RAM module exposed?

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Androideka5

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Sep 7, 2013
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TL;DR: One RAM chip seems to not be covered by the thermal pad. Is this like that for everyone (Gigabye Radeon R9 270x)

I just bought the Gigabyte Radeon R9 270x, and I can hardly overclock. At 1125 Mhz, it errors out in demanding games and a few minutes in benchmarks, even though the GPU stays very cool (57 degrees Celsius max). I took the card out, and noticed that there is slight bend towards the end of the card, and one of the RAM chips seems to be exposed. There is a thin gray pad between the RAM chip and the heatsink, and on one of the RAM chips, the pad only covers half of the chip. If anyone has one, I would appreciate if they took a close look at their cards and told me if this is the case for them. My concern is that this one chip isn't being properly cooled and so my card is crashing.
 
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Kari

Kari

Splendid
Jun 16, 2004
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exposed or not, vram should not effect the achievable oc on the gpu itself...
Have you tried giving it little bit more voltage? The stock voltage might be set rather low seeing as the temps stay so cool, little bit extra might allow it to overclock 'much' higher.

edit it is rather normal for the card to bend down a little under the weight of the cooler when plugged in, thats one of the reasons people like backplates and other extra bits of metal supporting the card, gives it that much extra rigidity..
 
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Androideka5

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Sep 7, 2013
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10,540
As per getdamafiaonyou's suggestion, I just ordered a replacement from Amazon, because they're return policy is so pain free (plus I get ~20 days to crossfire my current one and the replacement), so if the new one is also like this, it must just be how the card is. Thanks for your suggestions guys, and any more replies are welcome.

Edit: I took the card out to look at it again, and the PCB isn't bent due to weight, it almost seems like the PCB was actually cut slightly off, so the material (wood?) is actually just slightly thinner, not 'bent'
 
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Kari

Kari

Splendid
Jun 16, 2004
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heh well it is not wood but (some version of) glass fiber reinforced epoxy resin, commonly known as FR4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FR-4
Graphics cards use multilayer (4-8) boards so I'm having hard time to imagine a situation where the board would be noticeably thinner without being completely bricked, as far as I know they dont make boards with variable number of layers....

I suppose it's possible the cooler is screwed on so tight it actually bends the board around the gpu chip so the board is slightly warped end-to-end...
 
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