Do you think my warranty is void?

[vohiep84]

wow I don't know what to say ... it looks like it literally melted...

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by ilya

Looking back, I have no clue how the card could be fried. Thermal pads are usually made out of fairly pure paraffin wax, which should be a solid oil that's completely non-conductive. Having the pad fail and ooze out liquid should be about a 1 in a trillion chance. Even if the pad did fail, the liquid should be completely unable to short circuit my card, considering it should have been in a fairly pure form.

The only problem I see with it being Pure Paraffin wax is that the max melting for pure is no more than 70 degrees I believe. A GTX470 is going to get hotter than that. Though I understand the idea as the thermal properties of it are good, they would have to add something to it to stabilize it beyond that nominal melting point. So that being said I wouldn't rule out something in it shorting out the card perhaps?
Regardless of what it is made from, something isn't right for the Backplate to be doing that.

ST

[MacJunky]

Originally Posted by ilya

Having the pad fail and ooze out liquid should be about a 1 in a trillion chance.

I have seen quite a few oozing pads, but generally they are not very bad and do not leak far.
This is my motherboard right now. As you can see it has gone down from the VRMs, past PCI-E 1x, PCI-E 16x, PCI-E 1x, then gets to the top of another PCI-E 1x. That is three slots it passed and number four that it hit and seems to sit at for the moment.

And here is an overview of the affected area:

Fairly large imo.
At this point I am more concerned about the pad(s) drying up and losing effectiveness causing overheating or something than I am about my motherboard shorting out.

Of course, not every thermal pad is created by the same company so some *might* have something conductive in them... but if it is smooshed up against a PCB in a GFX card like that you would think they would avoid anything conductive completely..

[Perineum]

NICE Image host, MacJunky!

[David Milch]

I'd be very surprised if either company gave a new card. Evga because the backplate is for evga cards, and zotac because again the backplate if for evga cards. I'm just guessing, but evga probably has a conformal coating put on the cards that they get and zotac doesn't.