it safe?
Yes. The gel which has since turned into an oil like substance during high heat conditions will not harm you, nor your surrounding components in your PC. This gel is harmless, it is non-conductive and will not harm components on the motherboard – The gel is designed to work up to 140C so it will not burn out.
What do I do now?
As mentioned, HQ knows about the problems you have been experiencing and recommends you RMA your Graphics Card to our RMA centre for a replacement card with the new fixes.
Can you not just send some replacement fans or coolers?
No. While there are 0 issues with the PCB's, we cannot send you replacement fans and/or Twin Frozr coolers to do it yourself. One reason is we want to ensure you do not damage the PCB or cooler during installation (and thus voiding your warranty), but another reason is due to how we design the Twin Frozr coolers. You may not know this, but unlike many of our competitors who simply use the same cooler for every batch of cards, we engineer our coolers differently per each graphics card to ensure each cooler we place onto each GPU can handle the thermals produced from that very GPU since every GPU is different (silicone lottery).
We are very sorry if you have been affected by this issue. We hold our hands up, however we did have good intentions. Please RMA the Graphics Card back to us for a swift replacement.
Firstly can I say thanks to Rawz for taking the time to track this post down and post what is (I assume) the official MSI stance on these problems. Kudo's for them holding their hand up and offering replacements/repairs under RMA for a problem only affecting a small percentage of cards in conditions they didn't foresee...
Now on to my thoughts (I'll be the first to admit I've not had a huge amount of experience with the R9 series MSI cards) so read them as you will (Ok, I admit, I wanted to post a response as nobody else had yet!
) First point:Several people have had the same problem as the miners this response is obviously targeted it... People who have not been mining, have young cards (some just days old) with the same issue as those mining for several months, so the issue is not just isolated to those mining... Another thought would be the 'fault rate' being higher in miners because they have multiple cards of the same revision and probably the same batches...
Next point: So the fans that have ceased (mining and gaming) which had obvious oil 'leaks'... The failures are totally unrelated to the leak? To me (and I'm no mechanical/electrical engineer) a fan losing oil would be more likely to wear/develop a fault... The oil is there for a reason after all!
And finally... Although my experience with the MSI R9 series cards is limited, I know already (just from looking at cards) that the different series' have different coolers (most obviously the number of heatpipes per card), but are you saying that the cards even have different fans, or are 'tuned' to the specific card? That (to me) sounds like a complete headache and waste of time and manpower. Could someone with multiple R9 series cards check the part numbers on the fans themselves to prove this (I'm expecting them to be all the same part number to be honest).
I'm not criticising MSI's response (actually far from it, they've gained some respect from me for admitting there is a problem and offering a solution) but to blame all the problems on 'mining' is a bit of a low blow as I'm sure MSI have profited more than most from the mining 'boom' recently (partly for having such kickass cards!)
*crawls back under rock*
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Hmm so as I said MSI are basically blaming people that are running 100% fan speeds and mining for very long periods of time. So what about the people that don't mine and only game?
Need more responses from people who don't mine ^
Need more responses from people who don't mine ^
Soldato
- Joined
- 14 Dec 2013
- Posts
- 2,589
If I get time tomorrow I will have a little looksee at how my 2 MSI 290x are holding up, although they haven't had much use yet to be fair.
Soldato
But do miners fans run at 100% all the time. I bet not, 70/80% fans speed maybe.
@ MSIRawZ, I do not believe for one that all failed cards are running in a hot environment and 100% fan doing mining (like claims from MSI pasted in 3 threads now)
To even say that is not very honest without knowing and its a good cover story to half admit a problem.
To even say that is not very honest without knowing and its a good cover story to half admit a problem.
Soldato
Found this picture on MSi forum showing inside the Power Logic PLD10010S12HH sleeve bearing fan fitted to a Gaming Edition cooler, which has seized up accourding to the post.
Looks the same inside to any generic sleeve bearing fan.
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Associate
I noticed from the other thread only Nvidia 770 users raised issues with leaks. I don't remember seeing any 780 users logging an issue.
I take it that this isn't likely to effect the 780 Lightning cooler, and is limited to the coolers used in the Gaming Edition cards?
I take it that this isn't likely to effect the 780 Lightning cooler, and is limited to the coolers used in the Gaming Edition cards?