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So apparently on of the fans died on the Gigabyte windforce radeon 7970 HD video card, and several of the ceramic capacitors looks like they partially melted/burned. Surprisingly the card still works, and is stable at stock clocks. But I would still like to replace the caps. Here is what the caps look like. Some of them melted, others burned. Oh yeah, and these are out of warranty, or else I would RMA it.

Here is an image next to a ruler. I don't have any capilers nearby :/ but it looks like a 2mmx1.25mmx1.25mm size of capacitor.

Here is where the caps are. It's by the VRM which are underneath the copper heatsinks on top of the metal bar.


I'm thinking these might work as a replacement?
http://product.tdk.com/capacitor/mlcc/d ... H333J125AA
What do you guys think? 33 nF is probably sufficient right?

Without knowing what the capacitance of the fried caps was, there's no way of knowing whether 33nF is close or not. On the other hand, it looks like they may just be power rail bypass caps, in which case the exact capacitance is non-critical.

That's what I was thinking too, and that's why the card is still working even though I'm sure the capacitance at this point is waaaay off right now.

I cannot believe it is still working....usually when I see a board with one cap fried like that it is caput. Consider yourself lucky

Yeah I know right? Not only are there fried caps, there are 6 of them! And its still working stable. Found other owners of the windforce 7970 with similar problems, seems like any cap in the 10+ nf range should work. I'll try to replace them if the videocard becomes unstable.

I'd replace them right away. "When it becomes unstable" can easily turn into "when it dies from shorting or too much current".

If some are damaged I'd go ahead and replace all of them while you're at it. Doing surface-mount parts is a pain in the ass...but I'd rather do it all once than risk the rest of them popping down the road.

Contact Gigabyte and see if they can tell you what value those capacitors have. If RMA is out of the question, it can't hurt to ask just in case. Give them the names (C5225, etc.) of the capacitors you are looking to replace.

And I did already look for this on Gigabyte's website, but PCB parts is apparently too far down to publish on the card's page.

You will need to know voltage rating also.

Ceramic parts like that don't fry unless they are over-taxed with too much ripple current or they simply are running too close to the voltage rating, and have over-volted. Ceramics are tough to kill unless the design is bad to begin with, or something downstream is asking too much of it. This means the parts you replace these with should be better than what you are removing. If you can get the original values and ratings (which is unlikely) let me know and I will locate something that should last a little longer.

An aside: This is what can happen when you overclock and thus abnormally load a power supply on a dedicated device. Too much ripple current or an instability issue in the supply can overheat parts you would normally think as invincible.

superjawes wrote:

Contact Gigabyte and see if they can tell you what value those capacitors have. If RMA is out of the question, it can't hurt to ask just in case. Give them the names (C5225, etc.) of the capacitors you are looking to replace.

And I did already look for this on Gigabyte's website, but PCB parts is apparently too far down to publish on the card's page.

Yeah I contacted gigabyte, still haven't heard from them. The video card is still working by the way and hasn't crashed in weeks... i figured it would get more and more unstable until its unusable, but that hasn't happened yet

Are you sure it's out of warranty? My Windforce 7950 came with a 3-year warranty from Gigabyte as standard, and the 7970 has barely been available 18 months.

MrJP wrote:

Are you sure it's out of warranty? My Windforce 7950 came with a 3-year warranty from Gigabyte as standard, and the 7970 has barely been available 18 months.

Aftermarket cooler maybe?

Firestarter wrote:

MrJP wrote:

Are you sure it's out of warranty? My Windforce 7950 came with a 3-year warranty from Gigabyte as standard, and the 7970 has barely been available 18 months.

Aftermarket cooler maybe?

Yeah it's a different cooler so that probably voids the warranty? I'm not sure actually now that I think about it.