Graphics card blew up yesterday

Sheesh, my 6 month old nVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS card died on me yesterday. I was installing Ubuntu on a spare hard drive in the tower and all of a sudden there was a loud 'pop' and a bright flash then the screen went black. The rest of the PC was still running.



The fan has seized up (well, almost. Its very hard to turn it). That's what caused it to overheat, of course.

You can see where its burnt, like a sort of black gooey stuff there. Lucky I've kept my 4 year old ATI Radeon 9600 card, I'm using that on the main PC at the moment. I thought I'd lost the receipt but I've found it, thank goodness. Back to the computer store it goes in the next day or two.

Bugger, hope they give you a refund or exchange.

I've only had it for 6 months, I think it has a one year warranty (at least).

After a bit more investigation here's what actually happened:





See how the fan is out of alignment? High on the left side and low on the right.

The fan blades are rubbing against the top cover on the left side making it hard to spin, the bearing or mounting must have failed causing it to go out of whack.

Just got back from the computer store, they're going to replace the card under warranty. I have to wait for them to send the stuffed one away and get a replacement.

Well, at least you have a spare of sorts to get you by 'til the new one comes in.

Well, look what I got today.



Must have been the only AGP graphics card left in Perth. I've been to a few places over the past several weeks and until today, I couldn't find anyone that still sells AGP cards.

Cost me $479.95

This one has 512MB DDR3 RAM, the one that blew up "only" had 256MB.

I sure hope the fan doesn't fail on this one after 6 months, I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

Did they replace the damaged one? Hopefully they sent you a new
card & now have a spare..How long did it take to get the hard replaced,
before you bought this new one?
That card sure is expensive..lol..

Hi, Sharon.

Nope, the computer store where I bought the original card couldn't get a replacement so they gave me a refund. I bought a 320GB portable hard drive with that. I bought this new card from another computer store in Perth City today.

I was just walking past and I decided to try my luck there. I'd already tried nearly every other computer place in the Perth metropolitan area over the past few weeks but all they have now is PCI Express and my 4 year old motherboard doesn't support that.

I'll put this new card in tomorrow, I've just downloaded the latest drivers from the nvidia website. I'll keep my 4 year old 128MB ATI Radeon 9600 as a spare (I've been using it since that other nvidia card blew up), I even have a very old 64MB nvidia GeForce2 MX400 packed away here, it still works OK but I would only use it if I didn't have any other option.

Carl D wrote:Well, look what I got today.



Must have been the only AGP graphics card left in Perth. I've been to a few places over the past several weeks and until today, I couldn't find anyone that still sells AGP cards.

Cost me $479.95

This one has 512MB DDR3 RAM, the one that blew up "only" had 256MB.

I sure hope the fan doesn't fail on this one after 6 months, I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

For that price Carl I could of got a whole new computer lol

Pretty pricey, alright! Like you said, I hope it lasts a while.

At that price, I think I'd try to find a new fan from a component store, in case this one takes a dump too.

Boy for $479.95 I sure hope it lasts a lot longer then to old one Carl.

I don't believe this!

Had the computer on for a while earlier today then all of a sudden it just switched off. I've had that happen several times over the past few months and all I've done is wait a minute then switch it back on and all was good.

But... when I switched it back on today, everything powers up but, nothing happens. No beep, no POST. Nothing. The computer just sits there with the power light on and the hard drive activity light continuously on.

I've narrowed it down to the motherboard, the processor or the RAM. If I can find my old 2 x 512MB RAM sticks later when I get home from work I'll put them back in and try it one last time (I have 2 x 1GB sticks in there at the moment) but, I get the feeling the CPU may have died.

If it turns out that I need a new motherboard I sure hope there's still some available with an AGP graphics slot. I've just spent $479 four days ago on a new card. I'm not going to be too happy if I can't use it anymore. Sheesh.

In the meantime I'm confined to my 2 laptops. Thank goodness for those.

Well, at least I can use my large monitor with the laptop...



Keyboard and mouse are connected too.

Keeps me happy until I get this mess sorted out...

If it turns out that I need a new motherboard I sure hope there's still some available with an AGP graphics slot.

check on Ebay

Thanks, Larry.

A friend of mine has the exact same motherboard and processor, he doesn't use them anymore but still has them packed away for spares. He says I can have them if I can't fix it any other way.

Well, it isn't the RAM either (didn't think it was). I'll take the motherboard to a computer shop on Monday and get them to test it. I'm pretty sure its the CPU.

Now I'm really starting to get annoyed. I went to 2 computer shops yesterday, no-one wants to check out my motherboard/processor for anything less than about $200. That's just to look at it, they can't guarantee they'll be able to find the fault or fix it.

They say I should just "cut my losses" and buy a whole new motherboard, processor, RAM, graphics card etc. Yeah, right! I wouldn't mind doing that if I hadn't just forked out nearly $500 for a new AGP graphics card just over a week ago. "Sell it on EBay", someone said. I felt like saying "Bite me".

You can't buy a new motherboard with an AGP graphics slot anymore. I think that's BS, they should provide both options - AGP and the new PCI Express. Not everyone is interested in playing the latest and greatest video games, quite a lot of people only use their PC's for surfing, checking email, etc.

I still think its the processor and not the motherboard itself, I need to get hold of another one to test it. Of course, the computer shops don't have that type of CPU anymore - what a surprise. They want everyone to do a complete upgrade every few years spending lots of $$$$$. Well, they can kiss my @ss!

Now now, Carl! I can understand the frustration, you are going through a lot of trouble to be able to have your PC back and running! Hope it works out for you soon.

Thanks, Shawna.

My friend, Chris, has the exact same motherboard and processor. We both bought them at the same time 4 years ago. He's upgraded just recently so he doesn't need them anymore. He says I can have them if I want.

But first, I might go back to the guy who sold me all this stuff 4 years ago, he and his son run their computer shop from their house. I'm sure they must have quite a few old processors, etc. lying around the place.

Oh, and they tried to tell me at the computer shop that you can't get Intel Socket 478 processors anymore. I call that BS. I found a whole page full of them online earlier.

What really annoys me is that everything still looks brand new.



I took the heatsink/fan and processor off just a short time ago. The Arctic Silver I put on back in April seems to have pushed out to the sides so I'm wondering if the CPU might have been overheating? I've cleaned it all up before I took that picture.

Hmm, after doing a bit of reading it seems I haven't been putting the Arctic Silver on properly. It needs to be applied in a thin, straight line with the processor facing a certain direction, not as a small 'blob' in the centre of the processor. Uh-oh.

Edit: after talking to a few people I've found that doesn't really matter. In fact, you don't even have to use something like Arctic Silver if you don't want to. It shouldn't cause a problem.

Well, the good thing about this is it reinforces my opinion that the processor has failed, not the motherboard.

I finally got hold of my friend Chris's old motherboard and processor yesterday, they're exactly the same as mine.

It's my motherboard that's failed. The first thing I did was put my processor on his motherboard and connected everything up 'roughly' on the desk and it worked. Dammit, I was hoping it was just the processor, that would have been easier to replace. Oh, well, Chris says I can keep his old motherboard and processor as long as I like, he's not using them anymore.

Hopefully, they'll last quite a while so I can get some value out of that $479 graphics card. The entire computer is completely clean and looking like brand new, I also put new Arctic Silver between the processor and heatsink, of course.

Here's a few pictures, I've been using this laptop as my main PC for over a week:



Just about finished installing everything with Chris's motherboard here, my old motherboard is on the right:



Everything is up and running, Windows XP didn't complain about the different motherboard and processor since they're the same as my old ones:



I will upgrade eventually - after I get some use out of this graphics card.

Well, I'm off to Terry's next door to celebrate with a 'few' drinks.

your desk is to clean. You should see MY puter desk. I am now running 2 race leagues, and running the server on another 3. I have "notes" all over the place.

What do you expect from the "fastest growing online racing league in the US??"

Been busy reinstalling XP again. Seems that my old installation of XP Home wasn't completely happy with the new motherboard and processor... was getting a few blue screen errors, the last one was when I tried to run DVD Shrink yesterday.

Might have to do with the fact that my old motherboard was a Gigabyte 8IK1100 Revision 1 and Chris's is a Revision 2. The boards look exactly the same and the BIOS version and chipset drivers, etc, were the same but there must be some subtle differences that upset Windows.

The funny thing is, Ubuntu (on a 2nd hard drive) seems completely happy with the change. Go figure.

Yeah, I know I probably could have done a 'repair install' but I don't trust those to work properly. Oh, well, everything's working 100% now (so far).

Good to hear, Carl A lot of work when parts quit on a PC..
Good job getting it fixed..