exp gdc beast v8.4d egpu stopped working (r9 390/hd7850)

[MrRare]

Hi, I might be beating a dead horse here... but I'm quit desperate because I don't want to see my money being wasted here (Though I knew the risks). 

 

The hardware in question:

 

MSI GE60 2PC Apache (2014).

Rocking:

• i7 4710HQ
• 8 GB Ram
• 256 GB Samsung mSata SSD
• 1 TB HDD
• GTX 850M 2GB GDDR5 Maxwell version

 

Two gpu's:

• HD 7850 Sapphire Dual-X
• R9 390 Sapphire Nitro

 

And a ATX PSU:

• Corsair CX600 (600 Watt)

 

Alright here is my story:

 

When it arrived... I made a big mistake. I didn't realize that there was a switch to switch between ATX and Brick(whatever it's called). So i just connected my ATX psu and POOF. Smoke. Well, me immediately thinking that I'm done for. Till I opened it up and discovered that there was a switch. A switched it to ATX mode and, luckily, after some fiddeling with my STOCK bios and the PCI Timings it finally recognized my HD 7850. I then turned to my laptop, and thought; "Can I hide the mpci to hdmi cable inside my DVD drivebay?", which, apparently, I could.

 

All ends well. That was three days ago. 

 

Moving to the day before today, I luckily could get my hands on a 390 from a friend (which hes currently selling so I might buy it) to test it out. At first I had my reservations about the possibility that it would work instantaneously...  but, I was wrong. I plugged it in... turned on my psu, booted my laptop, and bwam, there it was, happily showing me my desktop through the R9 390. I even got around to do some testing, both valley, the division and the witcher 3 ran as smooth as it could be on my pci gen2 x1 lane. 

 

Now about today:

 

This morning, I booted everything up, and faintly noticed that my GPU Fans where not spinning (though its normal for a R9 390 to not spin its fans when idling). I went on to youtube as my daily routine...and after about 20 minutes of video... bwam, screen gone, and the fans suddenly ramping up to 100% derived from the wall of sound that came upon me. I suppose that something went wrong with the temperature sensor not reporting its temperature and the fans not turning on. Anyway, after it had hit its thermal maximum temperature, I suppose it internally told the gpu to stop doing whatever its doing and ramp up the fans as much as possible. But that wasn't my biggest problem. I booted it up again and it did came back to life. I then went into my oc'ing tool (Sapphire Strixx)(I didn't came around OC'ing it yet!)  to check the fan profiles... it gave me an error that it couldn't read the temperature sensor. So it send me to the static fan speed page... which was running at 20%.  But when I started to change the fan speed (just for checking it out) it hanged my laptop. And unfortunately... no life came back to my gpu. At first I thought my gpu was the one that was faulty. But when I went ahead and plugged my HD 7850 back in (which worked fine just days ago, including fans that adjusted to temperature), still no life. The fans were spinning alright tho. The final thing that I did was messing with the pci latencies... as it worked to get my hd 7850 to run at first. But nope. Nothing. Nada. 

 

I did notice a very high pitched (but not high in volume) sound coming from the exp gdc (i think), when it was working, before it died. 

 

There are a few things that I could think of which might be the cause or explain it:

 

• The smoke when I first tried it meant that it had burnt something(DUH), after I got it working I thought that only the protection circuitry for the power brick died, but it might have caused more issues on the pcb?
• When I fiddled with my mpcie to hdmi cable, I did had to bend it a few times a bit roughly as well as push it within a gap.  Maybe the cable as has a kink in it? (As it does not seem to do anything at bootup). But I didn't move it when the crash happened, and it was left in the same position when I ran The Witcher 3 the day before. (see here).
• When I was playing around with the PTD switch (when I first tried it, not during the crash)... it broke of, luckily left in the OFF position (I checked with my Multimeter / Continuity mode), which seemed to have worked fine.
• Maybe a bios/windows issue, issues with my oc software (saphire strixx) or something among those things?

 

See this video for the condition of the pcb, including the burned voltage regulator and broken switch.  (Bottom looks totally unharmed so it wasn't worth filming.)

 

 

There is one last question which I couldn't really find any answer for when searching here or googling: There is a switch called Slim line on the pcb, default is "Stand", and the other option is "Ultra". I left it on ultra after figuring out that my HD 7850 got recognized the first time, so I didn't really give it much thought afterwards, but now I am curious what this switch does.

 

But back to my main questions: Is this thing really a dead horse? Or is it savable? Am I doing something more stupid than what I have already done? (How) Can I test the pcb to be sure that it isn't the burning that made it go poof? 

 

Oh and I do know about Nando's DIY eGpu Setup 1.3, but as I said, it was working before, I have no clue about the risk using Setup 1.3 and I am not really sure if it would fix my issues at the moment. + it costs me 20 euro more.

 

And oh yeah... when it worked... it worked perfect.

 

Anyway, thanks in advance!

 

Edit*: After quit a lot of email contact I got my exp gdc beast refunded, I might go with the PE4C V3.0 as suggested by Nando, I do have some questions before the final decision which I will add in a new thread/topic thing. 

 

Edited October 1, 2016 by MrRare

[Tech Inferno Fan]

Suggest you get a refund for your EXP GDC as a faulty item and buy the superior PE4C V3.0 instead. It has a soldered cable which can provide more reliable Gen2 signalling.

http://www.hwtools.net/Adapter/PE4C V3.0.html

[MrRare]

Thanks for your reply, I explicitly went with the gdc beast due to the plug able hdmi cable because my laptop is still used for my studies. I am not really sure if I would be able to get a refund due to my mistake with the power switch and the broken switch. There is nothing I can do myself?