Hot card
You’re looking at the heat sink to an ATI Radeon X1600xt video card. The cooling fan failed, causing the chip to overheat and the heat sink to delaminate. The heat sink is soldered copper; lead-free solder melts at around 450 degrees Farenheit. You can tell that it actually melted and didn’t just weaken and break by the fact that there are strands between the heatsink and its base where it became liquid and flowed as the parts separated.
What’s remarkable is that this card still works. It shuts down after a few minutes of operation when it overheats, but it got hot enough to melt solder and still works. The Radion X1600 only pulls about 40 watts at peak 2D operation; it was the fact that the heat couldn’t go anywhere that caused it to mount up.
Next up; carbon nanotube or diamond chips that can run at much higher temperatures. But they’ll need entirely different kinds of heat sinks. Soldered copper clearly won’t cut it.
CPUs and GPUs are surprisingly resilient nowadays. Especially with the built in safety net of turning off the core when temps get too high.
The first computer I built around 99, 2000 had an AMD Duron 700 CPU. In my youth I forgot to use a heatsink with the CPU and it kept shutting itself off after only running for no more than 30 seconds. This kept happening for after trying to get the system up and running for awhile before the red light in the head started flashing. I called a local mom and pop computer store and they recommended a heatsink. After installing one that system ran perfectly and still today works just fine.
Come to think of it I have an ATI Radeon X1600xt video card but I never know that it has some features that is unique among others. Anyway since I never bother to get or watch out what is happening inside my CPU I never know that it is melting anyway thanks for this information I keep myself updated with my video card.
CPUs and graphics boards seem to be taking diverging paths as far as power requirements go. The CPU wattages range from 125 W max for an older 939 X2 Opteron, and now the typical is 65W max for an AM2 and even 45W for some models. Intel is doing even better.
High end graphics cards are becoming the gas hogs of computer systems. Most won’t function without at least a 600W-750W power supply (especially in SLI mode) and a specialized set of power plugs.
All that so you can play Crysis at high framerates at full res.
Heck! I’ve heard rumors that 3 Nvidia cards in SLI mode with a Quad core still can’t max out Crysis. That to me is pretty insane…
I must admit I don’t know what Crysis is… I have played solitaire and classic Asteroids. This card is from a public information system in our building.
Funny thing about the diagnosis. I was doing my zen techie act, moving my hands over the active circuit boards feeling for heat while my boss was checking the event log. We both nailed the shutdown cause within five seconds of each other.
There is a lot of pressure to reduce power consumption in CPU’s because of the size of server farms – I heard Google is locating new farms near hydroelectric dams. GPU chips in dedicated game systems are becoming the bargain of the supercomputer world, running protein-folding simulations, black hole collisions, 3d real time medical imaging, stuff like that. You might find a neuroscientist feeding the output of a SQUID helmet into a PS3 or Playstation cluster.
Correct! They also want to power their systems as much as possible from alternative energy sources. Google realizes the footprint of their server farms and wants to do what they can to lessen the impact.
< Heck! I’ve heard rumors that 3 Nvidia cards in SLI mode with a Quad core still can’t max out Crysis. That to me is pretty insane… >
“High framerates” for me would probably bore a teenage gamer to death.