One of my rigs started acting up today and I found some oil dripped on the mobo. I started looking for the source, and on the two rigs I checked I found visible oil dripping from the back end of three AMD cards. At first I thought I had blown a cap and it was leaking but after I took the back plate off all I found was a rubber like strip that was melting or leaking oil down the back plate and dripping onto the mobo below. I run my cards at ~60-65C so I have no idea what is going on.
<img src=“//cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/zcash/original/2X/e/ecb86c9fa4685d142ee31a15d41bf736edd2c144.jpg” width="690"height=“327”>
Anyone know what is going on here? I am really hoping I don’t have to clean this stuff off all my AMD cards.
Update: So after closer inspection 12 out of 14 RX480 cards have this sticky oil dripping. The two that don’t are XFX brand. This sticky stuff is all over my PSU’s, SSD, memory, PCIe slots and more.
Final update: Found threads on Etherum forum that they see this problem and its is a known issue with Nitro cards. Its silicone oozing from the memory heat transfer pad and will happen with 24X7 use. AMD says to just wipe it off… kinda hard to do once its inside a PCIe slot. So watch your AMD cards for this stuff oozing onto you other components.
Pulled out one of my Nitro R9 Fury cards and can confirm the above, oil leaking out of the heat transfer pad on the rear side of the card, in between the card and the heat spreader.
Have removed the faulty heat transfer pad and will monitor.
I notice oil gathering on top of my riser cards on nitro rig but didn’t put two and two together @cryptomined send all his back and receive replacements,I thought it was condensation and have been wiping it of
its grease from the thermal tape melting.
call sapphire and bitch. this kind of thermal tape is designed to melt and fill gaps, its not really faulty or defective… just a design flaw IMO.
Lets collect info in this thread and I will warn everyone.
I have previously confirmed this finding with others, so i have known for a while its not just me (about 2 months).
you cant really totally clean it off is the problem… you will have to RMA them if you want the problem totally gone. Now with the stain, if you sell it to someone second hand, and they find the stain, they will think that you sold them a card that you damaged when it is just Sapphires neglegence.
if it drips out, it can get on your motherboards, your PSU, etc… its a real pain in the ass… and to say i was upset to find this problem … is an understatement… i was downright
thats right and thats why i just bought a load of XFX and Dataland (powercolor) cards. I need to unscrew a dataland and see if they have the tape, and if so, remove it and replace it with a kind that does not melt (which my RMA’d sapphires now have)
Note: Sapphire has changed to the kind that will not melt for the 500 series… maybe due to my complaints. I talked to someone higher up in Sapphire.
Hi cryptomined. Back in town after being gone for a week, rigs are happily running but AMD cards are starting to drip again. I was planning to sell these rigs soon but I now have stains on the mobo where that stuff dripped. I tried to put in a ticket with AMD but only got this:
Do you have any contact info for AMD? When they replaced your cards did they send you new or refurbished cards? I just bought these cards in December. Also: did they send you replacements first or did you have to send in the RMA cards first? I would rather not take 4.4KS/s off-line when I am waiting for replacement cards.
Also got the parts in and going to try for 8 GPU’s on my rigs. The 7 GPU rigs are running great, never have a problem with them.
I think i got refurbished cards (they said new, but i dont think so), i was pissed to say the least, one would crash on first hash… and 2 of them were missing the OC bios (actually silent bios settings were on OC bios and nothing was on silent bios…nothing … wont even boot on silent switch…)
not happy to say the least.
i do have a contact but would prefer to wait until I finish before giving it out. anyways i had to take them offline and send them all in
Sorry for all your trouble. Thanks for sharing / warning all of us. I think I will try to get AMD to send me the new thermal pad used in the RX580 or just buy my own and replace.
actually i was lied to by sapphire, they told me I would get new replacements. I trusted them. only 2 of my 13 cards were issued new… the rest just had new thermal tape applied… stain is STILL THERE!
so yes for sure, just apply tape yourself and save yoursefl the headaches
Guys just a heads up I’ve taken one card and removed the thermal tape from the back plate and cleaned it all up and am running it without the tape. It makes no difference to GPU temp the back plate is cooler but still gets warm even without the tape! So if you get cards back on RMA I would advice just removing the backplate tape to be safe.
