Asus 280x overheating and artifacting

[Raduque]

Friend of mine from work has an Asus 280x that she claims is overheating and artifacting. I'm thinking the fans failed (or are clogged) and the thermal paste/pad got cooked. The card is not dead, but she got tired of the artifacts and replaced it with a 980ti about a month ago.

I was thinking of offering her $80 for it and cleaning, repasting and replacing the fans if needed. Anybody think it's a good deal, or should I stay away due to the card being permanently damaged?

Edit: She doesn't do overclocking, and I believe the card to be the Matrix Platinum R9 because it's the only one with backplate.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

I say it's risky. There are a lot of one egg and one star reviews for this card, lots of complaints of artifacting and dying. There is this video suggesting the artifacting can be fixed with a BIOS flash, though. I say go for it if she'll let you repair it first and pay her if you get a working card out of it. Otherwise she should send it in for warranty (3 years).

 

[Bacon1]

Why not just borrow it, test it and then buy it or return it to her?

 

[DooKey]

I find most artifacting is a RAM problem when it's a GPU. However, overheated RAM might be the issue and maybe the paste has pulled away from the RAM. With that said I wouldn't offer $80 for a failing GPU hoping you can resurrect it. Maybe $40.

 

[thesmokingman]

If it doesn't work out you can turn it into a chair.

 

[MongGrel]

Still using an ASUS 280X DCII TOP myself for years now that's plugging along pretty well. Might upgrade soon, but things have been tight here awhile.

Hard to say, borrow the thing and buy it if you can get it to work, doesn't sound like she's using it for anything atm.

 

[Raduque]

Nah, it's just sitting in her closet. I'm going to see if she's open to letting me borrow the card and test/try to fix it before paying her. I'm fairly positive she would.

Edit: She'll be giving me the card on Thursday. I can't do anything with it till Tuesday the following week because I'm going out of town for the weekend.

 

[Ozzu]

I had issues with my 280x back when I bought it and ended up putting one of these on it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835426031

All my issues went away at that point. It's a SERIOUS pain in the butt putting it on though and kinda spendy considering how old the card is.

 

[ClockHound]

Or if you just want to cheapskate your way to stability. Remove the cooler, clean and replace the TIM, replace all thermal pads on ram and vrm with FujiPoly.

If the fans are hooped, then could replace with cheap versions from eBay or...replace with much better static pressure fans using zipties and duct tape.

 

[KaRLiToS]

If it doesn't work out you can turn it into a chair.

Hahahaha, that is Ranger's card.

:thumbsup: classic

 

[Raduque]

If anybody is still interested, I finally got the card. It's an Asus 280x DirectCU II TOP. Factory overclocked. Reading about it, it seems like the issues are because the ram is running at 1.6v when it should be running at 1.5v, and it has no VRAM cooling.

I'm going to put heatsinks on the VRAM and see what happens. I cleaned and replaced the TIM with good thermal grease, and will see what that gets me.

 

[MongGrel]

If anybody is still interested, I finally got the card. It's an Asus 280x DirectCU II TOP. Factory overclocked. Reading about it, it seems like the issues are because the ram is running at 1.6v when it should be running at 1.5v, and it has no VRAM cooling.

I'm going to put heatsinks on the VRAM and see what happens. I cleaned and replaced the TIM with good thermal grease, and will see what that gets me.

Mine has been running fine since I bought it when they were released.

I guess YMMV, or it was in a hot case maybe to begin with, or something.

 

[Raduque]

Mine has been running fine since I bought it when they were released.

I guess YMMV, or it was in a hot case maybe to begin with, or something.

A lot of people were having problems with it, even with supposed good cooling. I haven't seen any issues yet, but I was only loading the card to about 60% usage - I'm downloading Witcher 3 to see if I can load the card up more.

 

[MongGrel]

Mine will pixalate if I push the OC too far, that's just a fact of life I guess.

Maybe someone ran it way over factory settings too long.

I can still push mine well over stock factory OC.

 

[Raduque]

It's not pixilation, it's texture corruption.

 

[Yakk]

These cards have a BIOS upgrade on the Asus site. Asus' GPUtweak utility will check that for you and upgrade as needed. That BIOS upgrade fixed a few issues including some screen corruption.

If that doesn't fix the issue I run a few of these cards (mostly for mining, but I also gamed on a couple) and also had artifacts which were caused by what I figured out was overheating RAM from defective slow fans.

Try running the fans at max for testing and see if the corruption is still there. If it isn't make a new more aggressive fan curve with those heatsinks you put on.

 

[kawi6rr]

I had the same problem with my 280x DCII never really got it to work right but when I down clocked the ram a little it seemed to clean up the artifacting a little. Ended up replacing it with a 290 so now it just sits in a box, only used it for a few months.

 

[Raduque]

Yes, if I run the fans at 60% or higher, the artifacts go away. It's definitely heat. They also go away if I down clock to about 5900mhz vs the stock 6400ghz.

 

[Raduque]

Put some metal on the ram chips to act as a heatsink, and I can run it all day long at ~40% fan speed without artifacts at 6200mhz ram speed. I just ordered some actual heatsinks for the ram so with a stock fan curve, it should run fine at stock clocks with them.

 

[MongGrel]

My whole main rig is getting old these days, but

Yeah, my crammed in interior has never been fancy.

 

[Raduque]

Hah! I've been testing with a Core2Duo and 6gb ram.

Edit: $80 for this card is a steal. With the ramsinks, it should be perfect, and will make an excellent 1080p gaming card. If I could get another one for $80, I'd grab it in a second.

 

[Raduque]

Well, if anybody is still following this, the ramsinks were a rousing success. Artifacting is almost completely gone. I think if I change the fan curve so it ramps up faster a little sooner, it'll be perfect.

More than happy with the deal I got on this card.

 

[kawi6rr]

Good to hear, I'll sell you my 280x cheap and you can crossfire them. Let me know.

 

[Raduque]

Good to hear, I'll sell you my 280x cheap and you can crossfire them. Let me know.

How much? And how much for shipping? These are heavy cards.

 

[kawi6rr]

What's the rock bottom these cards are going for used? I'm at work right now so I can't check but I'll make it worth your while I have no use for it. I'll take the price of shipping off the cost of the card too.