hot house = dead video card?

[ohGrFreak]

our central air died the other day, and on a previous post i stated that my second PC had been rebooting due to heat issues. now it's my main comp that's messed up.

my LCD has a standby/signal light, when the light is green, it has video signal, when it is orange, it has no signal. I came into my "office" and i saw that the screen was black, but the LCD's light was green, meaning that the video card was trying to send a signal. after thinking it's in sleep or hibernate mode, i try to wake it up, with no avail. i ended up having to do a hard shutdown.

upon startup, the mobo logo screen was choppy, for instance, it would say ASUS all the way down the screen when it only should appear in the middle of the screen. I shutdown again, opened the side panel, pointed a mini fan into the case directly towards the video card and started up again. this time, the mobo logo displayed fine for a second before it died/distorted again.

now, my a/c went out and it's 80+ degrees in the house. i did check the CPU temp of that comp, and it was in normal operating range (40c-45c) , so I just assumed the video card would be in the normal range as well.

a couple things might be wrong here, the video card itself overheated, or the PSU overheated.

I have a ASUS V9999 6800 plain hybrid with 256 DDR3, which is a replacment for my last one, it has worked more than perfectly and flawlessly for a few weeks since i got it.

The PSU is a stock raidmax 420 watt, which i have never had any problems with before, even with pretty hard overclocking.

This setup ran for almost one year without fault until the first video card died.

Upon installing the latest video card i did a fresh format and reinstall of XP home and all drivers.

so my question is, how do i determine if it's the video card or the PSU that's messing up? and did it do irreversible damage to the video card?

 

[Nubius]

I'm assuming you don't have another PSU to try out eh or even a spare crappy vid card?

That'd be the easiest way to check of course.

80+ isn't even that bad, it's 80.5F in my room right now, I have water cooling, BUT I was sporting air when it was these temps and higher at one point and never had such issue.

However if your case has poor flow then that could of course be a contributing factor.

Either swap out PSU's or take the vid card that you think is screwing up on you right now and put it into another computer or a friends computer...if it works properly, I guess you could assume it's the PSU, although if you're seeing garballed images on the screen I'd definitely say vid card first

 

[ohGrFreak]

alright, i'll dig my backup 5200 out and install it. i checked the inside thermometor, and it's actually almost 90, it just feels like 80 because i have a fan pointed on myself as well.

if it is the video card, could the PSU have a hand in killing it? like if the PSU overheated or couldn't send enough power to the card, could that have aided in the death of the card?

 

[ohGrFreak]

Well, I started the comp up after letting it cool down and having the mini fan pointed at it. it booted up and is now seemingly doing great. i will download ASUS' video card doctor and check out the temps of the video card itself while i still can.

so, now that's it's started up fine, can i assume that it was just heat that caused this?

EDIT: the temps are midrange for the card, 60c, DDR3 is 53c. I have no idea what happened to make it mess up like that. are there any preventative measure i should take so it won't happen again? i already have three case fans. front intake, side intake, rear exhaust and round cables to help airflow. does anyone have links to PCI fans that stick in a PCI slot and have fans that blow up to the video card?

 

[Nubius]

it's easy to make your own ghetto PCI-E fan...I suggest you do that instead of wasting money on those cheap ass ones, unless you REALLY want to.

I've attached an image of a really cheap one I made...I had this tiny little card that was used for adding more USB's which I didn't need so if you got something like that then you'll be set.

if it is the video card, could the PSU have a hand in killing it? like if the PSU overheated or couldn't send enough power to the card, could that have aided in the death of the card?

Don't know....if the PSU is working fine right now then perhaps it wasn't the PSU at all...coulda simply been the card just being way too hot...I'd figure the PSU would just overheat and die....guess in some instances when the PSU dies and POPS! or something then it might cause troubles.

 

[ohGrFreak]

All has been well so far, still have the mini fan pointing directly on the card. The PSU is fine, but the video card monitor reads the VCC at 3.29, I don't know what this means, but the graph is in the red because of it. Other than that, all other voltage readings are fine, I am running the video card fan at a higher speed now to hopefully help keep this from happening again.

I plan on printing out that picture, it's a good idea. I'll pick up a few extra case fans while i'm getting one for my other PC.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Replace the raidmax PSU, my raidmax PSU from my scorpio lit on fire...

 

[joshd]

that is one great design nubius. shame i cant do the same, as the mobo in my dell is on the WRONG side of the case, causing the gfx card to be the RIGHT way up. this means as it is pci-e, it is at the top, so i have not slots above to put a homemade cooler in. oh well. its a great idea though.

what happens if you try the 6800 at night, with all windows open?

 

[Nubius]

that is one great design nubius. shame i cant do the same, as the mobo in my dell is on the WRONG side of the case, causing the gfx card to be the RIGHT way up. this means as it is pci-e, it is at the top, so i have not slots above to put a homemade cooler in. oh well. its a great idea though.

Can you get a picture of the insides? I mean I've seen the BTX cases and whatnot, but if I see your case maybe I could figure out a way for you to mount it if you really cared.

I'm sure other people have done the ghetto PCI fan, but I think it's one of the only ideas I had where I didn't see it online first lol.

Doesnt work too well in my thermaltake case since it's got that 'toolless design' BS, so the little plastic clips can't hold onto it tight enough to keep it nice and straight while being parallel to the graphics card

 

[joshd]

im not that bothered, as i dont oc it, so the passive heatsink it come with is ok. its not a particularly great card really.