4870 Waterblock Options

[lyl]

You're great, many thanks for doing the tests.
I now fully agree with you that using a GPU only WB without active cooling will kill th eboard at those temperatures

It's really the VRM. Sad, it seems that the time of GPU only WB is done, unless we can fit some mosfets WB on the card

I think you may be jumping to conclusions here. GPU-only blocks are not 'done'. You just need good air flow to your components! The stock cooler provides direct air flow to the vregs/ram, and needs to be compensated for if you remove it.

From a failure analysis POV, if the OP's original card crashed multiple times, then finally died, thats a very good indication that one of the board's components were bad to begin with. Probably would have died if he would have kept using the stock cooler.