Quote Originally Posted by individual View Post
Blame AMD, they bought ATI.

trying to sound as un-technical as possible, but maybe the waterblocks are radiating lower temperatures to components of the board that arent meant to be cooled, eg. sensitive resistors, thermistors. I would suggest maybe put a peice of insulating foam, over the main board itself, of course cutting out areas where the waterblock makes direct contact with the chips, just a thought.

I know boards i used to work with at Redarc electronics, would have to be encased in silicon, not only for water protection but because if some of the components dropped below a certain level it would "mess up" the fine currents in some places, causing the board to malfunction. That is my theory with the 5970, I'm suggesting that it causes miniscule current/voltage/mA peaks and the card can detect it as a saftey feature, thinks it has been shorted, and freezes. Sounds a bit out there, but it happens, and any electronic enthusiast will know the colder components are the better they perform (contradiction?)

Ok AMD = bad

I guess your theory is plausible, but I don't really think probable. There are a couple of reasons why I say that. If the block is not in direct contact with a component the heat absorbtion is going to be minimal. Also, the water in the block is at best ambient temp, and probably after a while a few degrees above. The PCB components will all radiate some heat into the open spaces between the block and the PCB. Given the air in those tight spaces is likely stagnant I would think it would in fact be slightly warmer (not cooler) over time then with the stock blower.

Some of the problems cited sound very much like driver (or any on-board firmware) issues. For example I can imagine the card on start up checking that the fan is operational, but doesn't get a reading and goes into fault condition. It may then however recover because temps are good. Some of the other problems sound like overload or short circuit issues. SO....my theories. Is it possible the block is touching an exposed PCB "wire" when the card gets a little warm and expands just slightly? Are the thermal compounds that folks using completely non-conductive and if not has any oozed onto circuits?

And finally one last thing. When I took my stock cooler off I noticed 2 very small bits of silver metal on the table. I didn't give it much thought at the time, but could this be a more universal issue? Two, albeit extremely small, pieces of metal that don't fall on the table could certainly cause a multitude of problems if trapped on the board. Perhaps some folks should scan their boards very carefully with a magnifying glass. I dunno...just some thoughts here.