Sapphire R9 270X not working properly - PSU to blame?

[alipmcg]

Hi, I recently bought a Sapphire R9 270X, but when I installed it I experienced strange dots appearing on the monitor connected to the DVI port (not the other one connected via VGA) at 1920*1080. It looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JuUHt0OTco&feature=youtu.be

Didn't seem to be affecting video performance in any other way, but I took the card out anyway because I was worried that my PSU (Alpine 700W) may not be as powerful as it should be, and I don't want to risk damaging the card. The R9 270X apparently needs 24A on the 12V rail, and my PSU says it can manage 38A on the 12V rail, however since buying it I've read some very negative reviews. It was cheap, but I thought that what it's rated for should be reliable info.

Has anyone seen anything similar to this, and if so were you able to pinpoint the problem? Thanks in advance for any advice

 

[ImDaBaron]

After doing a little bit of research it looks like their power supplies have quite a bit of issues. I would get rid of that thing ASAP. Get a good Seasonic,XFX or Corsair power supply.

 

[cin19]

From the youtube, you said the card is the 2nd hand one, and yes, that PSU is not the good one, so it is hard to say the problem is from PSU or GPU. If you can try the card in other PC if you have one, or in your friend PC. If the card works fine in other PC, that means the PSU has problem. And now you need to make sure the card work first, then buy the other PSU.

 

[alipmcg]

Yes, reviews for that PSU are mostly pretty bad, and I do wish I'd gone with a trusted name. Unfortunately I don't know anyone with a desktop gaming PC with a powerful enough PSU to test the GPU in.

I may buy a better PSU anyway just because I'm a bit worried about this one dying on me and taking my mobo with it. I'll post an update when anything new happens

 

[ImDaBaron]

Yes, reviews for that PSU are mostly pretty bad, and I do wish I'd gone with a trusted name. Unfortunately I don't know anyone with a desktop gaming PC with a powerful enough PSU to test the GPU in.

I may buy a better PSU anyway just because I'm a bit worried about this one dying on me and taking my mobo with it. I'll post an update when anything new happens

I would definitely do that....looks like most people are reporting blow ups from those PSUs.

 

[alipmcg]

Before I go and buy it, anyone have a positive/negative opinion of the Seasonic S12II-620 Bronze? Online reviews are all positive and it looks a bazillion times better than what I have now

 

[DeNachtwacht]

This really looks like a defect GPU. Is it a new one or possibly a second hand mining card?

 

[ImDaBaron]

Before I go and buy it, anyone have a positive/negative opinion of the Seasonic S12II-620 Bronze? Online reviews are all positive and it looks a bazillion times better than what I have now

I have one on another system. Great power supply.

 

[cin19]

Yes, Seasonic S12II-620 Bronze is pretty good, but if you use only single r9 270x, the PSU is all the way over kill, because even you an use the psu for CF r9 270x. Here is the one of the r9 270x review.
CF: system might draw 513W
one GPU: system might draw 290W to 328W
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/5984/sapphire-radeon-r9-270x-2gb-toxic-video-cards-in-crossfire/index22.html

 

[alipmcg]

This really looks like a defect GPU. Is it a new one or possibly a second hand mining card?

It's second hand, but it came with approx 18 months warranty remaining. No idea if it was used for mining.

 

[alipmcg]

Yes, Seasonic S12II-620 Bronze is pretty good, but if you use only single r9 270x, the PSU is all the way over kill, because even you an use the psu for CF r9 270x. Here is the one of the r9 270x review.
CF: system might draw 513W
one GPU: system might draw 290W to 328W
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/5984/sapphire-radeon-r9-270x-2gb-toxic-video-cards-in-crossfire/index22.html

Maybe I'll settle for the 520w model then. I was using the Asus Power Calculator (http://support.asus.com/powersupply.aspx) and it estimated minimum 600w PSU, but the Cooler Master Calculator (coolermaster.outervision.com/PSUEngine2) came up with a minimum of 417w.

 

[cin19]

The 520W will be enough. Those PSU calculators usually give you very inflated numbers, I will check the review for the GPU power consumption, and the most power draws are from the CPU and GPU
From the tweaktown.com review, they use i7 3960x ee @4.7Ghz, and the meter to check the power consumption, so it is the most accurate.

Here is other review, they use the i7 4770K @4GHz, and Kill-a-Watt to test, here is from the review: " the power consumption test results show the R9 270X will be kind on your power bill. Even with the card overclocked and the fan running at 100%, the total system draw never even sniffed 300 watts. Idle power draw was equally impressive with a mere 101 watts sitting idle at stock speeds. Good stuff here!" http://www.overclockers.com/amd-r9-270x-graphics-card-review

 

[alipmcg]

Installed the new Seasonic power supply and put the 270x back in today, and I have the same issue as before with dots on the screen. Looks like I'll have to send the card back.

Thanks for all the advice on this topic

 

[alipmcg]

So I didn't send the card back, eventually I managed to test the card in another system and it worked in that one flawlessly. Put it back in mine and the dots reappeared, but I do seem to be able to get rid of them temporarily by pressing the auto-adjust button on my monitor.

Seems unlikely that the monitor would be the sole culprit since I never had this issue with my old card, does anyone know of any BIOS settings that could be to blame? As far as I can tell the PCI-x16 slot is getting as much power as possible.

Ideally I'd like to test my card in the other system again but with my monitor, but that's getting a little impractical

 

[alipmcg]

In case anyone is following this, I've just rebuilt my old system in order to sell it, so I tried the R9 270x card in that one and there are no dots on the DVI monitor.

This seems to indicate that the problem is coming from the newer motherboard. Are there are any BIOS settings that might be set up wrong causing this?

Thanks for any advice