How to stress GPU VRMs?

[shaithis]

Anyone know any fast and easy ways to stress the VRMs on a GPU?

Thinking my 580 has "slightly died" and I suspect the VRMs....really need a fast test for them and can't find anything obvious...apart from Furmark but I was under the impression the nV drivers throttle if it detects it running.

[Hoonigan]

By any chance do you keep getting slight green flashes in BF3?

I'm also running a GTX580 and I'm getting this in BF3.

[shaithis]

I was getting those in the beta and then early in the retail......but I found that running without ambient occlusion and AA meant I could play at 2560x1600 reliably with the added benefit that the green flashes stopped and IQ was increased by switching to native resolution.

Current issue is black screen/lockup....didn't happen until Monday (even after some sessions of up to 10 hours) and still doesn't happen for the first hour or so when booting up from cold.....once card is hot, BF3 crashes almost instantly - even after a reboot...yet GPU temp is still relatively low (I've had the lockup when GPU was ~70c)......hence I am suspecting slight VRM damage but want a fast, reliable test before starting an RMA....

[Rob_B]

Ooh I'm getting those as well (5850)

[dangel]

What voltage is the 580 running it's core at?

I found that crysis 2 required me to tweak up the voltage or it was very unstable - since doing the change it's never crashed since. BF3 has been fine too.

From memory i'm @ 1050mV but i'd have to double check.

[shaithis]

Was at 0.985, then upped to 1.0, then a few bumps later I am at 1.088.....it seems bumping the voltage did change the effect....instead of just hard-locking with screeching sound I now get hard lock with stuff still working in the background...i.e. can hear and talk on TeamSpeak, can hear BF3/Origin "doing stuff" etc but ctrl-alt-del does nothing.....as does the power switch....actually have to hold the power to get it to shutdown.

Going any higher on the voltage is a complete no-no. The card has a vid of 1.0...if it needs 1.10+ to run, then the card is faulty IMO and is only going to get worse pumping extra voltage through it.

[shaithis]

Well, pretty sure BF3 has pushed the card to the point where something has fried.

Furmark does crash after a while and I played for 30-40mins after warming up but only with the GPU clocked at 720MHz instead of 772 (stock).

Can see this being a real nasty RMA with eBuyer

[UseItNow]

I hate RMA's, sorry to hear about that mate.

Good luck with it, hopefully it'll be straight forward!