[SOLVED] Waterblock installed => 2 capacitors blown => what caused this?

[bartvdk]

I'll try to be brief => installed a waterblock from Barrow on a Gigabyte Geforce RTX 2080 Super.
Everything worked fine, temperatures weren't going through the roof but after a good night of gaming one of a series of 7 capacitors blew. A few days later, a second one did the same.

The red arrows show the blown capacitors.

• I know the reasons can be multiple but here are a few hunches : these capacitors have no connection with the metal from the waterblock when the block is installed. There was some heat building up inside the case during the gaming runs but nothing really hot...
• My PSU can output 750 W (brand is XFX but the max total load of the PC is arround 650 W) => is this enough? Maybe there were voltage fluctuations?

The PC is still running and as long as I don't game, everything works fine. When I try to run a game that uses GPU ressources, the screen goes black after 30 seconds or so. The same thing happens when I run Superposition benchmark. The PC, still runs (Music continiues to play for example and I can hear Windows sounds...) but the GPU stops all output.

I'm wondering what I should do? I can order 2 capacitors and replace the faulty ones but I don't think that will solve the real problem. Any ideas?

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Make and model of the PSU and it's age? XFX is the brand while 750W is the wattage, it's not telling us what model or series it's from in XFX's lineup.

We'll need to know what the specs to your build are. Since you've been working with a custom loop(assuming) you will need to include the pars lists for that too.

The power delivery components could be replaced, if you looked hard enough for the right capacitors. The reason why those could've blown was due to the capacitors being sub par or even damaged over time(regular wear and tear) or that the block did indeed make contact with the block, via an arc. I see slight charring around the capacitors on the PCB's side, which would mean that they did have some form of fire...?

 

[bartvdk]

Here you go (all components are new except the PSU and GPU) :

PSU	XFX PRO750 XXX-edition (https://www.eteknix.com/xfx-pro-750w-xxx-edition-power-supply-review/) => 5 years old
Motherboard	Gigabyte X570 AORUS ULTRA
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 5600X - Processor
GPU	Gigabyte Geforce RTX 2080 Super 8 OG => 3 years old
Geheugen	G.Skill Trident Z Neo F4-3600C16D-32GTZNC - (2 strips of 16 GB)
M2	Mushkin Pilot-E, 2 TB SSD
HD	2 SDD's (1120 GB and 1480GB) + 2 Hard Disks 7200rpm (2 TB each)
reservoir + pump	EKWB EK-Quantum Kinetic FLT 240 D5 PWM D-RGB - Plexi watercooling
radiator	EKWB EK-CoolStream Classic SE 360 radiator
Fans	EKWB EK-Vardar EVO 120 RGB case fan
Coolant	EKWB EK-CryoFuel Clear (Concentraat) koelmiddel
fittings	EK-HTC Classic 16mm – Black Nickel
buizen	EKWB EK-Loop Hard Tube 16 mm 0.5 m - Acrylic buis
CPU-block	EK-Quantum Momentum Aorus X570 Master D-RGB - Plexi

Here I have a picture of the capacitor caps that were cleanly blown of :

According to the helpdesk from Mouser.com they could be replaced with this part : Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors - SMD

A full picture of the rig is here (not sure it helps but hey, it looks like a nice christmas tree)

 

[bartvdk]

I fear that by replacing the capacitors I won't tackle the real problem so any insight on why those babies have blown on a 3-year old GPU are more than welcome. I'm happy to provide extra information.

 

[bartvdk]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Make and model of the PSU and it's age? XFX is the brand while 750W is the wattage, it's not telling us what model or series it's from in XFX's lineup.

We'll need to know what the specs to your build are. Since you've been working with a custom loop(assuming) you will need to include the pars lists for that too.

The power delivery components could be replaced, if you looked hard enough for the right capacitors. The reason why those could've blown was due to the capacitors being sub par or even damaged over time(regular wear and tear) or that the block did indeed make contact with the block, via an arc. I see slight charring around the capacitors on the PCB's side, which would mean that they did have some form of fire...?

Well, here is a small update : I have replaced the two capacitors and everything works again. I can put the card again under stress and it runs games like baldurs gate 3 or sniper elite in Ultra settings. Occasionally, it stills blacks-out so there is an underlying problem that I haven't solved yet... no clue what it is. My original PSU has now been replaced with a Corsair that can output 1000 W but the system hardly goes over 350 Watts so my old PSU should have been able to handle it... Is there any software that I could run to monitor the GPU and see what happens when it blacks out? The system stills runs (music still plays, just the screen is black).

 

[A2D3RS0N]

Well, here is a small update : I have replaced the two capacitors and everything works again. I can put the card again under stress and it runs games like baldurs gate 3 or sniper elite in Ultra settings. Occasionally, it stills blacks-out so there is an underlying problem that I haven't solved yet... no clue what it is. My original PSU has now been replaced with a Corsair that can output 1000 W but the system hardly goes over 350 Watts so my old PSU should have been able to handle it... Is there any software that I could run to monitor the GPU and see what happens when it blacks out? The system stills runs (music still plays, just the screen is black).

The only advice I can give you, is to replace every capacitors on the GPU, think of it from an electrical engineers perspective, you can not see the damage inside the other capacitors and the new capacitors are harder to tell if their bad unlike older types, unless the cap blows. When a mechanic rebuilds a motor they don't just replace a few pistons and call it good and keep using old pistons with new ones, just to cause more damage to the engine, sorry I had to give you a metaphor to explain it so your not wasting anymore time. I will also note this for you and any of the readers of this form, most water blocks are poorly designed to the point they cause a form of insulation on other parts of the card, preventing the overall cooling of vital parts. Windows event Viewer can only help so much, and task manager, and their are some system monitor tools you can use to see whats happening during the events, if you use another computer to network to it, so you can see the events occurring, with a multi-display option enabled.

 

[InvalidError]

you can not see the damage inside the other capacitors and the new capacitors are harder to tell if their bad unlike older types

You may not be able to see it but you can certainly measure it with a capacitor ESR/ESL meter. If the meter's test voltage is low enough to keep ultra-low-voltage CMOS logic below threshold, you can even do in-circuit measurements.

That said, you are likely correct about the other caps getting damaged from having to pick up the blown caps' filtering burden and may also be sharing whatever issue caused the first two to fail - could have been a bad batch.

 

[Karadjgne]

I would assume heat buildup. If you look at the block, just to the left of that long blue thermal pad are several grooves routered into the acrylic. When you drop the block onto the gpu, those grooves slide over the top of the caps like an ill-fitting glove. They didn't make contact with any metal, totally surrounded by acrylic.

Caps might be good for a decent amount of heat, but those caps are part of the power circuit with the mosfets. Blow one and all the juice the gpu requires gets shared out on the other phases. Blow two and you are really stacking on the amperage, until the mosfets overheat and you get a blackscreen.

Honestly, I'd replace every last cap in that series, and make sure you get Good caps, not the craptastic stuff sold on ebay.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supplies-101,4193-5.html

Nice looking rig, tubing is a little convoluted, but as long as the pump can handle it, it's good.

Not a big fan of that barrow block, it's honestly a giant waste of acrylic with all the coolant just in that tiny section by the plate. My HeatkillerIV is a full block and on a 2070Super has a ton more heatpads.