McBeen.com

Got a nice little scare last night as tendrils of smoke wafted out of the usb port connector on the back of the aquagate. I unplugged the USB port immediately, and kept an eye on everything to make sure the pumps kept going. I kept the power plugged into the system so I was hoping everything would keep going. I took the cover off the case, and unscrewed the controller board. Everything appeared to be fine, although one of the power transistors had a different discoloration on one side than the other. I’m not sure if it was heat related or not.

My guess is that the ESA controller melted, but I don’t have a good way to check it. I was never able to access the damn thing anyways. For now everything is continuing to work as expected.

The replacement has been ordered, along with a separate flow/temp sensor since I don’t have a good way to get readings out of my current controller. Hopefully everything will be here later in the week.

I took the 4870 back out of my machine tonight to get a closer look and the board and the discrepancy between it and the 4890. The components on my board are not missing any kind of heat sink material. They are fundamentally different from the four below them. So thats somewhat of a relief.

I also decided that even though having a cool CPU is nice… blowing large amounts of sub-zero air into my office was not. I went ahead and used the box the system came in, and made a nice fitting box for the fan set. I then reversed the top fan again, so the bottom sucks in cool air, then the top fan blows it back out. It raised the temps on the water system by about 10 degrees… but it also did the same for my office lol. I can live with mid 20′s idle, and low 40′s under load.

I’ve been going back and forth with Frozen CPU trying to see if I could get a return exchange on this block… we’ll see what happens. The good news it that they carry a block that looks like a perfect fit! If I can get a credit from them, I should be able to get it next week.

Also, I think I may have found a portion of my cooling issues on this card. If you take a look at these photos:

You can see on the right that two of the power supply transistors are missing their heat sinks. I never really thought about it until I saw a reference image for the 4890. I’ll have to see if I can get that corrected before tonights raids

FrozenCPU.com is the shit. They are responsive, helpful, and prompt. Always check them out first!!!