The metallic sticker with the date on it is the date it was refurbished. Out of 16 cards, I had one that was improperly refurbished. When I first saw the card temp (at idle), it was a bit higher than the other card (even though it was in the 2nd slot and could breathe better). I didn't notice that the fan speed was much higher than the other card though.
As soon as I started a miner, I watched the temp rise *much* more quickly than the other card in the machine. I thought the fan was dead or something. After listening to the fan quickly ramp up and the temperature keep climbing past 75c (even though the fan had crept up to 70%), I shut it down. I disassembled the card and quickly saw why this was happening:
Yeah. See how the diamond shaped "cutout" in the top heatsink has perfectly straight edges and is aligned properly? The bottom cutout looks like someone grabbed a razor and just eyeballed it. It's hard to tell in the image, but it's even slightly rotated. The top heatsink was also from one of refurbished 5870s (from the same batch), but it was actually assembled correctly.
I took some sandpaper to the heatsink, removed the coating, sanded again with finer paper, and reassembled both cards with diamond thermal paste. These cards went into my daily use machine (which mines when I'm not using it). With the fans left on auto, they both sit around only 31 and 32 percent fan speed while mining (at 79 degrees C). Considering that they're Bitcoin mining, they're very quiet.
Thumbs up for cheap cards though
