Why people "happily" use the HR-03+ if it voids gu

They make noise, too.

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Andario
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Why people "happily" use the HR-03+ if it voids gu

Post by Andario » Wed Aug 01, 2007 7:50 am

I´ve been thinking about getting the HR-03 for my new 8800, but I just realized that it voids your guarantee. I asked the store I was planning to buy from, and they confirmed it.

If that´s true, I cannot understand why people "say no" to a 300-600$ card guarantee from day one so "happily", since even if you return the card with the original cooler, it would pretty easy to determine that the thermal paste is not the same (among other things).

Could anyone please tell me about this? First-hand experiences with faulty cards, perhaps?

(I have to say that I haven´t found many faulty 8800 cards (I haven´t been searching for them, though ...) but even in that case, I better double-check before I drop my 500 bucks...)

Thanks guys, appreciate it.

Andario
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Post by Andario » Wed Aug 01, 2007 7:53 am

For some reason, guARANTEE didn´t make it.

Sorry about that

nutball
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Post by nutball » Wed Aug 01, 2007 8:00 am

What are the alternatives?

Moogles
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Post by Moogles » Wed Aug 01, 2007 8:22 am

I doubt people just throw their $450 graphics card out the window because it went busto with an aftermarket cooler. Removing the stock heatsink and applying new thermal paste does not void your warranty. There is absolutely no way for them to determine you were using an aftermarket cooler.

I'm not advocating fraud here, but really, if you IMPROVE upon the stock cooling configuration and the card breaks down, it's quite unjust of a company to deny you your warranty. If you botch the installation of an aftermarket cooler and this results in your card going belly-up, then that's another matter entirely.

Matija
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Re: Why people "happily" use the HR-03+ if it void

Post by Matija » Wed Aug 01, 2007 8:45 am

When I removed the stock cooler from my X1950 Pro, I found the GPU swimming in a sea of silver goo. It would be no problem at all to squeeze a fifth of a tube onto the GPU, place the stock cooler back on, and not have them suspect a thing ;)

Anyway, let me tell you a little story.

About four months ago, I bought my Sapphire X1950 Pro. Little did I know that its cooling mechanism was so bad that the card *idled* at 55-60 degrees and hit well over 80 under load, all the while being so loud that I literally got ringing and pain in my ears after 15-20 minutes of playing a game. I never had the pleasure of hearing the first GeForce "leafblower", but I imagine it couldn't have been much worse than this one.

I did what was reasonable: bought the HR-03 and mounted it on the GPU. End result? Idle temperature 35-37, game temperature 51-54, artificial ATT load temperature 61. Yes, that is correct, the GPU was cooler while playing a game than what it idled on with the stock cooling.

But then I hit a problem: my card was one of the earlier X1950 cards, and as such, had a large design flaw - three VRM chips that heat up so much that you could boil an egg on them. I still haven't managed to solve that problem, but lovely mr. lazygun sent me his VRM heatspreader from the Accelero S1, so I hope to be able to fix the overheating issue once and for all as soon as I find some time to clean the card and mount the heatspreader.

If my card drops dead for some reason, yes, I'm going to cheat and return it with the stock cooler. Is it fair and moral, you ask? Well, do you think it's fair and moral that I've been sold an expensive card with a design flaw, which physically hurt me (that's no exaggeration!) through excessive noise?

If the graphics card manufacturers paid just a little bit more attention to cooling (surprisingly, "noname" PowerColor is just about the only one who does that), then there would be no need to cheat.

WR304
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Post by WR304 » Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:03 am

I tend to use new hardware stock for 2-3 days before making any changes. If there aren't any issues by then it's usually going to work ok.

For graphics cards EVGA allow you to swap the cooling on the card without affecting your warranty. :)

If there's obvious damage as a direct result then your warranty is void though.

http://www.evga.com/support/lifetime/

Faults with graphics cards tend to be focused on certain batches where a bad component has been used.

8800GTS cards seem to be quite reliable in general. :)

If there are issues it's nearly always the factory overclocked cards at higher clock speeds that will have problems rather than a stock card.

You're more likely to have problems with the faster (and hotter) 8800GTX than a 8800GTS.

viewtopic.php?t=37899

.

Max Slowik
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Post by Max Slowik » Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:44 am

EVGA isn't alone in letting people change the heatsinks; there are quite a few manufacturers who continue warrantied coverage after that kind of change. BFG and XFX come to mind...

And if you do have problems that aren't related to the swap, you can probably get away with putting the original heatsink back on. (So hang on to them.)

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Post by Rusty075 » Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:57 am

It seems odd to single out just the HR-03. The issue of aftermarket coolers affecting VGA card warranties has been around since the days of the GeForce2's and Golden Orbs. (probably even before that, but that's the earliest I can remember anyone selling addon gpu coolers).

For that matter, it technically applies to CPU's as well. Basically unenforced within the enthusiast market, these rules have always been here. It's the chance you take for increased performance.

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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:49 pm

yeah, people in the computer world lack devious knowledge.

It is sad to keep noticing this. hardly anyone I speak with knows of the formula for getting pixels STUCK on a screen.

yes, stuck.

it would make returning an lcd easy if say 20 pixels were stuck.

be funnier if it said F U with those stuck pixels but that would make life a bit more complicated.

gluing stuff back on is the best idea next to getting a company's card that promotes modding and re-gooping.

If i spent 450 dollars on a gfx card, I think I would make sure they had a liberal return policy. but eh, I think I may be too smart to spend 450 on a gfx card. catch 22 :P

jaldridge6
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Post by jaldridge6 » Thu Aug 02, 2007 8:14 pm

I'm not sure if anyones mentioned this.. too lazy to read it all, but, two things.

first of all it'll void your warranty or return because the chipset is fragile, doesn't have a shim, and most aftermarket heatsinks are big and a dunce could easily fracture the chipset.

that being said... ive replaced the TIM on card and mobo alike and still returned them, sent them in for RMA. I replaced the TIM on a dfi lanparty recently. after about 2 months of use it chumped out. I sent it in for RMA and they didn't mention anything about the TIM and fixed it up so my guess is so long as the chipset is intact it'll be cool.

I'm sure as things progress this will become more common place to allow the consumer to do mods.... all in the nature of competition. I mean, since most video cards are just reference boards with stock heatsinks anyways, it'll take some serious daft to get people to convert to a certain provider. I know Evga can be dicks about their RMA program. etc etc etc.

probably thats all been said above :(

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Post by Aris » Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:39 pm

i always keep the stock cooking heatsink/fan in case i have a problem with the card in the future. Swap it back on and RMA it back to the manufacturer.

Is it fraud or cheating? Not if the aftermarket cooler is not the reason for its failure. Now if i F'd up, and chipped my core or crushed my core with an aftermarket cooler, then thats my bad and i have to pay for it. Same thing as if you chipped a core with one of the older athlons, you just suck it up, buy a new CPU and pay closer attention to what your doing next time.

I'm definately not going to send the card in for RMA with a $50 heatsink on it that they may or may not send back to me. I'm not going to take that risk. And i cant just send it back without a heatsink on it at all, how then will they verify whats wrong with it since its not operational at all without a heatsink/fan. So the only logical thing to do IMO is send it back in its stock configuration. If the mounting of a 3rd party heatsink caused the problem they are going to be able to tell that anyhow, and if its not caused by an afermarket heatsink then its their faulty product, and it shouldnt matter what i did to it since i'm not the reason it failed.

Now that all said, i do my best to buy GFX cards with stock passive, or stock quiet VGA heatsinks on them. A lot of times you can find the exact same physical card made by another company with a stock cooler on it that is either very quiet already, or completely passive. So then i dont need to get an aftermarket heatsink for it. I'd just prefer not to have to hassle or expense of getting a new heatsink for my GFX cards.

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Post by SebRad » Fri Aug 03, 2007 4:46 am

Hi, I had a Radeon 9600pro that I fitted a VGA Silencer to. After ~6 months it died, think they were prone to it. Got RMA from the supplier, refitted original heatsink, sent it back and they sent a new replacement one, been fine ever since (~3 years)
Was bit miffed that they said send back all the bits and pieces it came with, which I did but the replacement didn’t come with some things, thing I missed most was the DVI-VGA adapter.
I think in most cases if you’ve got the original heatsink and can put it back on you’ll get away with it. Like someone else said I like to test things for several days before modifying them so I know they’re working properly. Think most electronics will die in first few days or not in first few months.
Regards, Seb

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Post by ryboto » Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:42 am

I do it for the pursuit of silence :D . If I can run the card passive, why not? Like every other user says, it might void the warranty, but if I keep the stock cooler, how can they possibly know if it's been removed? There's no sticker, no markings. My drive is for a mostly passive system, and if that can be achieved with stock cooling, I'd do it, but typically the passive version of a new card are much more than buying the fanned version and an aftermarket cooler.

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