Been away from the screen, as I was on this forum so late last night. Those who were around at that point know this. I've just been getting to grips and learning more about what components do what and when upon the board.
Been trying to catch up here, but am still confused as to the purpose of the opening of the casing and top loading of fans. It makes zero difference, it just appears to be a bizarre form of planking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planking_(fad)
The temps ascertained by the BertMod (great work that man), reveal the voltage regulator temps, and not the ASIC. The voltage regulators can handle in excess of 100 degrees Celsius - ambient (surrounding environment) - so blowing a fan on them is pointless.
Likewise the ASICs are barely above 50 degrees when i was playing with a laser temp gauge. You can actually touch the heatsink bracket above the ASICs and hold your finger there. The heatsink can dissipate above 320 Watts of heat, and is a totally OTT margin. So there are no heat issues whatsoever. The unit hashing at the Atlanta conference had everyone stating the device barely generates any heat. Those present are welcome to testify to this fact. It was running for several hours as verifiable via Eligius.
Some of the armchair engineering is amusing, but I'm the only one that's skimmed it, as previously stated this is all firmware issues. For those in despair that the whole world is falling apart and that they are entirely unprofessional; grow up, you've knowingly bought an unrefined product that is undergoing refinement. In effect a prototype revision and this was always the fact. You didn't want to wait, but at the same you can't expect blind perfection. If the margins did not exist, you wouldn't be seeing promised specs met. I'm not sugar coating, this is an indisputable truth, but that said you have nothing to fear, just be aware no one knew what these chips could actually do 10 days ago. The fact we've seen multiple instances of significantly +400 Gh/s demonstrates what you should be reaching, and shall be. It's only ever been firmware.
In standard product design the refinement between receiving chips in hand and consumer product in around 12-18 months, and not 24 hours. However, due to the nature of the reward being greater in Bitcoin - the earlier you can play with the kit, the greater the reward.
You all chose to take the route of a product that is shipped proven to achieve a declared spec, and have to accept that it will improve overtime.
As such one can only assume you'll be relieved to upgrade to 0.95, this includes the hosting facility...
I've seen what the next update is capable of. You'll have that to play with shortly. From what i've seen CGMiner may be asked to restart every now and then if performance begins to degrade over time. Then you'll have a further revision the otherside of the weekend. The freak 4 module boards sapping unnecessary wattage will also be rectified as well, but everyone should be happy hashing. Any inconsistencies, keep them posted. Feedback is useful, whinging is not.
The blown caps appear to be linked to a particular type of PSU, safety in the HX850 is triggered, the reset involves removing ATX cabling and re-inserting it. When this happens the current from the power supply applied is too great, it does not gradually load as when usually switched on. The cap blows as a result. There has been a specialist from General Electric's (GE) Critical Power Division that has flown in from the States especially here the last couple of days working on determining what the fault is and how to best proceed, hence the silence until there is a definitive conclusion. He couldn't make it earlier due to the fact he was at a conference. I am not an expert from General Electric's Critical Power Division and as such can only convey what I've understood from a brief conversation, as it is more important these guys work together on this. There is nothing wrong with the board design from what he can see and it adheres to all the standard recommendations GE outlay. That part I did understand. The fact he is British helps too, no loss of translation by me there...
EDIT: I don't know if this applies soley to this particular Corsair PSU, but for sure as it is a popular one that has been causing it and the GE guy confirmed the reasoning behind it, it's best avoided. Also if you are super worried I think he said it takes like 30 seconds for the PSU to get this out of it's system before you can turn it on and off again without it delivering a high load. So maybe if your PSU does trip, just disconnect the PSU, reset the ATX cable without the miner attached, and run it without the miner attached for 30 seconds, before turning the PSU back off, attaching the miner and without the power supply switched on and then turn on again, just to get this freak load out of it's system. I will check again with GE's guy tomo when he has a moment to confirm this edit here makes sense. Although I won;t go out of my way to disturb him while he's busy testing kit.