It's not "normal" no and it is the result of our fan vendor over-compensating by adding too much oil to the fan in the first few batches of the fans. This has been resolved since and new cards shouldn't exhibit this behavior.
The oil leakage itself does not affect the card's function though.
BS the fans will eventually fail to operate without the proper lubrication.
More BS from MSI reps,
Hi Guys,
Thanks to OCUK Staff members for bringing this forum topic to our attention.
We are aware that some customers have been experiencing issues with our latest
AMD GAMING Graphics Cards, notably the R9 Series.
MSI takes this issue seriously.
What is the issue? On going issue still present to this date.
Some cards manufactured pre-January are experiencing oil leakage from the fans.
How is this caused? BS
Oil leaks from the fans hub when the fans are spinning at 100% over a long period of time under high heat conditions.
Why is this happening?
We have seen a huge spike in sales numbers since late November when the BitCoin-Cryptocurrency mining craze started to kick off. Thus, customers have been using our R9 Series of GAMING Graphics Cards since mid-December to mine coins over a 24-HR, 7 days a week period which these cards are not designed for.
The details... BS
Basically our cards are designed mainly for one thing.. gaming (the clue's in the name). They are not intended for use under "industrial" load conditions where they would be needed to run flat-out continuously day after day, week after week with potential high heat levels.
MSI HQ have been working on the fix since late December to make some changes to our Twin Frozr coolers to stop this from happening. At the centre of the fan there is a 3mm gap inside where a specially made gel is inserted to keep our fans running smoothly and quietly to give you the award-winning silent conditions during idle and gaming modes you have seen and/or heard about. MSI has since reduced this to 2mm. This doesn't sound much but has in fact solved one of the issues whereby there was extra space for air to squeeze inside the area alongside the gel to cause tiny air bubbles that (while at 100% fan load for a long period of time) forces the gel to leak out onto the fan shroud and surrounding area.
The final issue that was fixed was simply not to put as much gel inside the fans core. We intentionally put more gel into this area during production to ensure your cards would continue to run smoothly and that durability would never decrease. Sadly our good intentions came back to hurt us since many customers are using R9 Graphics Cards (and R7) to mine for coins jumping quickly onto the Cryptocurrency bandwagon. Our cards we're not designed for this. Under normal gaming conditions this would not happen (rare cases it may). MSI HQ wanted (yet again) to improve our award-winning Twin Frozr coolers further by solving any and all reliability questions of the running of our fans... hence more gel.
Unlike our competitors, our bearing is made from a special ring made from a mixture of pressed cooper shavings and oil – This unique design avoids the need of ball bearings so the fan can run quieter.
Those customers with Graphics Cards pre-January that are worrying about oil leaking in the future causing harm to the fans.. don't worry. The oil leaking is from the fans hub and not from the bearing, thus will not impact the lifetime running of the fans.
Is it safe?
Yes. The gel which has since turned into an oil like substance during high heat conditions will not harm you, nor your surrounding components in your PC. This gel is harmless, it is non-conductive and will not harm components on the motherboard – The gel is designed to work up to 140C so it will not burn out.
What do I do now?
As mentioned, HQ knows about the problems you have been experiencing and recommends you RMA your Graphics Card to our RMA centre for a replacement card with the new fixes.
Can you not just send some replacement fans or coolers?
No. While there are 0 issues with the PCB's, we cannot send you replacement fans and/or Twin Frozr coolers to do it yourself. One reason is we want to ensure you do not damage the PCB or cooler during installation (and thus voiding your warranty), but another reason is due to how we design the Twin Frozr coolers. You may not know this, but unlike many of our competitors who simply use the same cooler for every batch of cards, we engineer our coolers differently per each graphics card to ensure each cooler we place onto each GPU can handle the thermals produced from that very GPU since every GPU is different (silicone lottery).
We are very sorry if you have been affected by this issue. We hold our hands up, however we did have good intentions. Please RMA the Graphics Card back to us for a swift replacement.
Examples of fan failures back in 2013 with 7950s
- Spencer S.
- 9/16/2013 3:57:00 PM
- Tech Level:
- Ownership:
-
Verified Owner
Pros: Fast
Cons: Mediocre heat removal.
Short fan lifetime.
Failing fans throw oil on to heatsink fins and elsewhere.
Dust stick to fan oil, impeding heat removal even more.
Other Thoughts: I've purchased 8 of these in the last four months, they run 99% load, 24/7. Fans are quite loud, louder when failing.
After two months, fans fail routinely and sling oil around. Not exactly easy to clean. Factory fan replacements are not easily obtained, unless you don't care about downtime.
Is the fan lifetime just 1000 hours? Really?
- Noele B.
- 9/17/2013 2:54:02 PM
- Tech Level:
- Ownership:
-
Verified Owner
Pros: -Fast
-Good cooling
-7970 pcb w00t!
Cons: -The fans die very early.
-One of my fans died inside of 3 weeks.
-When the fans die they sling their oil all over the card making for a nasty cleanup.
-The fan that spilled out all it's oil is now excessively noisey and rattles like a soda can at anything above 50% fan speed.
-MSi will NOT sell customers replacement fan assemblies.
-Did I mention cleaning up all the oil that gets slung around and how that it's not very fun?
Other Thoughts: For whatever reason, my original review, pretty much the same as this one, was not posted. ::shrugs::
- Jason B.
- 8/10/2013 12:20:34 PM
- Tech Level:
- Ownership:
-
Verified Owner
Solid/easy RMA
Pros: Best performance per watt
Low failure
Very good RMA process on the 1 bad out of 15
Cons: Fans will fail after long use
?
The fans leaking oil is due to MSI continuing to use cheap sleeve bearing fans, this has been happening for a while and is not an issue that has just surfaced. I have owned 8 R7950s, 1 7970L & 1 7970LBE in 1.5 years time, I have mucho experience with MSI RMAs. They messed up my RMAs so many times trying to replace two other R7950s with bad HDMI ports they upgraded me to 7970 Lightnings. ( That process took over 1.3 months )
You can go look at newegg reviews of the R7950s Twins and you will see that many people had fan failures back then as well.
When the oil leaks from the fan assembly the fan will in a short amount of time start to rattle, give weird RPM readings, stop and start then finally fail to operate.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18582154
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=193
MSI reps, please by all means stop with the lies and be straight with the customers as Google and forums can be you're worst enemy.
