Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

[trodas]

About four years ago (summer 2008) I was confronted with this unfortunate fact, that computer witch I build for friend, started giving him troubles. The image on screen started going off, PC refuse to start, etc. After a while the PC get started in the end, but it was pretty clear, that once it will fail completely and it will be impossible to start it anymore. Not even with convincing the PC to start anymore.
This problem was the more embarassing for me by the fast, the my friend absolutely did no play games at all, so he is not stressing the gfx card much at all. That is why I picked up reasonably low powered (24W TDP) 7300GT with masive passive cooler for quiet operation. That is because in the case, there is a bit 120mm front fan, that at 7V spin pretty well and move cool air directly on the heatsink, right to the fins well orientated for it. So I expected a long life, despite the questionable caps (any cap, that is no genuine Rubycon, Nichicon, Samxon, Panasonic or Sanyo I call questionable if not outright bad... and yes, I did not like Chemicons and not consider them as good, but I could be mistaken or smeared away by bad personal experience with them, or more precisely - with likely fakes of them).
However the cause was embarassing for me the more, that I did the PC build from start to finish and has virtually only a little budget restrictions, so I was proud of the result and... this was just unexpected.

Not to mention that the GFX card itself looks cool:



After we discovered, that the waiting for RMA will took a month (and my friend was not cool with this and he fear, that after a month it will get his old card back because it works and that will be it), so we took a round to local shops in Prerov, yet not find anything that will be at least closely as usable and good as this card. So I get the idea, that I could try recap the card and see, if that helps. I suggested this, even none of the caps on the card are bulging or leaking at all. Yet they are still qestionable caps and there aren't that much of them on the card, so we decided to give it a try.



Rush was really big, so I did not even write down what caps are there in the first place, not even taking a picture of them. These pictures I made just after four years...



As you can see, I used a combination of what I had on hand. The bigger caps I replaced with Samxon GC caps, on the smaller ones I used Panasonic FM caps. I did not even added the missing cap. Also I did not optimized the voltages of the caps - at normal situation I measure the voltages that are really in action there and then use as close voltage and as big caps, as they fit there. Trying to make the voltage filtering better.



But as I was saying, there is not time. It was like a blitzkrieg. Yet despite the rush, the recap went fine and th card kicked on. And mainly - from this time on, the card is not giving any problems at all. I get to it after four years just because Mirek lend me it for testing, what works in my Sapphire A9RX480 mainboard. Because MSI GeForce 210 card do not...



So after four years of usage are there no signs of any problems, that with the questionable caps come just after one year and they are quite serious problems... And the graphic card is reasonably hot in run. Temperature just on the testing desk w/o any fan around is very high indeed:



So after years I checked up on my worn and come to conclusion, that it was not that bad, after all. So if anyone is recapping a Poing of View 7300GT gfx card, then he need something like that:
5x 1500uF 6.3V Samxon GC d10
4x 470uF 16V Samxon GC d6.3
2x 120uF 16V Panasonic FM d5
...or adequate replacements, like Nichicon HN/HM/HZ or polymer caps (Nichicon LE, FP...), where it will be necessary measure the actual voltages on the caps, because polymers are for 16V huge and hard to fit there. And I have my doubts that the 470uF 16V caps are under 12V. There is almost no way they will be. Usually the input voltages are used as low, as possible, to get as few voltage drop on the regulator, as possible, while this way is used to get as low heat output out of the regulators, as possible.
For example the two 1500uF caps on the back of the card will be for rams, so they are likely only up to 2.5V. And the 470uF 16V caps before them will be on the input of voltage regulator, likely powering from 3.3V or 5V rail. Hardly a point for 16V cap, IMHO... etc.
It can be optimized a lot

[Pentium4]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

That is indeed a cool looking graphics card. And that's a nice heatsink on it too for a low TDP, I'm surprised it runs so hot at idle. If my memory serves me well I believe it only uses 9W at idle.

Nice recap though, it definitely paid off! Do you by chance remember the brand of the original caps that were used?

[Wester547]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

I believe a dedicated fan would significantly lower the temperature of the 7300GT (though it would add noise which might be undesirable). Chemi-con capacitors are quite reliable outside of the KZG/KZV/KZJ/TMV/TMZ/TMJ series, all of which are out of production (except maybe KZV?), I believe...

I would not consider Samxon capacitors reliable in entirety. Samxon is a Chinese brand and even the best quality of aluminum mined in China or Taiwan is quite inferior to that of average Japanese raw materials.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

I'm afraid passive cooling is not enough for that card.

[trodas]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

Pentium4 - no, I had not had even time to take few snaps, so, no. But the card stoped working with them...

Wester547 -

a dedicated fan would significantly lower the temperature of the 7300GT

Indeed it can. But that is on bench, so, no fan. In case these passively cooled cards rely entierly on the airflow in the case and there is a 120mm intake fan, so...

I would not consider Samxon capacitors reliable in entirety.

That is utter nonsense. Just because China manufacture most of the things designed for dump, it does not produce only crappy things. Do you think Chinasee military use their Teapo/OST or Fuhjyyu caps?
Think again.
As for these Samxons, well, there is a way to test how good they are, after all these years!


Since it was quite some time (2008), when I recapped this card with Samxon caps, then I got an idea. How about to test the caps longetivity by - overclocking? So, not only the card still works, but it show the quality of the Samxon caps by overclocking, becazse from default clocks 350/300MHz (core/ram) can just just upped to 588/376MHz...!



(it need four MHz down to pass 3Dmark 2003, tough http://hwbot.org/submission/2441201_...dr2_8516_marks )


This is IMHO more that impressive


I would say that you are proven dead wrong, mate


goodpsusearch - indeed you are right. On the bench it is overheating.... I add a slow fan nearby and we see where the temps get...

[c_hegge]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

My parents PC uses a 7300GT. The heat sink on it is one I pulled off a card like this - http://freemarket.kiev.ua/images_mes...710/205974.jpg

It's much bigger than the heat sink on trodas's card, but it still gets very hot.

As for as the quality of Samxon, the GD, GC and RS series and maybe a few others aren't too bad (although I'll still take Rubycon, Nichicon or Panny over them any day). Others, though (GF, GL, etc) are total junk.

[Wester547]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

That is utter nonsense. Just because China manufacture most of the things designed for dump, it does not produce only crappy things. Do you think Chinasee military use their Teapo/OST or Fuhjyyu caps?
Think again.

I was referencing to electrolytic capacitors whose materials are mined in China and Taiwan, not military-grade products, which would obviously be leaps better. Aluminum foil mined in China and Taiwan not only has more impurities than Japanese foil but different kinds as well. Yes, there are different grades of this kind of foil even in China and Taiwan, and that means that their quality is not consistent. Sometimes they last, sometimes they don't. I know I sound paranoid but given the incessant failure rate of many capacitors whose materials are from China and Taiwan (much higher than those from Japan), I don't trust them...

As for these Samxons, well, there is a way to test how good they are, after all these years!


Since it was quite some time (2008), when I recapped this card with Samxon caps, then I got an idea. How about to test the caps longetivity by - overclocking? So, not only the card still works, but it show the quality of the Samxon caps by overclocking, becazse from default clocks 350/300MHz (core/ram) can just just upped to 588/376MHz...!



(it need four MHz down to pass 3Dmark 2003, tough http://hwbot.org/submission/2441201_...dr2_8516_marks )


This is IMHO more that impressive


I would say that you are proven dead wrong, mate

It's impressive for a card full of Samxons, but how stable a device is with bad capacitors (assuming they've gone bad) depends heavily on how well it's designed otherwise. It would depend on how many power on hours you have on the card as well as power cycles. Would be interested to see how that card does in 3DMark05 or 06, though.

[trodas]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

Constant day to day usage in my friend PC from 2008 - what more I can say to all the nonsenses you write? Maybe... the best elyte caps in terms of low ESR are - Samxon GA and they are par-to-par with Nichicons HZ.
But once I get these elusive HZ in my hands, they are so fragile made, it is laughable. Samxon, to get the specs, do a sturdy good work, even used a bit thicker wires! Defitinively I would 100% more believe Samxon GA over Nichicon HZ. This is just a cheapo cap...

Japanse caps being reliable? Have you ever hears about the Nichicon HN/HM series gone bad? There is your answer...



Temperature with fan, blowing from the side on the heatsink, to somewhat simulate the airflow in case:



...this is much better, huh? (later the temp climbed to 42°C) Room temperature was 21°C, 77% moisture.

[Wester547]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

Around 40*C is much better for sure. But there was only a defective, overfilled batch of HM/HN from 2001-2004. 2005+ HM/HNs are fine. Yeah, there are a -few- defective series from the Japanese manufactures, but it's few and far between compared to the Chinese and Taiwanese manufactures. HZ is pretty sensitive to heat relative to its water content, but I wouldn't say it's worse than Samxon. As for the 7300GT, it also depends on how many hours a day it's in use and how stressed or hot the Samxons get on that card, but I don't mean to pry.

[mockingbird]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

What a difference a core revision makes!

Your card is a B1, mine is an A2. Your temperatures are much lower than mine (Card used in my main rig):




And I have already had to reflow my card 3 times!!!

I have a Radeon 3450, but I can't stand ATI's quirky drivers and lousy TV-Out support. And if you complain about it on their forum, your post gets erased.

[domas]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

ok, a rookie question follows. I am not a gamer, so i don't understand too much about graphic cards.

Is it normal, that critical temp for graphics card is 125C and not 100??

[mariushm]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

Computer processors (CPU) usually have problems when temperature goes over about 75-80c. As this temperature is reached, the CPU will start to reduce frequency or turn off CPU cores in order to reduce the heat, and eventually shut down.

The maximum temperature is often dependant on the manufacturing process. You can see in the picture above that the 7300GT chip is manufactured under a 90nm process. I would say that chip can run for long times at 70-75c with no problems whatsoever.
As you use smaller manufacturing processes, the transistors in the chip are more efficient, leak less power, don't heat as much and so on. So a gpu chip that's manufactured at 65nm, or 55nm, or 40nm, or lower, will handle heat better and will also make less heat.

MODERN Video card processors are not that sensitive to temperature as processors are, they can tolerate a bit higher temperature.

For example, the AMD chips in the Radeon 48xx series cards were made using a 55nm manufacturing process and were designed by AMD to work fine with temperatures running up to 100c for short periods of times and to run for long times at 80-85c. They designed the fan in such a way to only boost the speed when approaching those speeds.

The chips in the new R9 series of cards are even more capable of tolerating temperature, due to much better layout of the components inside the chip and because they're made with a 28nm manufacturing process.
AMD actually designed the cards to work as long as possible at higher temperatures, in order to put the chip in a sort of "sweetspot". They're often running at around 90c under the heatsink and will only throttle down when going over 95c.

You can read about it here : http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/t...-290x-review/5

Before moving on from the subject of throttling however, let’s briefly touch on what’s undoubtedly going to prove to be a controversial element to the 290X’s power tune implementation: AMD’s 95C temperature throttle.

Simply put, no desktop 28nm card thus far has been designed/intended to operate at such a high sustained temperature by default. NVIDIA’s explicit throttle point for the 700 series is 80C, and AMD’s implicit throttle point for Tahiti cards is also in the 80C range, putting both cards well below 95C under regular operation. Now to be clear both are spec’ed to allow temperatures up to 95C (i.e. TjMax), however that 95C throttle point is not the point where either party has previously designed their equilibrium points around.

So why the sudden change on AMD’s behalf? There are a few reasons for it. But first and foremost, let’s talk about the physical costs of higher temperatures.

All other elements being held equal, temperatures affect silicon devices in 3 important ways: longevity, power consumption (leakage), and attainable clockspeeds.

For longevity there’s a direct relationship between temperature and the electromigration effect, with higher temperatures causing electromigration and ultimately ASIC failure to occur sooner than lower temperatures.

For power consumption there is a direct relationship between temperature and power consumption, such that higher temperatures will increase static transistor leakage and therefore increase power consumption, even under identical workloads.

And finally, there is a weak relationship between temperature and attainable clockspeeds, such that the switching performance of silicon transistors drop as they become warmer, making it harder to attain high clockspeeds (which is part of the reason why record setting overclocks are with GPUs well into the negative Celsius range).


The important part to take away from all of this however is that these relationships occur across the entire range of temperatures a product is rated to operate under, and more importantly that all of these factors are taken into consideration in product planning. The 95C maximum operating temperature that most 28nm devices operate under is well understood by engineering teams, along with the impact to longevity, power consumption, and clockspeeds when operating both far from it and near it. In other words, there’s nothing inherently wrong with letting an ASIC go up to 95C so long as it’s appropriately planned for. And this, more than anything else, is what has changed for 290X and Hawaii.

As a second wind product, one of the biggest low-level changes AMD has made to Hawaii relative to Tahiti is that they have been able to significantly clamp down on their leakage. Not that Tahiti was a particularly leaky chip (and not that it was particularly leakless either), but as the first GPU to roll out of TSMC it was very conservatively designed and had to be able to deal with the leakage and other nagging issues that come with an immature fabrication process. Hawaii in turn is designed against a very mature 28nm process, and designed in such a way that AMD doesn’t have to be conservative. As a result Hawaii’s leakage, though not quantified, is said to be notably reduced versus Tahiti.

What this means for 290X in turn is that one of the biggest reasons for keeping temperatures below 95C has been brought under control. AMD no longer needs to keep temperatures below 95C in order to avoid losing significant amounts of performance to leakage. From a performance perspective it has become “safe” to operate at 95C.

Meanwhile from a longevity perspective, while the underlying silicon hasn’t necessarily changed AMD’s understanding of ASIC longevity on TSMC’s 28nm process has. Nearly two years of experience in shipping 28nm GPUs means that AMD has hard evidence for how long a GPU can last at various temperatures, and the maturation of the 28nm process in turn has extended that longevity by improving both the quality and consistency of the GPUs that come out of it. Ultimately there is always going to be a longevity cost to increasing temperatures – and only AMD knows what that cost is – but as the entity ultimately responsible for warrantying their GPUs, at this point AMD is telling us that Hawaii will meet all of their longevity requirements even with the higher operating temperatures.

With that in mind, why would AMD even want to increase their operating temperatures to 95C? In short, to take full advantage of Newton’s Law of Cooling. Newton’s Law of Cooling dictates that the greater the gradient between a heat source and its environment, the more heat energy can be transferred. Or in other words, AMD is able to remove more heat energy from the GPU with the same cooling apparatus simply by operating at a higher temperature. Ergo a 290X operating at 95C can consume more power (operate at greater performance levels) while requiring no increase in cooling (noise) over what a 290X that operates at a lower temperature would require.

Now admittedly none of this makes 95C any less unsettling when first looking at temperatures, as we have become accustomed to 80C range temperatures over the years. But so long as the longevity of Hawaii matches AMD’s claims then this ultimately won’t be an issue. 95C will just be a number, and high ASIC temperatures will be another tool to maximize cooling performance. With that in mind, it will be interesting to see what AMD’s board partners do with their eventual custom Hawaii designs, assuming that they follow the same cooling paradigm as AMD. How much quieter would a Gigabyte Windforce or Asus DirectCU II based Hawaii card be able to operate if it was allowed to (and capable of) operating at 95C sustained? The answer to that, we expect, should prove to be a lot of fun.

[domas]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

I see now. But still id does say something about 100C, while this is set to 125C.

[cheapie]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

I see now. But still id does say something about 100C, while this is set to 125C.

The hotter you run it, the better the cooler works, apparently. It makes sense, but in a strange sort of way.

I'm the guy, though, that has a fan pointed at everything and a CPU running at 21 degrees (Celsius, at idle). I think that's pretty good, though, for air cooling with a room temperature of 18 degrees. It doesn't sound like a jet engine, either.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

I'll give you the real reasons why they let the chips run hotter now:

1. Cheaper cooling solution
2. Keeping reballers in business

[mockingbird]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

The chips run hotter so that the cores can run faster so that the incompetence of the programmers can be compensated for.

[domas]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

The hotter you run it, the better the cooler works, apparently. It makes sense, but in a strange sort of way.

I'm the guy, though, that has a fan pointed at everything and a CPU running at 21 degrees (Celsius, at idle). I think that's pretty good, though, for air cooling with a room temperature of 18 degrees. It doesn't sound like a jet engine, either.

Okay, deltaT of 3 degrees is quite bad ass. At least not-so-good ass. You are insane man.

Re. heat in the chips its clear now. It was new to me that some chips have Tjunction of more than 105C. You can also cook a small diner for yourself at 100++ deg. C.

[momaka]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

I'll give you the real reasons why they let the chips run hotter now:

1. ...
2. Keeping reballers in business

No, that's just the effect of it.
The original reason is planned obsolescence.
If you want long lasting hardware, you should stay under 50C for any BGA with lead-free solder.

[shovenose]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

Just because newer graphics cards are more powerful doesn't mean they are planned to break. That is silly.

[mockingbird]

Re: Point of View 7300GT gfx card recap

Who else here thinks the next Xbox is going to need a whole lot of re-flowing and re-balling?