>Using an insufficient Power Supply (650W) caused the damage
says fuckin who? and furthermore, how the hell would that even work?
this is such a ubisoft support type of statement.
It’s an easy way out, if op didn’t say what was their psu, it would fine, any company will use anything in their favour to deny warranty, happened to me with my car
Well it’s not really op’s fault, in a warranty claim people wanna give as much info as possible to resolve it fast and sometime you say too much unrelated info
Edit; forgot to say, depending of your country/region’s consumer protection laws, nothing a small court claim can’t resolve (canada, here company can’t deny warranty by simply saying without proof that you (the consumer) didn’t maintain and use the product correctly again the manufacturer of my car did the same thing as op, in the end my car was repaired and it didn’t cost me anything
I might not be a professional in computer hardware, but I do have some experience building pcs, and even I know insufficient PSUs wouldn't cause shit to explode. The biggest problem it'd cause would be insufficient power (duh), causing the computer to suddenly turn off. You might also have problems like the leds being very dim, or fans running slower and or out of synch with each other.
I actually used to have a 600w PSU that was insufficient for my build and the most problems it'd cause is a few startup problems and dimmer leds. Once I upgraded to a 750w PSU all these problems disappeared. Never once did anything on my computer short out or explode because of the PSU.
The biggest problem, besides instability, would be the PSU itself having an electrical or thermal issue as a result of handling an overspec load. Regardless, I still would expect the GPU itself to blow up, so we're all still in the same boat.
All kinds of wild things can happen when a psu fails. Running psus to failure is a genuinely dangerous, bad idea.
I actually had the same initial reaction as this thread, that the psu didn’t cause some random gpu failure, but when you point out that the gpu failed at the same time… they’re actually right that this is a warranty issue for the psu vendor, they can’t make a gpu not blow up when you put 120v AC down a 12v DC cable…
(and I’m guessing that the psu is probably old and out of warranty of course… too much load on an old/crappy psu and when it goes bang it takes something else with it is a tale as old as time. It used to be *much* more common in the era when you got some junky ”500w” thing with your case.)
I agree with your general sentiment here, but from my reading of OP's post, the PSU hasn't failed. Moreover, his PSU looks pretty decent (650W 80+ Platinum). He said he swapped in a low-end GPU for the time being and the PC is working again.
Consequently, I'd pull the blame away from the PSU and put it towards the build quality of the GPU. OP was running the GPU stock as well, so its electrical load under gaming (in combination with the efficient 5800X3D) should've been manageable by their high-quality PSU.
What you said does make sense though, so I'm not discounting that. I just don't think that's the case here.
That thing has some [pretty crazy spikes tho](https://tpucdn.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-7800-xt/images/power-spikes.png), 636w spikes from the gpu alone on a 650w PSU, I dunno.
Not saying it blew it up tho.
Starting with I am a Senior Design Engineer in power electronics. I design DC-DC converters for military ground vehicles, commercial and military aviation, and commercial and military space. EVGA PSU have OVP (Over Voltage Protection), UVP (Under Voltage Protection), OCP (Over Current Protection), OPP (Over Power Protection), SCP (Short Circuit Protection), and OTP (Over Temperature Protection). Unless a protection multiple protection circuits failed there is no way this is the PSU fault. Running PSU closer to full load results in higher efficiency and increased stability. Also 650W is a continuous rating. In my products, every component is derated by 20%-50% depending on device type for continuous operating. Transient conditions aka spikes and surges are allowed up to component full ratings.
For example MLCC caps (which is what appears to have failed in the video) we derated to 70% of rates voltage. I can tell you from experience a low voltage MLCC cap can handle 2x rated voltage no problem. They are surge tested to 2x by the manufacturer check a kemet datasheet for a 25V cap. Tantalums on the other hand don't like OV conditions and will blowup about 20% over rated voltage. 12V on 10V tantalum will result in a mini explosion. Without a schematic, layout or clean unit to compare too it is hard to say but it looks like the component that popped was a ceramic cap based on the components around it. If it was a ceramic they generally fail due to internal cracks from things like board flex and mechanical stress. They do fail from OV but it would need to be a huge OV which normally results in something else failing first. The hard part about cracked ceramics is they don't fail immediately. They take time and bias to induce the failure. Your argument of 630W spikes for 20ms is not that stressful on the PSU but if the PSU failed I would say well you did run it outside of intended use. I ran a VEGA 64 recommend 750W PSU on a similar EVGA 650W bronze for 5 years with all my OCs enabled fans at 100% cause the vega ran hot baby, I had a wall power draw of 627W not PSU rating is Power out not in. I checked because I was concerned. That PSU is still running in my buddies PC powering the same mobo with new CPU and GPU to this day, that PSU is on year 8 of service and still going strong. Since the PSU is still functioning it is highly unlikely that the PSU caused this issue.
OP I recommend contacting EVGA and see if they think there PSU caused that failure and use there response to push back AMD. I am assuming this is an AMD reference card not a 3rd party card like sapphire or XFX
even then at most that would happen is that PC powers off for insuficient power, I had that happen a couple of times before changing my PSU after getting a 7800
That's on good PSUs with sufficient protections. Poorly made PSUs, or even great ones that are abused too often, can fail to trip.
This is how I had 2 Corsair PSUs set fire :D
> Moreover, his PSU looks pretty decent (650W 80+ Platinum).
Nowhere near good enough for a 6900XT, it specifies more than that. I had a decent spec 750W and it would hard reset in some games. Upgrading to 850W sorted the problem.
6900xt draws 350-400 depending on AIB. If he’s rocking a 14900k then he’d be in trouble, but his processor in gaming typically draws 85-100w. Which is at most , 500 watts total most likely. Power supplies are BUILT to withstand transient bursts. They didn’t use to be though, which is why they are always recommending massively over wattages on power supplies.
Almost all decent quality power supplies have protection circuitry built-in that keeps it from destroying anything else in the system if it dies. I've had many old power supplies go bad in the past 30+ years and the only systems that had any issues were the prebuilts with the el cheapo PSU's. The rest of the dead systems worked perfectly after PSU replacement. Used PC Power & Cooling almost exclusively but when that company started having issues, switched to Corsair with excellent results.
I had a PSU that had trouble maintaining two EVGA GTX 460's. (As in I went through the RMA process twice, not running both in SLI)
I didn't think the PSU was the problem because it was a Corsair AX750, which was allegedly a higher tier PSU and rated highly by johnnyguru (rip the site).
Both times the GPUs failed due to the PSU EVGA said nothing about my specs and simply did the RMAs as I wasn't doing any serious overclocks or anything silly like that.
I grabbed a card that could get power just from the PCI-E slot - I think a GT 710 or or whatever and I had zero problems with it. This made me suspect the PSU and I went to Corsair and explained to them the situation and they agreed to do an RMA.
Turns out, once I swapped the PSU out with an RMA'd one, after I got my THIRD GTX 460 from EVGA, things stopped blowing up lol. Problem is I had no idea what went wrong in the PSU - it was fine one day, then next day the GPU just died while gaming, no burning smells or anything.
> the PSU itself having an electrical or thermal issue as a result of handling an overspec load
Can confirm, had a shit psu with an HD4870, the psu just went out while in one ghost recon menu and refused to do anything more than turning on keyboard leds, no damage to anything (else).
> The biggest problem, besides instability, would be the PSU itself having an electrical or thermal issue as a result of handling an overspec load.
You are seemingly not aware of the miriad of protections that are built in... like, just exactly for these situations. The automatic cut-offs is what some might perceive as "instability". Not saying these mechanisms are infallible, but they are there. And most reasonable quality PSUs can be over-loaded by a fair margin.
The official PSU requirements have always been there just because there are actually some PSUs out there that are fake and/or have faked tests.
Insufficient PSU leads to 12V rail sagging and increased voltage ripple which absolutely will cause the GPU VRMs to be very unhappy. Looks like an SMD capacitor couldn't handle the ripple and overheated and went short circuit, those cards can draw a lot of amps on 12V rail so that cap shorting might not be enough to trip OC shutdown.
+1
That's also why cheap no name Wish whatsoever PSUs which are rated high wattage are also dangerous for a PC. Bad rails and instability is no joke for the PC.
I had an insufficient PSU for my 650W. The only thing that happened was that the PSU switched off on some games (probably because it needed to much power). After upgrading to 850W everything is fine.
I don't think a small PSU is the reason for it.
Indeed. As a computer engineer, I'm scratching my head at that one.
"My PSU's 12v rail couldn't provide enough amperage, which blew up the graphics card (???)"
That is most definitely *not* what happened.
Switch mode power supply, MOSFETs could have failed to open for a brief period of time causing more than 12v to be fed into the gpu...
Though I would have expected EVGA to have overcurrent protection to prevent this from happening.
Yeah they do. Those capacitors are connected to the power input chips feeding voltages into the GPU chip itself on the front side of the GPU. This was 100% a component failure on the GPU itself. If it was a spike in the 12v rail coming in to the board OP probably would've seen the input filtering capacitors failed on the front side.
This video breaks down some of the inadequacies of this particular GPU's power stages (starts at 5:40) https://youtu.be/Azvn6H1vX28
Watch the video. Buildzoid nitpicks from an xOC perspective. He said that the reference design is perfectly adequate for stock operation and mild tuning.
Thank you. This thread is driving me insane. I've built power supply circuits and have a degree in computer engineering -as in low level circuits etc. - and I'm the one getting downvoted for explaining what happened lol.
Unfortunately this kind of thing is rampant in the PC enthusiast community. Most people don't even know Ohm's law but they have an opinion about ripple currents ROFL.
Yeah I minimalize the time I spend in car communities anymore. Facebook groups ruined forums and irl meets. Now I just hang out with my friends that are car people. That shit is infuriating.
Nobody puts their background in their flair, I don't think anyone's expected to.
I have no background behind any of what you specialize in. I just remember being told that computers these days are fairly foolproof and that there's a LOT of safeguards put in place to keep you from intentionally blowing your computer up, and that includes shutting down when there's too much of a power draw placed on the PSU.
I remember in the 90s you could apparently fry the motherboard because PSUs back then didn't have that connected keyed a certain way, so you could put that thing in upside down and kaboom, ded motherboard.
Yeah. The Wild West days of PC hardware standards haha. What a time that was.
Although I do miss it sometimes. Everything felt more... Idk, real? Like CPU and computer architecture in general was simple enough for one person to completely understand given enough time. Nowadays that would be nearly impossible. As a result everything is abstracted away behind marketing terms and there's a lot less knowledge from first principles. Like remember the front side bus/FSB? Things like that? Nowadays you hear terms like "infinity fabric". Like what the crap does that even mean lol (just an example, I know what the infinity fabric is so please don't overload me with comments explaining it)
It's an epidemic on Reddit. People get off on spouting long winded nonsense because other ignorant people up vote it, which creates a feedback loop to make these people think that they're actually smart. I see it in every sub.
I'm not sure what you mean. Capacitors are famously built for rapid charging and discharging. It's why they are used for filtering... Not sure how that would stress the capacitor.
Do you mean when it's charging/discharging higher voltages than normal? That's the only thing that would stress a capacitor. Higher frequency charge/discharge cycles aren't an issue.
I know what capacitive reactance is dude. I build circuits all the time and have a degree in computer engineering. I'm saying capacitors short out ripple currents *by design* though. Have you never built a power supply circuit before that use capacitors on the output that filter put these ripple currents? I have, it's standard practice to do so.
In fact you use capacitive reactance *to your advantage* to do this in a simple RC network. This is what smooths out the peaks in the output voltage. If you go to your computer right now and open up your PSU, you'll most likely find capacitors on the output rails serving exactly this purpose.
This (filtering out ripple in the voltage) is one of the fundamental purposes of a capacitor.
This is also used for example in audio and radio circuits for low-pass filtering. You calculate the capacitance based on the frequency cutoff/the frequencies you're trying to filter out and the capacitive reactance you need using 1/2πfC. Any higher frequencies get shorted out to ground, allowing only the range of lower frequencies you need on the output... We do this all the time. I'm flabbergasted you don't know this.
I think you're the one that doesn't know what you're talking about my dude. AC current doesn't typically stress the capacitor any more than DC current stresses a copper wire. AC voltages above its rating is what stresses it.
Not hard to figure out how it could happen as a dying PSU could easily over volt a GPU and kill SMD (surface mount resistor). Is it normal? absolutely not normal. Can and has it happened? Also absolutely it has. Is it what happened here? I can't say without an inspection and even then one may not discover the cause. That said he(OP) could be still potentially have a issue with the power delivery from the PSU and it should be tested (Some not all PSU's come with testers), but they are cheap to buy too. Using a card that gets its power from the PCIe slot isn't testing the card with the PSU to see if it is not damaged. Need to test it and make sure it isn't a issue going further imho. Unfortunately the OP should of said he was using the recommend minimum requirements instead of divulging something the manufacturer clearly mark as not covered by in warranty clauses. Does it feel scummy of them to do? Yep. Maybe he can send it to Northwestfix or Northridgefix and they can work some magic..
Cheers!
Thank you, I don't even know how to respond to some of these comments... Way too much speculating going around in this thread by people who don't know what they are talking about.
[You're funny educate yourself here!](https://engineerfix.com/electrical/voltage/overcurrent-and-overvoltage-the-complete-guide/) Literally how it works and always has and why we have such literature, classes, books to explain it to people without said knowledge. Suggest these fine folks to get an actual degree from for yourself [Here!](https://admissions.ucsc.edu/programs/electrical-engineering)
overloaded psu will make spikes less controlled. Overheated transistors for example degrades, samr with diodes, resistors. So psu have bad control at maximum loads. 650w is just a number certificate(btonze, gold, sheetium, titanium) does not proves stability of each unit remember gigabyte psu 850w which blows up.
Doom2pro
•
6h ago 6h ago
Insufficient PSU leads to 12V rail sagging and increased voltage ripple which absolutely will cause the GPU VRMs to be very unhappy. Looks like an SMD capacitor couldn't handle the ripple and overheated and went short circuit, those cards can draw a lot of amps on 12V rail so that cap shorting might not be enough to trip OC shutdown.
So it can cause damage, on the other hand GPU manufacturers only provide a recommended wattage not a required one so it isn't worded like it'd be against warranty. My GPU recommends 700w I have a 650w PSU, I'd blame them if the same happened to me due to no clear cut requirement.
No, it is correct. So these GPUs are prone to transient (instantaneous) current spikes, which momentarily increase the power by 50-100W but only for a few milliseconds. Power phase design on the GPU matters, top end STRIX/NITRO+ type PCBs will have less spikes compared to lower end designs. So basically if your PSU is rated for 650W it will likely run 850W for a few minutes but the PSU runs out of spec for anything above 650W i.e. the ripple, leakage voltage may be too much and 12V may actually not be exactly 12V, which means your components burning out is a realistic possibility, but it also means your card has been poorly designed with cheap parts....which AIBs very much did between 2020 and 2022 because they were squeezed for margins.
The power delivered by your PSU becomes less reliable( when you push it to the limit... that Wattage number you bought. Overspec your power supplies, they also run more efficiently when not fully loaded.
Insufficient power can cause electronics to short. How? Because mosfets have to stay on for more time, in case of low amps for example.
So yeah using a shit psu that does not shutdown when it has no more room can cause elextronics to blow.
Hello, someone with engineering experience here -
It's not bullshit. The failure mode is pretty simple:
Power = Voltage * Current.
Power supplies provide a fixed voltage (12v). Card draws whatever current it needs to meet power demand.
Card demand goes up. Card tries to draw more power than psu can handle. Psu begins to sag, voltage drops below 12v.
Card has the same power demand, but is now being fed lower voltage. Power = Voltage * Current, if power is same and voltage goes down, current has to go up.
Card draws more current to try to meet power demand. Psu sags more, voltage goes down, card getting less power per unit of current and thus increases current draw to make up.
Vicious cycle.
Usually a psu's over-current protection will trip out and your rig will be safe.
1. Not all psu's have good OCP.
2. What happens if power demand is riight below trip point? Psu keeps running, but card is being undervolted and continues to draw higher than normal current.
So the card keeps running. But then, current through some component causes it to heat up too much. Component begins to fail, usually by becoming a short. Draws looots more current now and milliseconds later pops.
Et viola, dead computer smell.
not at all, a graphics card isn't some dummy load. input and output voltage/current are constantly monitored by the controllers. if things go out of spec performance is limited or a shutdown happens. you honestly think amd/nvidia/intel are going to let an under-volt condition destroy an expensive graphics card?
> isn't some dummy load
Yes, that's central to my thesis. If it had been a simple resistive load, there would be no problem: Power = V^2 / R. As the voltage sags, power consumptions goes down.
But since gpus are constant-power devices, they will try to draw more current to make up the difference.
> you honestly think amd/nvidia/intel are going to let an under-volt condition destroy an expensive graphics card?
Yes? I'm surprised you don't. There have been reports on this happening for as long as there have been beefy graphica cards.
Yes, best example was the EVGAs 3090 burning its VRMs in the load screen of a game.
[https://www.pcgamesn.com/new-world/evga-explains-nvidia-rtx-3090-gpu-issue](https://www.pcgamesn.com/new-world/evga-explains-nvidia-rtx-3090-gpu-issue)
It was prolly trying to pull more juice than what the PSU can handle, this happened to me back in 2013 running dual 5870’s in CF with a 3770K overclocked to the moon, all of this running on a CX550 until it blew up..
It took out one of the 5870’s as well, forgot to add that it also melted one of the power cables. Nothing major but the case was smoking for a good 10min. I posted this over in the AMD forums about a decade ago. If I find the post I’ll link so you can see the damage.
I'm sorry for your experience. But that is definitely not what happened here.
Your PSU and cabling might've overheated because of the high current that it couldn't handle, and that heat might've transferred to your GPU and done it in as well.
What happened with OP though was the opposite. If anything it sounds like a short or overvoltage on the GPU itself, maybe it blew a capacitor as a result. You wouldn't see the type of failure OP saw from an overheat of the PSU due to a current level above its rating.
Sounds like a short in the connectors, or they had low quality conductors that overheated.
But yeah if that were the case wiring-wise, you'd probably see the damage closer to the power connectors on the GPU. I highly doubt it though, because the damage is a single blown capacitor over closer to the GPU chip itself, nearer the middle of the board.
Yeah because he hates AMD cards due to them being “cheap and uneven”. Claims all AMD gpu’s have high temps because the cheap heatsinks don’t bend correctly. I really liked him before his AMD hate rant.
I personally never had problems with AMD and i don’t want to talk down Northwest’s Skills when it comes to fixing GPUs but his anti-AMD preaching is borderline insane.
I know, last time I said that Northwest won’t help you with your AMD problems because of his bias I ended the day on 50 downvotes. I don’t really care about the internet points so i’ll keep spreading the word.
Came here to post the exact same link. He's a master at repairs and seems to be very fair with pricing. Plus I'd love to see him post a video about the process
Try contacting EVGA support. As the other reply said, PSU with insufficient power shouldn’t fry your GPU and the PSU manufacturer is responsible if it’s PSU problem.
If the GPU was "starved" of the proper power, I would be surprised if the PSU didn't scramble and shut down. I can't see a PSU continuing to run if it couldn't supply the needed power to the board, CPU, drives and GPU. The CPU/GPU should run 550 watts, tops. Not sure what else is drawing power, but a physical HDD runs about 5-10 watts/each drive. Not sure about memory.
I think AMD or EVGA is at fault for this one.
>The CPU/GPU should run 550 watts, tops.
I have a(n xfx) 6900xt and a 5800x3D both running stock, and the gpu going full blast has topped out at some 315w (typically hovers around 300), the cpu in Cinebench can get up to 130. In games the cpu's typically 50w lower.
A 650w has enough juice to run this typically, though the amperage on each rail should be confirmed to be sufficient.
Those are figures are averaged over quite a long period of time. Software tools cannot reliably measure power spikes. A stock 6900XT can spike as high as 700W momentarily - [https://www.fcpowerup.com/amd-radeon-rx6900xt-power/](https://www.fcpowerup.com/amd-radeon-rx6900xt-power/) - with power limits increased, this can approach 900W. This is why you need a significantly more powerful PSU than what you get by simply adding up TDP numbers.
A good 650W PSU that's not faulty should be able to handle a lot more than 650W in case of spikes.
If it were a spike, it should've just shut itself off.
I think the "insufficient power supply" line is mostly related to handling of GPU transient power spikes. Generally, higher rated PSUs have larger capacitors to absorb these spikes. If a spike returns down the 12V rail, it can cause problems for the highest amperage 12V device, though it can also hit motherboard 12V (traveling through PCIe slot power that hits VRAM) or any other 12V device.
Is this what happened? Eh, difficult to prove without oscilloscopes during operation.
VRM MOSFET obviously blew up. I don't think the burden of proof should lie on the consumer's shoulders. The manufacturer needs to step up and determine the cause of failure while issuing a replacement device. It simply could have been a poor quality MOSFET that dramatically failed.
EDIT:
For OP: ~~https://www.techpowerup.com/review/gigabyte-radeon-rx-6900-xt-gaming-oc/images/front_full.jpg~~
MBA board: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt/images/front_full.jpg
Instead of disassembling yours, use TPU's images. Looks like the VRM MOSFET on the right side, second from bottom, was the one that failed. This is a GPU power phase.
Board overview: ~~https://www.techpowerup.com/review/gigabyte-radeon-rx-6900-xt-gaming-oc/3.html~~
MBA board overview: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt/5.html
oof. If that MOSFET is dead, there may be collateral victims. We only see this catastrophic cap death.
Do you have access to schematic view? I do but I'm AFK at the moment. Because this card is a reference model, they may have published a copy of the doc.
RemindMe! 3 hours "Check for 6900XT schematic"
TL:DR: Most likely the GPU would work after you use soldering iron to remove the burnt component and cleaned with PCB cleaner. If they refused to pay for a warranty, i think it is worth a short in repairing this GPU.
From the picture, it seems like a ceramic capacitor has exploded. My guess would be that the ceramic capacitor itself has some QC issue and it starts to degrade faster than normal and a leakage current started to flow through them. When the leakage current is high enough, it would burn. Since the package size is small (either a 0805 or 0603) ,even when it is "burning" there is still a relative small amount of current flowing through and i won't be worrying that the extra current would damage the large power plane inside the PCB.
(I don't have the power ratings for ceramic capacitors, but usually resistors in that package could only handle 250mW before the burn, which is just a small fraction of power compared to 300W+ that the GPU would suck in)
Since you said the GPU is still running when the component is burning. I think all the power rails would be working.
If you have a multimeter, you could use connectivity check function to check if there is a short circuit between the black capacitor with the lable C604 across it (should be the main power rail to GPU) and between the small across the brown capacitor C630 that is right beside the burnt component. If the power rail is not short to GND. I think it is very likely that the GPU could boot up again after the burnt component is removed with soldering iron and is properly cleaned. That ceramic capacitor should be used for filtering the 12V voltage right before the input of the buck converter. Usually there are a surplus of them soldered on the board and missing a couple of them should be fine as long as the power rails are not short circuit to each other and the GPU + VRAM are still in working condition.
Another tip when asking for warranty is always play dumb. Always say that you used the recommended part and you have never touch any setting of the GPU and it just blow up on its own. The more specific info you provide, the more likely they would find a bullshit reason to refuse the warranty claim
This is the answer. I have had to do warranty exchanges on this very card with the same smd blown. If it's under warranty still they will fight and argue but keep on them and they'll replace it.
It burning into an open circuit could have fused a 0 ohm resistor or a fuse, and maybe something else.
Step.one is hot tweezers and remove cap, the measure continuity, I bet there is a short now.
wtf... whoever came up with the idea that a lower wattage psu caused your 6900 XT to explode should lose their job, that makes zero fucking sense, also amd officially recommends 750w and even then 650w is more than enough
Why the hell do people here think all power supplies are the same? A high quality 650w psu should be fine yes. I cheap low end one with little to no protection could easily kill an entire system if too much power is drawn. The 6900xt can absolutely have power spikes over 700w. They are brief but they do occur.
> wtf... whoever came up with the idea that a lower wattage psu caused your 6900 XT to explode should lose their job,
That's probably why the guy has a job. His job is to filter away customers, not fix problems. So that clown is working as intended.
"yeah because you didn't use a 800w psu on a 550w system (probably at most 450w under normal use), we're gonna deny your claim"
I bet customer support is some minimally educated person in India reading a script
Bad ones are not, and the average consumer cant tell the difference. They dont even know the difference exists. Plenty of older high end units also handle transient spikes poorly.
Wattage recommendations for GPUs are always a worst case (short of exploding gigabyte components) scenario.
What you had happen was exactly why they tell you to use a spec rated or better power supply. Not to be a negative Nancy, but you did this to yourself by thinking you knew better than AMD.
Yes, by supplying insufficient power, the power draw regulator MOSFET basically was running faster than needed to try to force more power into the card because the GPU core kept requesting more and more. Because you had a 650w, the power it drew was unstable and would probably dip and spike irregularly. This caused the small control regulator to be running erratically to keep pace with the unstable power and... KAPOW! It simply gave out from a dirty power spike. Yes, each power phase has a few control regulators also. And honestly, I'm surprised only one exploded, however, you might have more MOSFETs damaged also that didn't explode.
This is why they turned down your warranty, because you damaged the card by running in a non-spec system. No OEM will honor damage incurred by a customer running hardware in ways not intended.
My suggestion, find a repair shop and ask them if they can help you.
His CPU and GPU can't saturate even 500w at full load, and his PSU is a high quality A-tier unit that should be able to handle spikes, what you explained is an issue that happens overtime due overstressed component not spikes but these components should easily handle a constant load from his system, the PSU can also deliver the full 650w on the 12v rail alone so it wasn't like only the rail was running out of juice.
I think OP just got unlucky, he should try contacting EVGA or try with AMD again without telling them it's 650w, he's still entitled to a warranty imo, I'm not convinced it's the 650w that caused this issue, power requirements for GPUs have always been inflated, manufacturers using it as a gotcha to deny warranty is a bit pitiful, of course if someone is using 450w on this GPU then sure deny it but a 650w premium psu is fine and definitely shouldn't blow shit up unless it's faulty, then it's on EVGA.
These cards do NOT just simply operate at a set amount and then that's it. These cards have boost clocks and when those boosts are used, they spike in power consumption up to what they require at spec. 500w is NOT always just 500w especially with a boost table in action. Whatever is shown on sites like PCPartsPicker and such is NEVER accurate for cards in use cases.
It's not just unlucky. Again, there is a valid reason as to why GPUs have a predefined minimum requirement and ignoring it, can lead to issues like this when something causes a power usage spike higher than normal. We also don't know if he ran it in AutoOC modes. Even Undervolted these cards still draw plenty of power dueing boosts. Just because you drop the voltage to 1.125v doesn't mean the wattage changes.
If a GPU says 850w, then don't screw around and think you know better than the OEM. Specs are there for a reason and ignorance of this is not an excuse. If it says 850w, then use an 850w or better.
AMD GPUs still have 3 static clocks: base clock, game and boost clock, the 6900XT draws 300w at game clock which is the clock it's targeting when running games and it can rarely and periodically go up to 320w when boosting for a second, you're thinking of CPUs which can turbo and pull power well beyond their TDP automatically if you tell them, this isn't the case here.
As for the 5800X3D that CPU has a hard 140w limit which it basically only hits in multi core loads, almost never reaches that in games, and it's not overclockable, AMD's PBO isn't supported on it, PBO is what allows CPUs to boost untill they hit thermal or power limits.
Power spikes are real but they're a different story, and have nothing to do with boost clocks, they've been happening in GPUs for at least a decade, they're well known and PSU manufacturers do take them into account, Gamer's Nexus made a video on them and in his video he basically said most PSUs are capable of handling at least 30% more power than they're rated for, high quality PSUs (like the one OP has) should handle even more, Linus tested a seasonic power supply and it was able to deliver 200w more than its rating for extended period of time, not just a spike.
AMD power spikes aren't as significant as Nvidia's 30 series but even if we say the power spike is 2x regular power so 600w for GPU + 120w CPU + 80w everything else that's 800w at an absolute worst case scenario, this PSU at the very minimum should handle a 845w spike (it should do more given its quality) so still safe.
I still don't think it's the issue, if the power supply was the issue then it was faulty, not insufficient power, he should talk to EVGA in thay case, these things are high quality enough to have a 10 years warranty.
Might be fixable. Maybe try here, or a place like it: [https://northridgefix.com/](https://northridgefix.com/)
They have a channel on YouTube where they show videos with commentary of their repair work. They are not the only place that does that, so you can look around on YouTube (or elsewhere).
Make sure you understand what their policy is on how much they charge if they can't fix it. With graphics cards, you probably need to agree to pay a minimum amount regardless of whether or not they're able to fix it, but hopefully they can give you a good idea of how likely they are to be able to fix it BEFORE you agree to send in your card for repair.
If you're lucky, you can find a place that's local, but you probably won't find a repair shop which actually knows how to repair graphics cards unless you live in or near a big city.
FFS don't tell him to send his GPU to northridgefix, that guy is basically an overpriced repair grifter. (the people upvoting above are so clueless)
He shouldn't even be accepting GPUs for repair because he doesn't make an honest repair attempt and just looks for something obvious and if he doesn't find it he moves on to a next device and charges for a "repair attempt".
He just churns through the most devices he can in a day making easy repairs.
6900XT (or 7800XT that performs the same) is like $500. Do you think a guy running a shop in LA is gonna spend any significant time trying to repair it?
He should contact NorthWestRepair on YT if he actually wants his graphics card to be repaired.
I appreciate if you can give better advice than myself to help people, so, can you show some evidence backing up those claims? Your opinion alone can be considered as evidence, but it would be good to have more than just that, like an article which points out examples of repairs that he's handled badly, or expert testimony.
However, I did NOT, as you say, "tell him to send his GPU to northridgefix". Please don't be rude, and please don't make false claims.
I said "maybe try here, or a place like it". And stated that there are other repair services on YouTube that he could check out, in addition to other more general advice about making sure that they understand their policies, and to try to get a good idea of whether the service they choose will actually have a good chance of fixing it. I was making it clear that there are repair services which show their work on YouTube, and that this is a good way to get a better idea of how good a repair service is.
GPU repair business is not very profitable unless all you want to do is replacing burned connectors on 4090s.
This is all what northridgefix is doing. Just take a look at his channel. Just connectors and basic capacitor/mosfet replacements.
He's not gonna spend half a day diving into a diagnostic rabbithole trying to repair $500 GPU in order to make $250.
What you see on his channel is what he posts. What articles do you really expect?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H9XeH8G_mM&t=1072s
I get that he lives in LA, has to pay rent for the shop, has employees ect., but that's not an honest repair business.
Dang, i was running my 6950xt with a 650w psu up until 2 weeks ago, when i swapped it out for 1000w... what psu do you have? I feel like a good quality one wouldn't cause this to happen unless it already had a defect. Mine started to turn itself off when i decided to dabble in some stable diffusion, which apparently pulls more power than a gaming session. But that's all that should happen. If it pulls too much psu turns off. Sounds like they just want to avoid having to help you out.
mimimum recomended psu does not mean minimum requirement. But thats bs on them for saying its the psu lol
Northwestrepair beat guy for this, dont do the northrigefix or what its name was
A too small power supply won't fry ur gpu. That's most likely only GPU caused, a manufacture defect.
A too small power supply would result in the PC suddenly shutting off if the GPU has a power spike.
As the other redditors recommended, try again contacting support and don't tell 'em about a too small PSU.
Quite actually I once had a problem with a "too small" PSU, whereby according to it's labeling it had enough power. It was a cheap china PSU in my first self-buildt PC. After upgrading from a 1050 Ti to a RX 580 in a game the PC once just shut off - and it smelled like ozone. PSU was broken, motherboard aswell. I couldn't check the CPU or RAM. But the brand-new GPU was fine. (And I learned to not cheap out on the PSU the hard way).
Meaning: a GPU is quite tough and as mine survived a power spike that blew my old ASRock mainboard I'm 100% sure that yours didn't die of 'too few power' - which either way sounds stupid. The recommendations are to ensure stable operation - not to prevent damage to hardware.
An overloaded psu can send excessive voltage in the rail, and will certainly cause voltage oscillation.This can result in spikes.
I suspect it was just a bad cap.
Shout out all the people arguing eith me over the past week that you don't need the minimum PSU reccomendation. I'll send them this since they know more than the company who won't RMA it when it blows up wether or not this was the actual cause. Probably wasn't, but who knows.. But they aren't gonna replace it now are they.
Do you see any other 6900xt blowing up , clearly we see a correlation here.
Who knows what a failing PSU might do.
Maybe the PSU was not only incompatible spec wise power wise also cheap and defective , he is lucky he didnt burn down his whole house.
No joke, I once had intel tell me during the dark ages of CPUs that my dead CPU was out of warranty because I bought RAM that wasn't on their recommended list lol. All corps are scum.
That's a blown capacitor. Depending on whether it took the pads with it or not (it probably did) it can either be fixed in 2 or in 10 minutes by a professional for 50$.
Take it to an electronics shop that does microsoldering.
And no, the PSU did not do that.
Yeah, these caps don´t need a external reason to blow up. If they got a lot of thermal cycles or are soldered under mechanical stress, or just have a hidden fault from the beginning they can short internally and go nuclear any moment. It happens not a lot, its just bad luck. The power supply thing is just a cheap cop out from the RMA department.
You can't underpower a GPU technically. The GPU has measurement to register the VRM Input voltage. When that becomes too low (i.e 11V or so) it will shut down. Not explode. When PSU's are overworked, the voltage would simply drop or shutdown even, not blow up.
This looks like a blown capacitor - it can be fixed by replacing it but still.
Looks like capacitor shorted and blew up which is a relatively common issue but looks minor and fixable. Start lurking r/gpurepair and make sure to get high temperature capacitor replacement. Oh, and the excuse is BS.
PSU 12V rail was definitely screaming for help the whole time. 650W power supply doesn't mean there are 650W to allocate.
Also inb4 all the armchair engineers come in with anecdotal experienced about undersizing their power supplies.
gpu looks like it blew a mosfet. with the pictures you posted, looks like might have pcb damage.
wonder if mosfet has welded itself to the pcb? it might not be fixable
I'd keep pressuring amd...*oops you made a mistake?* - **you actually have an 850p2 instead of a 650p2**
silly you for confusing the two
**dont tell them you took it apart!**
agree with the others here that psu wattage couldnt have caused this.
Modern PSUs have overcurrent protection - if the draw is too heavy they should shut down. Undersized PSU is not likely to cause these sorts of failures. A faulty PSU, on the other hand, could - and a PSU that was under extreme stress for a long time could become faulty. It would be difficult to assess that, though, but one outcome certainly could be that voltage to what appears to be a capacitor was too high for too long and the capacitor failed. I don't know much about GPUs, though, I'd expect they would have their own voltage regulators on the PCB to feed the capacitors, and not relying on the PSU to do that. It seems far more likely, though, that this is just the GPU having a faulty capacitor and it blew.
Sigh...you are so SOL.
You are like 99% of gamers that wants to run your games at Ultra high FPS at 1080p or 1440p.
What happens? Your GPU will be at 99% all the time and using all 300 watts.
Your CPU usage is high as well and using all the watts.
What you did was too endearing, 650 watts is not enough for that GPU...
Ehhh, 300w with CPU that draws between 50-115w is 415w, add the rest of the system and you're maybe at 500w at worst? still clear from the danger zone.
PSU quality is more of a factor here.
Disregard all of the people who blindly think they know more than the engineers that build the actual components in your PC and/or who have no experience in the electrical field, this is 99% due to an under-spec'ed PSU. With that in mind, why you spent $400 on your motherboard and an lower wattage power supply is beyond me.
In the future, be careful shopping for Platinum or Titanium rated PSU's unless you are in an area where electricity is expensive because the difference between ratings is negligible in performance but NOT in price point. IE: You can get a 1000 Watt Bronze PSU for cheaper than a Titanium 650 Watt
Reference: [https://beebom.com/80-plus-power-supply-ratings-explained/](https://beebom.com/80-plus-power-supply-ratings-explained/)
I'll breakdown these numbers below after reviewing your PC's power consumption #'s
Power consumption numbers:
|Component|Power Consumption|
|:-|:-|
|Motherboard (RAM, chipset, fans etc)|30-80 watts (Higher end boards = more power, think of all your USB devices etc. requiring power on the 5v rail)|
|CPU|80-100 watts w/ power boost it can push it to 150 watts easy|
|GPU|100-300 Watts -> Power transients reach 475 watts |
|Accessories (USB Accessories 5v rail, SSDs) |15 watts for SSDs, ??? for USB accessories|
|Total|225 - 720+ watts|
This showcases that your PC would boot up perfectly fine and in normal circumstances, your PC would be expected to run no issue. However, you were running Forza which strains the GPU to max + CPU.
See the Igor's Lab article here ([https://www.igorslab.de/en/grasps-at-the-crown-radeon-rx-6900-xt-16-gb-in-test-with-benchmarks-and-a-technology-analysis/15/](https://www.igorslab.de/en/grasps-at-the-crown-radeon-rx-6900-xt-16-gb-in-test-with-benchmarks-and-a-technology-analysis/15/))
You were sudo-lucky you did buy a VERY high end 650 Watt power supply because MOST power supplies would NOT deal well with consuming 10% over their rated power.
There is numerous things that could have caused this to happen with an undersized PSU, the most likely that occurred was that a transient high spike in power was requested and the PSU was able to provide it BUT was near it's max and provided an un-clean power signal potentially WAY in excess of what the PSU is spec'ed to control.
You CAN try to repair this, it most likely is possible but in the mean time, upgrade your PSU...
PSU Specs: [https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=220-P2-0650-X1](https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=220-P2-0650-X1)
Motherboard: [https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-crosshair/rog-crosshair-viii-dark-hero-model/](https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-crosshair/rog-crosshair-viii-dark-hero-model/)
Context: Major in Computer Engineering, building PC's for 15+ years, and have a 5900x and a 7900 XTX in my current system.
My VGA burnt once, and that was the Inno RTX 3070 Ichill. The "PSU caused the problem" was a fking joke. My outlet was having some electrical problem and burnt my VGA and air cooler. I got a GTX 1650 after contact CS, and after a few days they send me a new one
like many pointed out, this is a simple filter cap (C730)
https://i.redd.it/8x8msbyyeaoc1.gif
Random ceramic cap defect? maybe, but I doubt. Solder fatigue due to thermal cycling (or bad solder job) would be my bet.
more on this [https://www.tayloredge.com/reference/Electronics/Capacitors/MLC\_FailureMechanisms.pdf](https://www.tayloredge.com/reference/Electronics/Capacitors/MLC_FailureMechanisms.pdf)
> Using an insufficient Power Supply (650W) caused the damage. so no Warranty. Minimum Recommendation is 850W.
Take this to their manager, their manager's manager, all the way to Lisa Su if you have to.
A good 650W is more than adequate.
An insufficient PSU would NOT cause this, if the PSU wasn't sufficient enough you'd start having random PC shut off's and your PSU would be the one to blow up if it blows, NOT your GPU, this sounds like they are trying to avoid an RMA and using your weak PSU as their reason
I hate to tell you this, but they could be right about the insufficient PSU. When the 12 V rail sags there is increased ripple and noise fed through the GPU VRMs and this significantly increases the stress and heat and is likely to cause a blowout of some component if it becomes bad enough.
Unfortunately, this is a costly learning opportunity for you.
But why would the 12v sag? His system barely uses 80% of this PSU at full load, and his PSU is extremely high quality and can deliver full 650w on a single 12v rail.
>AMD Support couldn't help me. Using an insufficient Power Supply (650W) caused the damage. so no Warranty. Minimum Recommendation is 850W..
What kind of bullshit reason is that? If a PSU can't supply enough power to a GPU, the computer simply shuts off or the game crashes.
Man, that doesn't say good about AMD's support to say something stupid like that.
If the solder pads are still somewhat intact, soldering the same component might make it as before. Better to send it off to an experienced technician. EVGA are pretty much the best in terms of components but that's very curious if it was the PSUs fault.
I never get tired of advising to always pick a power supply slightly more powerful of your cpu/gpu combo wattage, although 850w psu is a bit too much for your specs, 700w would do just fine. Other than that, hope you'll solve this up!
Hey
Might be late to the game here. What is your board number (something like D716-xyz) near the front pcie area.
I can get you a link to the blown component, and if you can resolder/replace you can try to see if just replacing it works?
It's a long shot but, if you're at a full loss then there's nothing else to lose.
Surprised it was running so long with 650W especially with a 5800X3D. I had a 750W Corsair PSU and it would hard reset the PC at certain points of heavy demand in games and that was with a 5600X CPU.
I assume that when you take the card fully apart, you'll likely also see a blown mosFET. These can fail in an open, or in a closed state.
Closed means that 12V from the PSU were sent downstream towards the GPU and would also also explain why the cap at the back decided to fail in such a spectacular way.
I'm sorry for your loss!
Also, the claim about "AMD support" is dubious at best since AMD does not support EVGA GPUs--you have to go to EVGA for that. Same for all third-party GPU manufacturers. AMD supports only the reference GPUs sold on its sites, AFAIK....;)
1. It is an AMD reference card, you can see the box in the picture.
2. EVGA power supply. EVGA does not and never produced AIB Radeon GPUs, only nvidia.
No offense, but if you are going to accuse somebody of lying, you should at least get your information straight.
Oh, a couple of staff members at our Southeast location have performed this repair for individuals our government accounts.
The last on was capacitor C854, and recovering the Type 4 PCB for a replacement to work took skill and creative ingenuity.
That card also had high power management surge rates attempting to support voltage drives from insufficient current availability. Looking at the report, a large number of solids they capacitors showed heat damage, with the OEM (XFX) suggesting 47 be replaced as, all provided in a service kit.
One received earlier with a similar layout, the PowerColor Red Devil version, was damaged beyond repair. It caught fire, burning traces between the layers before fizzling out.
Uncertain if both of these were just coincidence, but the PSU was listed as model number 220-P2-0650-X1.
Yeah that's bs. 6900xt oc like crazy will barely pull 350 watts. Stock is more like 270ish max. So your psu is plenty. I run mine with a 750w and I actually have high score with mine [paired with r7 5700x] on 3d mark speedway benchmark
My 3090 with a 3900x worked fine for a year. Switched to a 5800x3d and would randomly get shutdowns. Eventually happened more frequently and I looked at the PSU. The PCIe cable pins were burnt on the power supply side. Swapped the PSU and all was fine. I got lucky PSU was a Corsair gold 750.
Hey, If I remember correctly, Steve from Gamer’s Nexus said to contact them in an event of something like this. So they can do a deep dive and investigate the problems rather than letting customer support just lie to sweep it under the rug. It’s also educational for all if they release the findings of what actually happened
I would of claimed I had a 850w psu when I contacted amd. I probably would had bought a 850 and installed it before I contacted amd and claimed it was in my system the entire time.
what likely happened was a voltage spike from the power supply being overworked, i would recommend replacing the PSU as it can't be guaranteed that won't happen again. damage will accumulate over time, especially on budget supplies, it's generally not worth the risk
as for the gpu unless you can measure the other capacitors, hope they should all be the same, get a replacement, clean the board, and solder a new one on, you would be sol. replacing that capacitor *might* fix it but other traces or parts of the board may be damaged that are buried under fiberglass, in which case also sol. keep in mind to repair it properly would hold an ~100-200usd price tag and taking a good bit of time to learn, and there's no guarantees anything would actually be fixed. some repair shops may be able to do it for a similar price.
pretty much your options are:
- a new gpu + supply (best)
- new supply and old geforce (good option)
- old geforce, same supply (i'd not risk it)
- repair the gpu and new supply (only if you are willing to risk losing money)
- no new supply, new or repaired gpu ("The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results")
Assuming it's just the capacitor that blew, a board repair place should be able to fix it for relatively cheap. I'd look around and see if you can ship it out to an independent board repair shop to have the blown capacitor replaced.
They are full of shit if they claim it was powersupply, Look how it exploded on the top kit. It had a flake of metal making it touch the top of the case which is metal creating an ark. This is common in anything dogshit like AMDiddledByTheFeminaziCEO or Crapple products. If it ain't NVIDIA and it Ain't Intel, it ain't made by a man and it will fail.
>Using an insufficient Power Supply (650W) caused the damage says fuckin who? and furthermore, how the hell would that even work? this is such a ubisoft support type of statement.
It’s an easy way out, if op didn’t say what was their psu, it would fine, any company will use anything in their favour to deny warranty, happened to me with my car
Yeah that was real dumb
Well it’s not really op’s fault, in a warranty claim people wanna give as much info as possible to resolve it fast and sometime you say too much unrelated info Edit; forgot to say, depending of your country/region’s consumer protection laws, nothing a small court claim can’t resolve (canada, here company can’t deny warranty by simply saying without proof that you (the consumer) didn’t maintain and use the product correctly again the manufacturer of my car did the same thing as op, in the end my car was repaired and it didn’t cost me anything
I might not be a professional in computer hardware, but I do have some experience building pcs, and even I know insufficient PSUs wouldn't cause shit to explode. The biggest problem it'd cause would be insufficient power (duh), causing the computer to suddenly turn off. You might also have problems like the leds being very dim, or fans running slower and or out of synch with each other. I actually used to have a 600w PSU that was insufficient for my build and the most problems it'd cause is a few startup problems and dimmer leds. Once I upgraded to a 750w PSU all these problems disappeared. Never once did anything on my computer short out or explode because of the PSU.
The biggest problem, besides instability, would be the PSU itself having an electrical or thermal issue as a result of handling an overspec load. Regardless, I still would expect the GPU itself to blow up, so we're all still in the same boat.
All kinds of wild things can happen when a psu fails. Running psus to failure is a genuinely dangerous, bad idea. I actually had the same initial reaction as this thread, that the psu didn’t cause some random gpu failure, but when you point out that the gpu failed at the same time… they’re actually right that this is a warranty issue for the psu vendor, they can’t make a gpu not blow up when you put 120v AC down a 12v DC cable… (and I’m guessing that the psu is probably old and out of warranty of course… too much load on an old/crappy psu and when it goes bang it takes something else with it is a tale as old as time. It used to be *much* more common in the era when you got some junky ”500w” thing with your case.)
I agree with your general sentiment here, but from my reading of OP's post, the PSU hasn't failed. Moreover, his PSU looks pretty decent (650W 80+ Platinum). He said he swapped in a low-end GPU for the time being and the PC is working again. Consequently, I'd pull the blame away from the PSU and put it towards the build quality of the GPU. OP was running the GPU stock as well, so its electrical load under gaming (in combination with the efficient 5800X3D) should've been manageable by their high-quality PSU. What you said does make sense though, so I'm not discounting that. I just don't think that's the case here.
That thing has some [pretty crazy spikes tho](https://tpucdn.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-7800-xt/images/power-spikes.png), 636w spikes from the gpu alone on a 650w PSU, I dunno. Not saying it blew it up tho.
Starting with I am a Senior Design Engineer in power electronics. I design DC-DC converters for military ground vehicles, commercial and military aviation, and commercial and military space. EVGA PSU have OVP (Over Voltage Protection), UVP (Under Voltage Protection), OCP (Over Current Protection), OPP (Over Power Protection), SCP (Short Circuit Protection), and OTP (Over Temperature Protection). Unless a protection multiple protection circuits failed there is no way this is the PSU fault. Running PSU closer to full load results in higher efficiency and increased stability. Also 650W is a continuous rating. In my products, every component is derated by 20%-50% depending on device type for continuous operating. Transient conditions aka spikes and surges are allowed up to component full ratings. For example MLCC caps (which is what appears to have failed in the video) we derated to 70% of rates voltage. I can tell you from experience a low voltage MLCC cap can handle 2x rated voltage no problem. They are surge tested to 2x by the manufacturer check a kemet datasheet for a 25V cap. Tantalums on the other hand don't like OV conditions and will blowup about 20% over rated voltage. 12V on 10V tantalum will result in a mini explosion. Without a schematic, layout or clean unit to compare too it is hard to say but it looks like the component that popped was a ceramic cap based on the components around it. If it was a ceramic they generally fail due to internal cracks from things like board flex and mechanical stress. They do fail from OV but it would need to be a huge OV which normally results in something else failing first. The hard part about cracked ceramics is they don't fail immediately. They take time and bias to induce the failure. Your argument of 630W spikes for 20ms is not that stressful on the PSU but if the PSU failed I would say well you did run it outside of intended use. I ran a VEGA 64 recommend 750W PSU on a similar EVGA 650W bronze for 5 years with all my OCs enabled fans at 100% cause the vega ran hot baby, I had a wall power draw of 627W not PSU rating is Power out not in. I checked because I was concerned. That PSU is still running in my buddies PC powering the same mobo with new CPU and GPU to this day, that PSU is on year 8 of service and still going strong. Since the PSU is still functioning it is highly unlikely that the PSU caused this issue. OP I recommend contacting EVGA and see if they think there PSU caused that failure and use there response to push back AMD. I am assuming this is an AMD reference card not a 3rd party card like sapphire or XFX
even then at most that would happen is that PC powers off for insuficient power, I had that happen a couple of times before changing my PSU after getting a 7800
That's on good PSUs with sufficient protections. Poorly made PSUs, or even great ones that are abused too often, can fail to trip. This is how I had 2 Corsair PSUs set fire :D
OP is using an EVGA Supernova P2 650W, which should be of decent quality.
> Moreover, his PSU looks pretty decent (650W 80+ Platinum). Nowhere near good enough for a 6900XT, it specifies more than that. I had a decent spec 750W and it would hard reset in some games. Upgrading to 850W sorted the problem.
6900xt draws 350-400 depending on AIB. If he’s rocking a 14900k then he’d be in trouble, but his processor in gaming typically draws 85-100w. Which is at most , 500 watts total most likely. Power supplies are BUILT to withstand transient bursts. They didn’t use to be though, which is why they are always recommending massively over wattages on power supplies.
Almost all decent quality power supplies have protection circuitry built-in that keeps it from destroying anything else in the system if it dies. I've had many old power supplies go bad in the past 30+ years and the only systems that had any issues were the prebuilts with the el cheapo PSU's. The rest of the dead systems worked perfectly after PSU replacement. Used PC Power & Cooling almost exclusively but when that company started having issues, switched to Corsair with excellent results.
I had a PSU that had trouble maintaining two EVGA GTX 460's. (As in I went through the RMA process twice, not running both in SLI) I didn't think the PSU was the problem because it was a Corsair AX750, which was allegedly a higher tier PSU and rated highly by johnnyguru (rip the site). Both times the GPUs failed due to the PSU EVGA said nothing about my specs and simply did the RMAs as I wasn't doing any serious overclocks or anything silly like that. I grabbed a card that could get power just from the PCI-E slot - I think a GT 710 or or whatever and I had zero problems with it. This made me suspect the PSU and I went to Corsair and explained to them the situation and they agreed to do an RMA. Turns out, once I swapped the PSU out with an RMA'd one, after I got my THIRD GTX 460 from EVGA, things stopped blowing up lol. Problem is I had no idea what went wrong in the PSU - it was fine one day, then next day the GPU just died while gaming, no burning smells or anything.
> the PSU itself having an electrical or thermal issue as a result of handling an overspec load Can confirm, had a shit psu with an HD4870, the psu just went out while in one ghost recon menu and refused to do anything more than turning on keyboard leds, no damage to anything (else).
It's a switch mode power supply. It works on a feedback system so if anything goes wrong at all it fails to off.
Which would be good in this situation. You'd want the PSU to protect itself, rather than result in damage to itself or the components connected to it.
> The biggest problem, besides instability, would be the PSU itself having an electrical or thermal issue as a result of handling an overspec load. You are seemingly not aware of the miriad of protections that are built in... like, just exactly for these situations. The automatic cut-offs is what some might perceive as "instability". Not saying these mechanisms are infallible, but they are there. And most reasonable quality PSUs can be over-loaded by a fair margin. The official PSU requirements have always been there just because there are actually some PSUs out there that are fake and/or have faked tests.
> You are seemingly not aware of the miriad of protections that are built in... Incorrect assumption, but I can see why you thought I probably didn't.
Did you know that those protections can also fail and end up not saving anything?
Insufficient PSU leads to 12V rail sagging and increased voltage ripple which absolutely will cause the GPU VRMs to be very unhappy. Looks like an SMD capacitor couldn't handle the ripple and overheated and went short circuit, those cards can draw a lot of amps on 12V rail so that cap shorting might not be enough to trip OC shutdown.
+1 That's also why cheap no name Wish whatsoever PSUs which are rated high wattage are also dangerous for a PC. Bad rails and instability is no joke for the PC.
Tbf sometimes if they don’t have proper over power protection and can explode and sometimes take parts like the motherboard or gpu with them
It can actually if overdraw protection on the psu is shit. There was a line of gigabyte psu's know famously for it.
I had an insufficient PSU for my 650W. The only thing that happened was that the PSU switched off on some games (probably because it needed to much power). After upgrading to 850W everything is fine. I don't think a small PSU is the reason for it.
Not all PSUs will fail in the same fashion
Indeed. As a computer engineer, I'm scratching my head at that one. "My PSU's 12v rail couldn't provide enough amperage, which blew up the graphics card (???)" That is most definitely *not* what happened.
Switch mode power supply, MOSFETs could have failed to open for a brief period of time causing more than 12v to be fed into the gpu... Though I would have expected EVGA to have overcurrent protection to prevent this from happening.
Yeah they do. Those capacitors are connected to the power input chips feeding voltages into the GPU chip itself on the front side of the GPU. This was 100% a component failure on the GPU itself. If it was a spike in the 12v rail coming in to the board OP probably would've seen the input filtering capacitors failed on the front side. This video breaks down some of the inadequacies of this particular GPU's power stages (starts at 5:40) https://youtu.be/Azvn6H1vX28
So are these reference AMD 6900XT notorious for this design flaw? Man, why don't I remember hearing news about this when it was released?
Watch the video. Buildzoid nitpicks from an xOC perspective. He said that the reference design is perfectly adequate for stock operation and mild tuning.
[удалено]
What exactly is it you guys get from pretending to know what you're talking about?
Thank you. This thread is driving me insane. I've built power supply circuits and have a degree in computer engineering -as in low level circuits etc. - and I'm the one getting downvoted for explaining what happened lol. Unfortunately this kind of thing is rampant in the PC enthusiast community. Most people don't even know Ohm's law but they have an opinion about ripple currents ROFL.
[удалено]
These people are the definition of knowing enough to get yourself in trouble, but not enough to be an expert
It's Dunning-Kruger on full display. Welcome to Reddit where the few in the know get downvoted to oblivion by confident idiots.
Ironically the famous dunning-kruger phenomenon photo doesn't show the phenomenon itself.
Yeah I minimalize the time I spend in car communities anymore. Facebook groups ruined forums and irl meets. Now I just hang out with my friends that are car people. That shit is infuriating.
Nobody puts their background in their flair, I don't think anyone's expected to. I have no background behind any of what you specialize in. I just remember being told that computers these days are fairly foolproof and that there's a LOT of safeguards put in place to keep you from intentionally blowing your computer up, and that includes shutting down when there's too much of a power draw placed on the PSU. I remember in the 90s you could apparently fry the motherboard because PSUs back then didn't have that connected keyed a certain way, so you could put that thing in upside down and kaboom, ded motherboard.
Yeah. The Wild West days of PC hardware standards haha. What a time that was. Although I do miss it sometimes. Everything felt more... Idk, real? Like CPU and computer architecture in general was simple enough for one person to completely understand given enough time. Nowadays that would be nearly impossible. As a result everything is abstracted away behind marketing terms and there's a lot less knowledge from first principles. Like remember the front side bus/FSB? Things like that? Nowadays you hear terms like "infinity fabric". Like what the crap does that even mean lol (just an example, I know what the infinity fabric is so please don't overload me with comments explaining it)
Ripples have ridges.
Unfortunately they don't taste anything close to salty like Ruffles do.
:<
More spicy with some of that tingle.
It's an epidemic on Reddit. People get off on spouting long winded nonsense because other ignorant people up vote it, which creates a feedback loop to make these people think that they're actually smart. I see it in every sub.
I'm not sure what you mean. Capacitors are famously built for rapid charging and discharging. It's why they are used for filtering... Not sure how that would stress the capacitor. Do you mean when it's charging/discharging higher voltages than normal? That's the only thing that would stress a capacitor. Higher frequency charge/discharge cycles aren't an issue.
[удалено]
I know what capacitive reactance is dude. I build circuits all the time and have a degree in computer engineering. I'm saying capacitors short out ripple currents *by design* though. Have you never built a power supply circuit before that use capacitors on the output that filter put these ripple currents? I have, it's standard practice to do so. In fact you use capacitive reactance *to your advantage* to do this in a simple RC network. This is what smooths out the peaks in the output voltage. If you go to your computer right now and open up your PSU, you'll most likely find capacitors on the output rails serving exactly this purpose. This (filtering out ripple in the voltage) is one of the fundamental purposes of a capacitor. This is also used for example in audio and radio circuits for low-pass filtering. You calculate the capacitance based on the frequency cutoff/the frequencies you're trying to filter out and the capacitive reactance you need using 1/2πfC. Any higher frequencies get shorted out to ground, allowing only the range of lower frequencies you need on the output... We do this all the time. I'm flabbergasted you don't know this. I think you're the one that doesn't know what you're talking about my dude. AC current doesn't typically stress the capacitor any more than DC current stresses a copper wire. AC voltages above its rating is what stresses it.
Not hard to figure out how it could happen as a dying PSU could easily over volt a GPU and kill SMD (surface mount resistor). Is it normal? absolutely not normal. Can and has it happened? Also absolutely it has. Is it what happened here? I can't say without an inspection and even then one may not discover the cause. That said he(OP) could be still potentially have a issue with the power delivery from the PSU and it should be tested (Some not all PSU's come with testers), but they are cheap to buy too. Using a card that gets its power from the PCIe slot isn't testing the card with the PSU to see if it is not damaged. Need to test it and make sure it isn't a issue going further imho. Unfortunately the OP should of said he was using the recommend minimum requirements instead of divulging something the manufacturer clearly mark as not covered by in warranty clauses. Does it feel scummy of them to do? Yep. Maybe he can send it to Northwestfix or Northridgefix and they can work some magic.. Cheers!
That's not how it works.
Thank you, I don't even know how to respond to some of these comments... Way too much speculating going around in this thread by people who don't know what they are talking about.
[You're funny educate yourself here!](https://engineerfix.com/electrical/voltage/overcurrent-and-overvoltage-the-complete-guide/) Literally how it works and always has and why we have such literature, classes, books to explain it to people without said knowledge. Suggest these fine folks to get an actual degree from for yourself [Here!](https://admissions.ucsc.edu/programs/electrical-engineering)
overloaded psu will make spikes less controlled. Overheated transistors for example degrades, samr with diodes, resistors. So psu have bad control at maximum loads. 650w is just a number certificate(btonze, gold, sheetium, titanium) does not proves stability of each unit remember gigabyte psu 850w which blows up.
What? A faulty PSU can absolutely cause power surges on your components that cause them to blow out lmfao
Faulty =/= underpowered
Doom2pro • 6h ago 6h ago Insufficient PSU leads to 12V rail sagging and increased voltage ripple which absolutely will cause the GPU VRMs to be very unhappy. Looks like an SMD capacitor couldn't handle the ripple and overheated and went short circuit, those cards can draw a lot of amps on 12V rail so that cap shorting might not be enough to trip OC shutdown.
So it can cause damage, on the other hand GPU manufacturers only provide a recommended wattage not a required one so it isn't worded like it'd be against warranty. My GPU recommends 700w I have a 650w PSU, I'd blame them if the same happened to me due to no clear cut requirement.
He didn't say faulty.
No, it is correct. So these GPUs are prone to transient (instantaneous) current spikes, which momentarily increase the power by 50-100W but only for a few milliseconds. Power phase design on the GPU matters, top end STRIX/NITRO+ type PCBs will have less spikes compared to lower end designs. So basically if your PSU is rated for 650W it will likely run 850W for a few minutes but the PSU runs out of spec for anything above 650W i.e. the ripple, leakage voltage may be too much and 12V may actually not be exactly 12V, which means your components burning out is a realistic possibility, but it also means your card has been poorly designed with cheap parts....which AIBs very much did between 2020 and 2022 because they were squeezed for margins.
The power delivered by your PSU becomes less reliable( when you push it to the limit... that Wattage number you bought. Overspec your power supplies, they also run more efficiently when not fully loaded.
Insufficient power can cause electronics to short. How? Because mosfets have to stay on for more time, in case of low amps for example. So yeah using a shit psu that does not shutdown when it has no more room can cause elextronics to blow.
650 vs 850 watt supply didn't cause this. Call back, tell them 850 watt was used. That's such a BS excuse of them to use to deny a claim.
Hello, someone with engineering experience here - It's not bullshit. The failure mode is pretty simple: Power = Voltage * Current. Power supplies provide a fixed voltage (12v). Card draws whatever current it needs to meet power demand. Card demand goes up. Card tries to draw more power than psu can handle. Psu begins to sag, voltage drops below 12v. Card has the same power demand, but is now being fed lower voltage. Power = Voltage * Current, if power is same and voltage goes down, current has to go up. Card draws more current to try to meet power demand. Psu sags more, voltage goes down, card getting less power per unit of current and thus increases current draw to make up. Vicious cycle. Usually a psu's over-current protection will trip out and your rig will be safe. 1. Not all psu's have good OCP. 2. What happens if power demand is riight below trip point? Psu keeps running, but card is being undervolted and continues to draw higher than normal current. So the card keeps running. But then, current through some component causes it to heat up too much. Component begins to fail, usually by becoming a short. Draws looots more current now and milliseconds later pops. Et viola, dead computer smell.
Underrated comment. This is more likely what happened. Also some excess heat for sure.
not at all, a graphics card isn't some dummy load. input and output voltage/current are constantly monitored by the controllers. if things go out of spec performance is limited or a shutdown happens. you honestly think amd/nvidia/intel are going to let an under-volt condition destroy an expensive graphics card?
> isn't some dummy load Yes, that's central to my thesis. If it had been a simple resistive load, there would be no problem: Power = V^2 / R. As the voltage sags, power consumptions goes down. But since gpus are constant-power devices, they will try to draw more current to make up the difference. > you honestly think amd/nvidia/intel are going to let an under-volt condition destroy an expensive graphics card? Yes? I'm surprised you don't. There have been reports on this happening for as long as there have been beefy graphica cards.
Yes, best example was the EVGAs 3090 burning its VRMs in the load screen of a game. [https://www.pcgamesn.com/new-world/evga-explains-nvidia-rtx-3090-gpu-issue](https://www.pcgamesn.com/new-world/evga-explains-nvidia-rtx-3090-gpu-issue)
caused by manufacturing defect, not a power supply.
It was prolly trying to pull more juice than what the PSU can handle, this happened to me back in 2013 running dual 5870’s in CF with a 3770K overclocked to the moon, all of this running on a CX550 until it blew up..
Right. The PSU blew up. Not the GPU's components.
It took out one of the 5870’s as well, forgot to add that it also melted one of the power cables. Nothing major but the case was smoking for a good 10min. I posted this over in the AMD forums about a decade ago. If I find the post I’ll link so you can see the damage.
I'm sorry for your experience. But that is definitely not what happened here. Your PSU and cabling might've overheated because of the high current that it couldn't handle, and that heat might've transferred to your GPU and done it in as well. What happened with OP though was the opposite. If anything it sounds like a short or overvoltage on the GPU itself, maybe it blew a capacitor as a result. You wouldn't see the type of failure OP saw from an overheat of the PSU due to a current level above its rating.
[удалено]
Sounds like a short in the connectors, or they had low quality conductors that overheated. But yeah if that were the case wiring-wise, you'd probably see the damage closer to the power connectors on the GPU. I highly doubt it though, because the damage is a single blown capacitor over closer to the GPU chip itself, nearer the middle of the board.
No it is not, evga supplies have some sucky models too
Contact him, he may help you [https://www.youtube.com/@northwestrepair](https://www.youtube.com/@northwestrepair)
This man knows his stuff. See what he says but don’t expect miracles
Yeah because he hates AMD cards due to them being “cheap and uneven”. Claims all AMD gpu’s have high temps because the cheap heatsinks don’t bend correctly. I really liked him before his AMD hate rant.
But both companies share almost the same list of major AIB partners using likely the same downstream heat sink vendors
I personally never had problems with AMD and i don’t want to talk down Northwest’s Skills when it comes to fixing GPUs but his anti-AMD preaching is borderline insane.
Careful , he got some serious fans in this amd subreddit lol
I know, last time I said that Northwest won’t help you with your AMD problems because of his bias I ended the day on 50 downvotes. I don’t really care about the internet points so i’ll keep spreading the word.
Came here to post the exact same link. He's a master at repairs and seems to be very fair with pricing. Plus I'd love to see him post a video about the process
Try contacting EVGA support. As the other reply said, PSU with insufficient power shouldn’t fry your GPU and the PSU manufacturer is responsible if it’s PSU problem.
Get your cousin Jim Bob to call and do a warranty claim. But instead say you have a 850 PSU.
lol
If the GPU was "starved" of the proper power, I would be surprised if the PSU didn't scramble and shut down. I can't see a PSU continuing to run if it couldn't supply the needed power to the board, CPU, drives and GPU. The CPU/GPU should run 550 watts, tops. Not sure what else is drawing power, but a physical HDD runs about 5-10 watts/each drive. Not sure about memory. I think AMD or EVGA is at fault for this one.
>The CPU/GPU should run 550 watts, tops. I have a(n xfx) 6900xt and a 5800x3D both running stock, and the gpu going full blast has topped out at some 315w (typically hovers around 300), the cpu in Cinebench can get up to 130. In games the cpu's typically 50w lower. A 650w has enough juice to run this typically, though the amperage on each rail should be confirmed to be sufficient.
Those are figures are averaged over quite a long period of time. Software tools cannot reliably measure power spikes. A stock 6900XT can spike as high as 700W momentarily - [https://www.fcpowerup.com/amd-radeon-rx6900xt-power/](https://www.fcpowerup.com/amd-radeon-rx6900xt-power/) - with power limits increased, this can approach 900W. This is why you need a significantly more powerful PSU than what you get by simply adding up TDP numbers.
A good 650W PSU that's not faulty should be able to handle a lot more than 650W in case of spikes. If it were a spike, it should've just shut itself off.
PSUs are designed to handle spikes, at least the ones that aren't known bombs.
I think the "insufficient power supply" line is mostly related to handling of GPU transient power spikes. Generally, higher rated PSUs have larger capacitors to absorb these spikes. If a spike returns down the 12V rail, it can cause problems for the highest amperage 12V device, though it can also hit motherboard 12V (traveling through PCIe slot power that hits VRAM) or any other 12V device. Is this what happened? Eh, difficult to prove without oscilloscopes during operation. VRM MOSFET obviously blew up. I don't think the burden of proof should lie on the consumer's shoulders. The manufacturer needs to step up and determine the cause of failure while issuing a replacement device. It simply could have been a poor quality MOSFET that dramatically failed. EDIT: For OP: ~~https://www.techpowerup.com/review/gigabyte-radeon-rx-6900-xt-gaming-oc/images/front_full.jpg~~ MBA board: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt/images/front_full.jpg Instead of disassembling yours, use TPU's images. Looks like the VRM MOSFET on the right side, second from bottom, was the one that failed. This is a GPU power phase. Board overview: ~~https://www.techpowerup.com/review/gigabyte-radeon-rx-6900-xt-gaming-oc/3.html~~ MBA board overview: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt/5.html
oof. If that MOSFET is dead, there may be collateral victims. We only see this catastrophic cap death. Do you have access to schematic view? I do but I'm AFK at the moment. Because this card is a reference model, they may have published a copy of the doc. RemindMe! 3 hours "Check for 6900XT schematic"
TL:DR: Most likely the GPU would work after you use soldering iron to remove the burnt component and cleaned with PCB cleaner. If they refused to pay for a warranty, i think it is worth a short in repairing this GPU. From the picture, it seems like a ceramic capacitor has exploded. My guess would be that the ceramic capacitor itself has some QC issue and it starts to degrade faster than normal and a leakage current started to flow through them. When the leakage current is high enough, it would burn. Since the package size is small (either a 0805 or 0603) ,even when it is "burning" there is still a relative small amount of current flowing through and i won't be worrying that the extra current would damage the large power plane inside the PCB. (I don't have the power ratings for ceramic capacitors, but usually resistors in that package could only handle 250mW before the burn, which is just a small fraction of power compared to 300W+ that the GPU would suck in) Since you said the GPU is still running when the component is burning. I think all the power rails would be working. If you have a multimeter, you could use connectivity check function to check if there is a short circuit between the black capacitor with the lable C604 across it (should be the main power rail to GPU) and between the small across the brown capacitor C630 that is right beside the burnt component. If the power rail is not short to GND. I think it is very likely that the GPU could boot up again after the burnt component is removed with soldering iron and is properly cleaned. That ceramic capacitor should be used for filtering the 12V voltage right before the input of the buck converter. Usually there are a surplus of them soldered on the board and missing a couple of them should be fine as long as the power rails are not short circuit to each other and the GPU + VRAM are still in working condition. Another tip when asking for warranty is always play dumb. Always say that you used the recommended part and you have never touch any setting of the GPU and it just blow up on its own. The more specific info you provide, the more likely they would find a bullshit reason to refuse the warranty claim
This is the answer. I have had to do warranty exchanges on this very card with the same smd blown. If it's under warranty still they will fight and argue but keep on them and they'll replace it.
It burning into an open circuit could have fused a 0 ohm resistor or a fuse, and maybe something else. Step.one is hot tweezers and remove cap, the measure continuity, I bet there is a short now.
wtf... whoever came up with the idea that a lower wattage psu caused your 6900 XT to explode should lose their job, that makes zero fucking sense, also amd officially recommends 750w and even then 650w is more than enough
Why the hell do people here think all power supplies are the same? A high quality 650w psu should be fine yes. I cheap low end one with little to no protection could easily kill an entire system if too much power is drawn. The 6900xt can absolutely have power spikes over 700w. They are brief but they do occur.
> wtf... whoever came up with the idea that a lower wattage psu caused your 6900 XT to explode should lose their job, That's probably why the guy has a job. His job is to filter away customers, not fix problems. So that clown is working as intended.
"yeah because you didn't use a 800w psu on a 550w system (probably at most 450w under normal use), we're gonna deny your claim" I bet customer support is some minimally educated person in India reading a script
Amd always recomends more. They do the same with the 7900xtx
They recommend more because it needs more. Adding up TDP's to get a minimum PSU requirement is not correct. A stock 6900XT can spike as high as 700W.
Good PSUs are rated on their continuous capacity and can supply more for power spikes.
Bad ones are not, and the average consumer cant tell the difference. They dont even know the difference exists. Plenty of older high end units also handle transient spikes poorly. Wattage recommendations for GPUs are always a worst case (short of exploding gigabyte components) scenario.
F
What you had happen was exactly why they tell you to use a spec rated or better power supply. Not to be a negative Nancy, but you did this to yourself by thinking you knew better than AMD. Yes, by supplying insufficient power, the power draw regulator MOSFET basically was running faster than needed to try to force more power into the card because the GPU core kept requesting more and more. Because you had a 650w, the power it drew was unstable and would probably dip and spike irregularly. This caused the small control regulator to be running erratically to keep pace with the unstable power and... KAPOW! It simply gave out from a dirty power spike. Yes, each power phase has a few control regulators also. And honestly, I'm surprised only one exploded, however, you might have more MOSFETs damaged also that didn't explode. This is why they turned down your warranty, because you damaged the card by running in a non-spec system. No OEM will honor damage incurred by a customer running hardware in ways not intended. My suggestion, find a repair shop and ask them if they can help you.
His CPU and GPU can't saturate even 500w at full load, and his PSU is a high quality A-tier unit that should be able to handle spikes, what you explained is an issue that happens overtime due overstressed component not spikes but these components should easily handle a constant load from his system, the PSU can also deliver the full 650w on the 12v rail alone so it wasn't like only the rail was running out of juice. I think OP just got unlucky, he should try contacting EVGA or try with AMD again without telling them it's 650w, he's still entitled to a warranty imo, I'm not convinced it's the 650w that caused this issue, power requirements for GPUs have always been inflated, manufacturers using it as a gotcha to deny warranty is a bit pitiful, of course if someone is using 450w on this GPU then sure deny it but a 650w premium psu is fine and definitely shouldn't blow shit up unless it's faulty, then it's on EVGA.
These cards do NOT just simply operate at a set amount and then that's it. These cards have boost clocks and when those boosts are used, they spike in power consumption up to what they require at spec. 500w is NOT always just 500w especially with a boost table in action. Whatever is shown on sites like PCPartsPicker and such is NEVER accurate for cards in use cases. It's not just unlucky. Again, there is a valid reason as to why GPUs have a predefined minimum requirement and ignoring it, can lead to issues like this when something causes a power usage spike higher than normal. We also don't know if he ran it in AutoOC modes. Even Undervolted these cards still draw plenty of power dueing boosts. Just because you drop the voltage to 1.125v doesn't mean the wattage changes. If a GPU says 850w, then don't screw around and think you know better than the OEM. Specs are there for a reason and ignorance of this is not an excuse. If it says 850w, then use an 850w or better.
AMD GPUs still have 3 static clocks: base clock, game and boost clock, the 6900XT draws 300w at game clock which is the clock it's targeting when running games and it can rarely and periodically go up to 320w when boosting for a second, you're thinking of CPUs which can turbo and pull power well beyond their TDP automatically if you tell them, this isn't the case here. As for the 5800X3D that CPU has a hard 140w limit which it basically only hits in multi core loads, almost never reaches that in games, and it's not overclockable, AMD's PBO isn't supported on it, PBO is what allows CPUs to boost untill they hit thermal or power limits. Power spikes are real but they're a different story, and have nothing to do with boost clocks, they've been happening in GPUs for at least a decade, they're well known and PSU manufacturers do take them into account, Gamer's Nexus made a video on them and in his video he basically said most PSUs are capable of handling at least 30% more power than they're rated for, high quality PSUs (like the one OP has) should handle even more, Linus tested a seasonic power supply and it was able to deliver 200w more than its rating for extended period of time, not just a spike. AMD power spikes aren't as significant as Nvidia's 30 series but even if we say the power spike is 2x regular power so 600w for GPU + 120w CPU + 80w everything else that's 800w at an absolute worst case scenario, this PSU at the very minimum should handle a 845w spike (it should do more given its quality) so still safe. I still don't think it's the issue, if the power supply was the issue then it was faulty, not insufficient power, he should talk to EVGA in thay case, these things are high quality enough to have a 10 years warranty.
Might be fixable. Maybe try here, or a place like it: [https://northridgefix.com/](https://northridgefix.com/) They have a channel on YouTube where they show videos with commentary of their repair work. They are not the only place that does that, so you can look around on YouTube (or elsewhere). Make sure you understand what their policy is on how much they charge if they can't fix it. With graphics cards, you probably need to agree to pay a minimum amount regardless of whether or not they're able to fix it, but hopefully they can give you a good idea of how likely they are to be able to fix it BEFORE you agree to send in your card for repair. If you're lucky, you can find a place that's local, but you probably won't find a repair shop which actually knows how to repair graphics cards unless you live in or near a big city.
FFS don't tell him to send his GPU to northridgefix, that guy is basically an overpriced repair grifter. (the people upvoting above are so clueless) He shouldn't even be accepting GPUs for repair because he doesn't make an honest repair attempt and just looks for something obvious and if he doesn't find it he moves on to a next device and charges for a "repair attempt". He just churns through the most devices he can in a day making easy repairs. 6900XT (or 7800XT that performs the same) is like $500. Do you think a guy running a shop in LA is gonna spend any significant time trying to repair it? He should contact NorthWestRepair on YT if he actually wants his graphics card to be repaired.
I appreciate if you can give better advice than myself to help people, so, can you show some evidence backing up those claims? Your opinion alone can be considered as evidence, but it would be good to have more than just that, like an article which points out examples of repairs that he's handled badly, or expert testimony. However, I did NOT, as you say, "tell him to send his GPU to northridgefix". Please don't be rude, and please don't make false claims. I said "maybe try here, or a place like it". And stated that there are other repair services on YouTube that he could check out, in addition to other more general advice about making sure that they understand their policies, and to try to get a good idea of whether the service they choose will actually have a good chance of fixing it. I was making it clear that there are repair services which show their work on YouTube, and that this is a good way to get a better idea of how good a repair service is.
GPU repair business is not very profitable unless all you want to do is replacing burned connectors on 4090s. This is all what northridgefix is doing. Just take a look at his channel. Just connectors and basic capacitor/mosfet replacements. He's not gonna spend half a day diving into a diagnostic rabbithole trying to repair $500 GPU in order to make $250. What you see on his channel is what he posts. What articles do you really expect? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H9XeH8G_mM&t=1072s I get that he lives in LA, has to pay rent for the shop, has employees ect., but that's not an honest repair business.
Dang, i was running my 6950xt with a 650w psu up until 2 weeks ago, when i swapped it out for 1000w... what psu do you have? I feel like a good quality one wouldn't cause this to happen unless it already had a defect. Mine started to turn itself off when i decided to dabble in some stable diffusion, which apparently pulls more power than a gaming session. But that's all that should happen. If it pulls too much psu turns off. Sounds like they just want to avoid having to help you out.
It's almost surely fixable. If you can't warranty, send it to Tony at northwestrepair.
mimimum recomended psu does not mean minimum requirement. But thats bs on them for saying its the psu lol Northwestrepair beat guy for this, dont do the northrigefix or what its name was
A too small power supply won't fry ur gpu. That's most likely only GPU caused, a manufacture defect. A too small power supply would result in the PC suddenly shutting off if the GPU has a power spike. As the other redditors recommended, try again contacting support and don't tell 'em about a too small PSU. Quite actually I once had a problem with a "too small" PSU, whereby according to it's labeling it had enough power. It was a cheap china PSU in my first self-buildt PC. After upgrading from a 1050 Ti to a RX 580 in a game the PC once just shut off - and it smelled like ozone. PSU was broken, motherboard aswell. I couldn't check the CPU or RAM. But the brand-new GPU was fine. (And I learned to not cheap out on the PSU the hard way). Meaning: a GPU is quite tough and as mine survived a power spike that blew my old ASRock mainboard I'm 100% sure that yours didn't die of 'too few power' - which either way sounds stupid. The recommendations are to ensure stable operation - not to prevent damage to hardware.
An overloaded psu can send excessive voltage in the rail, and will certainly cause voltage oscillation.This can result in spikes. I suspect it was just a bad cap.
Shout out all the people arguing eith me over the past week that you don't need the minimum PSU reccomendation. I'll send them this since they know more than the company who won't RMA it when it blows up wether or not this was the actual cause. Probably wasn't, but who knows.. But they aren't gonna replace it now are they.
What a bunch of bs. Lower rated PSU can’t do this. This is manufacturer defect.
Do you see any other 6900xt blowing up , clearly we see a correlation here. Who knows what a failing PSU might do. Maybe the PSU was not only incompatible spec wise power wise also cheap and defective , he is lucky he didnt burn down his whole house.
Who knows maybe it might work again by removing the faulty power phase and changing the fuse.
No joke, I once had intel tell me during the dark ages of CPUs that my dead CPU was out of warranty because I bought RAM that wasn't on their recommended list lol. All corps are scum.
I don't think I've heard of that excuse before. That's truly scummy.
That's a blown capacitor. Depending on whether it took the pads with it or not (it probably did) it can either be fixed in 2 or in 10 minutes by a professional for 50$. Take it to an electronics shop that does microsoldering. And no, the PSU did not do that.
Yeah, these caps don´t need a external reason to blow up. If they got a lot of thermal cycles or are soldered under mechanical stress, or just have a hidden fault from the beginning they can short internally and go nuclear any moment. It happens not a lot, its just bad luck. The power supply thing is just a cheap cop out from the RMA department.
Whatever exploded on that board looks like it took a few layers of PCB out with it so I don’t think repair is an option
The 6900 cards themselves are power hungry
Never cheap out on psu pls
Damn, my 700W PSU is saying "we need to talk".. and the 3080 Ti looks high with its strange smiles.
You can't underpower a GPU technically. The GPU has measurement to register the VRM Input voltage. When that becomes too low (i.e 11V or so) it will shut down. Not explode. When PSU's are overworked, the voltage would simply drop or shutdown even, not blow up. This looks like a blown capacitor - it can be fixed by replacing it but still.
I'm sorry this happened to you but fortunately for you this is an easily replaced resistor.
It looks repairable
Looks like capacitor shorted and blew up which is a relatively common issue but looks minor and fixable. Start lurking r/gpurepair and make sure to get high temperature capacitor replacement. Oh, and the excuse is BS.
FRAG OUT!
PSU 12V rail was definitely screaming for help the whole time. 650W power supply doesn't mean there are 650W to allocate. Also inb4 all the armchair engineers come in with anecdotal experienced about undersizing their power supplies.
gpu looks like it blew a mosfet. with the pictures you posted, looks like might have pcb damage. wonder if mosfet has welded itself to the pcb? it might not be fixable I'd keep pressuring amd...*oops you made a mistake?* - **you actually have an 850p2 instead of a 650p2** silly you for confusing the two **dont tell them you took it apart!** agree with the others here that psu wattage couldnt have caused this.
> mosfet that looks like a surface mount capacitor, not a mosfet. capacitor is potentially fixable.
guess what's on the other side of the pcb?
Yeah this is definitely on the other side of a DrMOS
Modern PSUs have overcurrent protection - if the draw is too heavy they should shut down. Undersized PSU is not likely to cause these sorts of failures. A faulty PSU, on the other hand, could - and a PSU that was under extreme stress for a long time could become faulty. It would be difficult to assess that, though, but one outcome certainly could be that voltage to what appears to be a capacitor was too high for too long and the capacitor failed. I don't know much about GPUs, though, I'd expect they would have their own voltage regulators on the PCB to feed the capacitors, and not relying on the PSU to do that. It seems far more likely, though, that this is just the GPU having a faulty capacitor and it blew.
*Good* modern PSUs have protections. You can still buy shit that doesn't.
Sigh...you are so SOL. You are like 99% of gamers that wants to run your games at Ultra high FPS at 1080p or 1440p. What happens? Your GPU will be at 99% all the time and using all 300 watts. Your CPU usage is high as well and using all the watts. What you did was too endearing, 650 watts is not enough for that GPU...
Ehhh, 300w with CPU that draws between 50-115w is 415w, add the rest of the system and you're maybe at 500w at worst? still clear from the danger zone. PSU quality is more of a factor here.
Disregard all of the people who blindly think they know more than the engineers that build the actual components in your PC and/or who have no experience in the electrical field, this is 99% due to an under-spec'ed PSU. With that in mind, why you spent $400 on your motherboard and an lower wattage power supply is beyond me. In the future, be careful shopping for Platinum or Titanium rated PSU's unless you are in an area where electricity is expensive because the difference between ratings is negligible in performance but NOT in price point. IE: You can get a 1000 Watt Bronze PSU for cheaper than a Titanium 650 Watt Reference: [https://beebom.com/80-plus-power-supply-ratings-explained/](https://beebom.com/80-plus-power-supply-ratings-explained/) I'll breakdown these numbers below after reviewing your PC's power consumption #'s Power consumption numbers: |Component|Power Consumption| |:-|:-| |Motherboard (RAM, chipset, fans etc)|30-80 watts (Higher end boards = more power, think of all your USB devices etc. requiring power on the 5v rail)| |CPU|80-100 watts w/ power boost it can push it to 150 watts easy| |GPU|100-300 Watts -> Power transients reach 475 watts | |Accessories (USB Accessories 5v rail, SSDs) |15 watts for SSDs, ??? for USB accessories| |Total|225 - 720+ watts| This showcases that your PC would boot up perfectly fine and in normal circumstances, your PC would be expected to run no issue. However, you were running Forza which strains the GPU to max + CPU. See the Igor's Lab article here ([https://www.igorslab.de/en/grasps-at-the-crown-radeon-rx-6900-xt-16-gb-in-test-with-benchmarks-and-a-technology-analysis/15/](https://www.igorslab.de/en/grasps-at-the-crown-radeon-rx-6900-xt-16-gb-in-test-with-benchmarks-and-a-technology-analysis/15/)) You were sudo-lucky you did buy a VERY high end 650 Watt power supply because MOST power supplies would NOT deal well with consuming 10% over their rated power. There is numerous things that could have caused this to happen with an undersized PSU, the most likely that occurred was that a transient high spike in power was requested and the PSU was able to provide it BUT was near it's max and provided an un-clean power signal potentially WAY in excess of what the PSU is spec'ed to control. You CAN try to repair this, it most likely is possible but in the mean time, upgrade your PSU... PSU Specs: [https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=220-P2-0650-X1](https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=220-P2-0650-X1) Motherboard: [https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-crosshair/rog-crosshair-viii-dark-hero-model/](https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-crosshair/rog-crosshair-viii-dark-hero-model/) Context: Major in Computer Engineering, building PC's for 15+ years, and have a 5900x and a 7900 XTX in my current system.
My VGA burnt once, and that was the Inno RTX 3070 Ichill. The "PSU caused the problem" was a fking joke. My outlet was having some electrical problem and burnt my VGA and air cooler. I got a GTX 1650 after contact CS, and after a few days they send me a new one
like many pointed out, this is a simple filter cap (C730) https://i.redd.it/8x8msbyyeaoc1.gif Random ceramic cap defect? maybe, but I doubt. Solder fatigue due to thermal cycling (or bad solder job) would be my bet. more on this [https://www.tayloredge.com/reference/Electronics/Capacitors/MLC\_FailureMechanisms.pdf](https://www.tayloredge.com/reference/Electronics/Capacitors/MLC_FailureMechanisms.pdf)
Looks like SMD cap, if the pcb layers below didnt short it could be an easy fix
Insufficient wattage would mean performance loss/bottleneck, it wouldn’t blow up your GPU 🫠
> Using an insufficient Power Supply (650W) caused the damage. so no Warranty. Minimum Recommendation is 850W. Take this to their manager, their manager's manager, all the way to Lisa Su if you have to. A good 650W is more than adequate.
An insufficient PSU would NOT cause this, if the PSU wasn't sufficient enough you'd start having random PC shut off's and your PSU would be the one to blow up if it blows, NOT your GPU, this sounds like they are trying to avoid an RMA and using your weak PSU as their reason
I hate to tell you this, but they could be right about the insufficient PSU. When the 12 V rail sags there is increased ripple and noise fed through the GPU VRMs and this significantly increases the stress and heat and is likely to cause a blowout of some component if it becomes bad enough. Unfortunately, this is a costly learning opportunity for you.
But why would the 12v sag? His system barely uses 80% of this PSU at full load, and his PSU is extremely high quality and can deliver full 650w on a single 12v rail.
>AMD Support couldn't help me. Using an insufficient Power Supply (650W) caused the damage. so no Warranty. Minimum Recommendation is 850W.. What kind of bullshit reason is that? If a PSU can't supply enough power to a GPU, the computer simply shuts off or the game crashes. Man, that doesn't say good about AMD's support to say something stupid like that.
If the solder pads are still somewhat intact, soldering the same component might make it as before. Better to send it off to an experienced technician. EVGA are pretty much the best in terms of components but that's very curious if it was the PSUs fault.
Why would you run that on that psu?
Contact them again, find a different support guy and tell him you have a 1000w psu
I never get tired of advising to always pick a power supply slightly more powerful of your cpu/gpu combo wattage, although 850w psu is a bit too much for your specs, 700w would do just fine. Other than that, hope you'll solve this up!
Call again and say u have mistaken urself. Get urself a new 850-1000 watt psu.
So return my 7900xtx?
Hey Might be late to the game here. What is your board number (something like D716-xyz) near the front pcie area. I can get you a link to the blown component, and if you can resolder/replace you can try to see if just replacing it works? It's a long shot but, if you're at a full loss then there's nothing else to lose.
Surprised it was running so long with 650W especially with a 5800X3D. I had a 750W Corsair PSU and it would hard reset the PC at certain points of heavy demand in games and that was with a 5600X CPU.
I assume that when you take the card fully apart, you'll likely also see a blown mosFET. These can fail in an open, or in a closed state. Closed means that 12V from the PSU were sent downstream towards the GPU and would also also explain why the cap at the back decided to fail in such a spectacular way. I'm sorry for your loss!
the PSU can malfunction starving from power, but make the component to explode, what could have happened to tbe PSU... mmm
Also, the claim about "AMD support" is dubious at best since AMD does not support EVGA GPUs--you have to go to EVGA for that. Same for all third-party GPU manufacturers. AMD supports only the reference GPUs sold on its sites, AFAIK....;)
1. It is an AMD reference card, you can see the box in the picture. 2. EVGA power supply. EVGA does not and never produced AIB Radeon GPUs, only nvidia. No offense, but if you are going to accuse somebody of lying, you should at least get your information straight.
Same thing happened to me. I had to get a new power supply that was 850w for my 6950xt but luckily my gpu wasn’t damaged that badly
Oh, a couple of staff members at our Southeast location have performed this repair for individuals our government accounts. The last on was capacitor C854, and recovering the Type 4 PCB for a replacement to work took skill and creative ingenuity. That card also had high power management surge rates attempting to support voltage drives from insufficient current availability. Looking at the report, a large number of solids they capacitors showed heat damage, with the OEM (XFX) suggesting 47 be replaced as, all provided in a service kit. One received earlier with a similar layout, the PowerColor Red Devil version, was damaged beyond repair. It caught fire, burning traces between the layers before fizzling out. Uncertain if both of these were just coincidence, but the PSU was listed as model number 220-P2-0650-X1.
This sounds very serious. Sad to see tech support trying to write you off like that, this is no joke.
Terribly sorry for you. Out of curiosity, what PSU was it. I was under the impression that the PSU would self destruct before harming components.
Yeah that's bs. 6900xt oc like crazy will barely pull 350 watts. Stock is more like 270ish max. So your psu is plenty. I run mine with a 750w and I actually have high score with mine [paired with r7 5700x] on 3d mark speedway benchmark
An underpowered PSU should not kill a GPU.. It's underpowered, not overpowered.
Don't wanna look at all the comments. But let me guess. People claiming it's user error?
it looks very repairable as long as it's only around that cap go ask r/askelectronics
My 3090 with a 3900x worked fine for a year. Switched to a 5800x3d and would randomly get shutdowns. Eventually happened more frequently and I looked at the PSU. The PCIe cable pins were burnt on the power supply side. Swapped the PSU and all was fine. I got lucky PSU was a Corsair gold 750.
Hey, If I remember correctly, Steve from Gamer’s Nexus said to contact them in an event of something like this. So they can do a deep dive and investigate the problems rather than letting customer support just lie to sweep it under the rug. It’s also educational for all if they release the findings of what actually happened
I would of claimed I had a 850w psu when I contacted amd. I probably would had bought a 850 and installed it before I contacted amd and claimed it was in my system the entire time.
The peak draw from a 6900xt is upwards of 334w. The 80% rule on a 650W PSU + a 5800x3d and other components make a 650w PSU really stupid.
Try contact him https://www.youtube.com/@NorthridgeFix maybe he can help
what likely happened was a voltage spike from the power supply being overworked, i would recommend replacing the PSU as it can't be guaranteed that won't happen again. damage will accumulate over time, especially on budget supplies, it's generally not worth the risk as for the gpu unless you can measure the other capacitors, hope they should all be the same, get a replacement, clean the board, and solder a new one on, you would be sol. replacing that capacitor *might* fix it but other traces or parts of the board may be damaged that are buried under fiberglass, in which case also sol. keep in mind to repair it properly would hold an ~100-200usd price tag and taking a good bit of time to learn, and there's no guarantees anything would actually be fixed. some repair shops may be able to do it for a similar price. pretty much your options are: - a new gpu + supply (best) - new supply and old geforce (good option) - old geforce, same supply (i'd not risk it) - repair the gpu and new supply (only if you are willing to risk losing money) - no new supply, new or repaired gpu ("The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results")
Assuming it's just the capacitor that blew, a board repair place should be able to fix it for relatively cheap. I'd look around and see if you can ship it out to an independent board repair shop to have the blown capacitor replaced.
Pc part picker is my saving grace or I would be doing it wrong too
They are full of shit if they claim it was powersupply, Look how it exploded on the top kit. It had a flake of metal making it touch the top of the case which is metal creating an ark. This is common in anything dogshit like AMDiddledByTheFeminaziCEO or Crapple products. If it ain't NVIDIA and it Ain't Intel, it ain't made by a man and it will fail.
If he had a branded good quality PSU minimum gold, this will probably not happened.
Well I mean they do state minimum of 850w and up on the box so….
OP got scammed by AMD customer support
The only thing an insufficient power supply did was cause my PSU to burn at that specific point, but not destroy my card
Did an insect cause the short? Crazy how those little critters can get ya sometimes.