Topic: Swapping cards # for RMAs. (Sapphire xtreme dying after ~1 year) - page 2. (Read 2782 times)

+1.

I consider it sort of lucky that the manufacturers still warranty the cards at all, considering the torturous non-typical usage we put them through.  I would imagine there's some sort of "normal use" clause in their warranty contract that they could utilize if they wanted to.

It's not planned obsolescence. We're basically stress testing these cards 24-7 for a year on end. Build out of warranty failures into your business plan, purchase extended warranties, etc. Your rationalization is ridiculous.

Get Cleverer, and buy cards with longer warranties next time.

Not everywhere warranty is 1 year

Here it is 2 years for example

Was there no forethought when you bought the cards?  If you bought in on pretty much an AmEx card and some Visa/MCs the card will extended the warranty out a year.  If you knew you were going to min with the cards and didn't want the risk you could have also bought an extended warranty from somebody like squaretrade.  If taking the time and energy to carefully swap out serial number stickers is not worth the $20 to sell your ethics (the price of a squaretrade warranty) then you probably shouldn't be posting on this board.

I lie all the time when its a matter of convenience (like not bothering to tell Frys that a "brand new" video card is dead - good lord anybody knows you would have to stand in line for 1 hour only to see them put the card back onto the shelves) but not if it means scamming a company.  To each their own 

Wouldn't planned obsolescence be a fraud too ? 
(cards were running at 1.088v and ~70c)

Ps : They aren't risking much since these card aren't sold anymore.

Swapping stickers isnt a good idea ...

Yep, the sticker are "tamper resistant" so it should be hard to remove the sticker without leaving traces that the stickers have been swapped.

And the GPU has a serial number, and if suspect, I think they would compare their records of the GPU serial with the card serial.
And what do you do when the newer cards fail after those 2 weeks? Then you don't have any sticker to swap with?
(you cannot use the "replacement cards" sticker, since these stickers have then expired*)

* Think of you have 2 weeks left of warranty. When replacing, your warranty is NOT renewed, rather they set the serial number to have 2 week left of warranty. When the newer cards fail, those 2 weeks are out. When the replaced cards fail after 1 year from replacing them, your warranty is like 2 years old and expired.

The cards propably log runtime too, so they can see in a log how much time the card have been "on". Propably the card logs full-load time too. So then they can see that the cards have ben run for longer than manufacturer date and that would raise some alarms.

Propably, the Sapphires 5850's are tuned to work flawlessly under full load until end of warranty (1yr) + a few days, to keep the parts cost down. Half load = 2 yr + a bunch of days.
25% load = 4 yr + 1 month
and so on. Since they don't expect people to game under full load 24/7 (which you would basically "do" if you mine with the cards, from the card's point of view), they don't expect the card to fail after 1 year.


If they find out what they do, you would be charged with fraud. You cannot expect the card to work after 1 year (when the warranty expired) so just pull up your wallet and buy a new card!

I have a bunch of Sapphire 5850 that that began failing on their own after 1 year and a few days.

At this rate I fear they'll all die on me a few month after warranty.

I know this is illegal, but given the low ethics of this company I'd feel no shame.

I was thinking on swapping their serial # stickers with newer cards. (2 week newer  )

Do the cards have serial numbers inside they will tap into that could void this RMA ?

 Ps : This sticker seems like a pain to remove.