Alphacool Eiswolf killed my 1080Ti?

[Shadow of chaos]

I got a 1080Ti with a stock cooler recently and it worked fine, so a couple of days later i ended up putting the Eiswolf cooler on it very carefully. I checked the instructions to make sure everything was right, paste had good contact with the GPU. So i booted up and first thing i did was check temps. They did fluctuate a bit and sometimes a bit rapidly, i fired up Valley and in less than 10 seconds temps shot up to 90+c and the computer shut down.

I took it apart and checked everything and then started up again, did the same test with Valley and exactly the same thing happened again. Only this time after it shut down it would not boot up again.

Put my other card in and it starts fine, no go with this 1080Ti.

What i don't understand is how come this even happened so quickly? I thought the shut down was in place so this kind of thing was not possible, yet it still seemed to cause it. I mean how else am i supposed to test the card is being cooled properly?

If a GPU can fry that easily, and that fast, then i don't really want to bother doing this again. I've done a CPU a couple of times before and never had this happen, first time a GPU and then i have this happen.

I emailed Aquatuning 3 days ago and no reply either, typical.

 

[tinytomlogan]

It shut down because it got hot I doubt its dead.

You will have just had an air bubble in the block OR didnt have the pump plugged in properly

Sadly if it has died then its only what youve done dude

 

[Shadow of chaos]

It shut down because it got hot I doubt its dead.

You will have just had an air bubble in the block OR didnt have the pump plugged in properly

Sadly if it has died then its only what youve done dude

I checked everything properly and the pump was definitely plugged in each time, and well i reassembled the original cooler on the card the next day and it still doesn't boot.

I really don't think what happened was my own fault, i can't see anything i did wrong. But the temps really did fly up fast, and like i already said there was plenty of contact between the block and the GPU.

The auto shut down obviously didn't save it by the seems of it! A bit confusing.

 

[tinytomlogan]

It was likely air in the block if you did all of the above

Temps should have gone up unless you put load on it or it wasnt fitted quite right :/

 

[Shadow of chaos]

Well I'm just more surprised by the fact that high temps seem to have buggered the card so quickly to be honest, if a pump ever fails during normal water cooling i wouldn't feel very confident about the auto shut down saving the card :mellow:

in any case i am going to try to send the card back and see what happens, but i don't feel very enthusiastic about trying to water cool a GPU again, that's for sure.

If i end up getting a replacement then I'm not sure what to do with this cooler, I'd be a bit scared of trying it again.

 

[tinytomlogan]

Its a shame Im not there to check it tbh. Blocking up a GPU has always been one of those jobs a lot of people are scared of because a lot can go wrong.

Genuinely think it was an air bubble the first time though - Id have been running the pump from a molex to start to make sure it was getting 12v and help move any air about

 

[SuB]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but do GPU's have thermal shut down? I know CPU's do, and I know most modern GPU's will throttle, but if it's in proper thermal runaway (like this sounds) I didn't think they had actual protection, they just clock down a lot in an attempt to cool down, but I've never heard of one shutting down to save itself like a CPU does.

 

[S_I_N]

yes they do my gigabyte gtx 1080 ti gaming oc was shutting down after putting a actic acellero turbo III on it cause the core wasnt making contact at all it would boot to the login screen then bamm black out. Took it apart saw the reason re-attached it minus the plastic spacer to protect the pcb and blammo roccking solid, but didnt like the no spacer part so returned it then sold card lol now getting an EVGA 1080 FTW2

 

[tolagarf]

I've actually been trying to help this guy sort it out on Overclock.net (I go by the name d0mmie there), and I agree with Tom that it's probably an air lock that happened. The same happened with my first Eiswolf, it went straight to thermal limit in a mere second, yet mine did not go over it while benchmarking and seemed to down clock the card properly. I don't quite get how it could reach 90C.

Btw Shadow of Chaos, you need to open up a RMA case with Aquatuning on their website, to get that Eiswolf handled.

 

[Shadow of chaos]

Its a shame Im not there to check it tbh. Blocking up a GPU has always been one of those jobs a lot of people are scared of because a lot can go wrong.

Genuinely think it was an air bubble the first time though - Id have been running the pump from a molex to start to make sure it was getting 12v and help move any air about

I appreciate the thought and if i was closer I'd bring it to you to see what's up, but i suppose like you said it could well be an air bubble. I actually did run it at 12v at first but not when it was connected to the GPU though, i did that just to make sure it was working.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but do GPU's have thermal shut down? I know CPU's do, and I know most modern GPU's will throttle, but if it's in proper thermal runaway (like this sounds) I didn't think they had actual protection, they just clock down a lot in an attempt to cool down, but I've never heard of one shutting down to save itself like a CPU does.

Well if they do have a thermal shut down like it seems they do, it did a rubbish job of protecting mine anyway!

I've actually been trying to help this guy sort it out on Overclock.net (I go by the name d0mmie there), and I agree with Tom that it's probably an air lock that happened. The same happened with my first Eiswolf, it went straight to thermal limit in a mere second, yet mine did not go over it while benchmarking and seemed to down clock the card properly. I don't quite get how it could reach 90C.

Btw Shadow of Chaos, you need to open up a RMA case with Aquatuning on their website, to get that Eiswolf handled.

Didn't realise that was also you i didn't know that you could open an RMA directly from their site, i guess I should go ahead and do that, just for the Eiswolf cooler itself though and not the radiator right?

 

[tolagarf]

i didn't know that you could open an RMA directly from their site, i guess I should go ahead and do that, just for the Eiswolf cooler itself though and not the radiator right?

Depends if you bought the GPU block and radiator as a complete package. If you did, you should send both in as you got it.

 

[Shadow of chaos]

Depends if you bought the GPU block and radiator as a complete package. If you did, you should send both in as you got it.

Got them separately, 240mm radiator along with the cooler. I'll go sort it out on their site.

 

[Vintage-x]

I had this issue with my eiswolf when I moved the rad from the top to the front.

I was checking temps on idle and it was 50c. Kept shutting down the system taking the block apart - redoing the thermal pads and paste - putting it back in the system getting 50c idle temps rinse and repeat.

Finally got so annoyed with it I shook the pc in a fit of rage. The pump made some crazy noise and the temp dropped pretty much instantly to 30c idle.

Must have been a lot of air in the loop.


As for your card dying. Same thing happened to me when I attached a kraken x61 to one of my gtx 1080s. Pump was DOA and temps shot up to 90c. I switched off the pc but my graphics card was completely dead. I put the stock cooler back on but when I switched on the pc the fans were running 100% and still no display.

Had to RMA the card

 

[tolagarf]

I also had a GTX 1080 die which might have been caused by my Eiswolf (I never really figured it out what happened). But later I found out my Eiswolf was under-performing by an 20C degree difference compared to a new Eiswolf. Got my money back at least for that one, and EVGA gave me a new graphics card as well.