My PC includes two ASUS EAH4870 video cards
www.winterlight.org/4870.jpg
don't know if this will work from email
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121276R
I bought the first one last September, and then the second in
December. I wasn't going to buy the second one because so many people
in Newegg reviews said their fans were dying. But my fan had been OK,
and a call to ASUS tech support revealed that they were not having
an unusual failure rate and more importantly they told he I had to
have matching cards in order to enable crossfire. This turned out to
be wrong, on both counts.
My 4870s ran fine, supporting three large monitors until April second
when the fan on the one I bought in December failed. After a lot of
hassle I got a RMA from ASUS, and sent it off. Three weeks later it
came back. This one lasted a little over 24 hours before failing.
I got mad insisting on a replacement and was mostly ignored, but
after about two weeks of calls they finally sent me a return label,
ground, and another three weeks passed when a refurbished replacement
showed up. That lasted a little over a week before the fan went dead.
I got really mad but was told that I needed to speak to a special
third RMA person who would contact me, and after three RMAs they
wouldn't support the card again. No one has ever called me, and short
of a small claims action, which I am considering, there is not much I
can do other then deal with the problem.
I discovered there were no fans around around for GPUs of this
caliber that weren't enormous. I settled on a fan less solution am
Arctic Cooler Accelero S1 Rev 2 which was, surprisingly, was the
smallest thing I could find that was rated for a 4870.
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_&mID=105&language=en
I got it in the case, not easily, and it works, and no fan can go
bad, but if my other 4970's fan ever goes out it would be impossible
to get two of these in the case. Worse,... I can not hook up the
crossfire connectors because the cooler is just too high and the card
with the cooler only works in the first PCIe slot. And that brings me
to my questions.
Do they make extra long Crossfire connectors? Is it possible to
replace the GPU fan with something that is about the same size as the
one on it now? Or is every after market GPU cooling solution going to
be over the top?
thanks
