I'll explain my story briefly so I can get to my question. So I ordered a Powercolor Radeon HD 7870 PCS+ about two weeks ago and when it finally came in the mail I was eager to put in to my system. The card didn't seem to have any faults.So i slide it in to place, plug in the cables and voilá! The system boots. But when I'm installing the OS I suddenly heard something that broke off inside the computer and I very fast turn off the system and almost rips open the side panel.
Two fan blades had broken off the graphics card and I was devestated. But then a thought came into my mind: "There are aftermarket coolers; right?" So I quickly return to my old computer and do a quick google. And I found the "Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo II". I then contacted where I bought the card, which quickly sent it to the manufacturer, Powercolor.(It has been 3 weeks and still no answer from Powercolor)
But that's not why I'm posting here. My question is if any of you is familiar with applying an aftermarket cooler to the HD7870 and if you think it's worth spending $60 on a cooler when I'm not thinking of overclocking. (Mostly the reason of that I don't want to wait is because of that i'm ordering new parts from my Christmas money tomorrow and it would suck having a "good" gaming system with Intel's HD Graphics -.-)
I would sent the card to the place you bought it from demand a new card and a full refund. This should not happen and the fan blades could have hit something and broken it inside your computer. I am verry sorry that you had this experience, power color should realy get their arses kicked for this.
I would not bother getting a new cooler the price of shipping to the place you bought it from will probably be cheaper, if however yuo cannot get the card to the place you got it from you should buy the cooler, remember though that the card might be damaged, the system might boot, but it could be damaged and be a huge hit in performance, although most likely if it is damaged the card would not work.
I would try your best to contact the e-tailer and try and get a refund or replacement if powercolor aren't responding. Good luck, sad to see this happen. :(
The fan blades might have hit something inside the case, maybe some cables, in which case it's technically not Powercolour's fault at all. Can't you just slap a new fan on the cooler? I didn't like the stock fan that came with my graphics card, so I just took the old one off and replaced it with another 80mm fan. It depends on how the cooler works though.
That was the weirdest thing, the first thing I checked after removing the graphics card was if something had hit the fan blades. And nope, there wasn't any cables or anything even remotely close to the graphics card.
I also checked if i could just replace the 80mm fan, but nope. The screwholes for the fan isn't cabable of "just" adding a 80mm case fan. That would have been my number one choice otherwise.