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Could use some expert help with a bricked GTX 680

Just an update on my bricked 680 - hoping this wont spark another heated discussion about jeans and mobile phones :)

My colleague has taken a long hard look at the card and one of the solder pads has been damaged. Luckily the path on the pcb connects to another one of the dislodged components that is close so he will be able to solder a bridge in place to connect them. He will do this over the weekend so next week will be testing time to see if the card still works.

Caveats:
Card may have been damaged by trying to run it in it's damaged state.
The solder bridge may not work correctly - it could change the properties of the resistor and capacitor.
The whole system may blow up in a puff of smoke when I test the repaired card!

In any case I am going to try it out and see what happens - will be using a secondary system I have to minimise risk :)

Will update with pictures and status once I have tested it.
 
ibpalle said:
Just an update on my bricked 680 - hoping this wont spark another heated discussion about jeans and mobile phones :)

My colleague has taken a long hard look at the card and one of the solder pads has been damaged. Luckily the path on the pcb connects to another one of the dislodged components that is close so he will be able to solder a bridge in place to connect them. He will do this over the weekend so next week will be testing time to see if the card still works.

Caveats:
Card may have been damaged by trying to run it in it's damaged state.
The solder bridge may not work correctly - it could change the properties of the resistor and capacitor.
The whole system may blow up in a puff of smoke when I test the repaired card!

In any case I am going to try it out and see what happens - will be using a secondary system I have to minimise risk :)

Will update with pictures and status once I have tested it.
Click to expand...

Thought of you the other day when I was looking at a 680, a couple of those caps are bloody small ! Pretty sure the card will work if you get them back on though ;)
 
Hi all again

And an update - got the card back from my colleague and the soldering looked fine - the bridge trick worked so full of expectations, I attached the stock cooler again and plugged it into a machine here at work. Had to grab an old husk of a PC with 4 molex connectors as well in order to get the needed power to the gtx680.

Booted up windows and installed driver - that in itself was a step up from previous when windows would blue screen immediately. Fired up furmark after the driver install and it ran for 30m absolutely fine!

So a bit more testing needed but otherwise I think I may have my 3rd card back from the dead!
 
Nice, just be a little more careful this time. :)

Speaking from experience, a repair isn't usually too bad to do, but repairing a repair is, more often than not, a huge PITA!
 
~Dockie said:
Nice, just be a little more careful this time. :)
Click to expand...

Luckily I know now exactly what went wrong when I damaged the card so no risk of repeating that particular error.

I will be adding a full cover block to this card as well - just put my signature on another purchase order so going tri-SLI now!

Thank you everyone for the cheers, best wishes and advice.
 
ibpalle said:
Luckily I know now exactly what went wrong when I damaged the card so no risk of repeating that particular error.

I will be adding a full cover block to this card as well - just put my signature on another purchase order so going tri-SLI now!

Thank you everyone for the cheers, best wishes and advice.
Click to expand...

Pleased you got it fixed....you never did say how you damaged it ?...is it very embarrassing ?
 
JAKUS said:
Pleased you got it fixed....you never did say how you damaged it ?...is it very embarrassing ?
Click to expand...

Heh - it is a bit :) I edited the first post with a description of what happened. When I removed the stock cooler I pushed it a bit from side to side to loosen the TIM and thermal padding. While doing this I pushed the stock cooler too far towards the PCI-E connector. Right below the GPU area there is a screw fitting and that one is very close to a cluster of components on the PCB. That screw fitting pushed against the components so when I was trying to loosen the stock cooler I pushed the components off the board. 2 resistors and one capacitor.

Lesson learned - checkout PCB layout before removing stock cooler and don't wiggle it from side to side - at least not by much - try to lift it off the PCB rather than sliding it off!

:D
 
ibpalle said:
Lesson learned - checkout PCB layout before removing stock cooler and don't wiggle it from side to side - at least not by much - try to lift it off the PCB rather than sliding it off!

:D
Click to expand...

You were correct to wiggle it Never pull vertically, if it's tight Use a heatgun or hairdryer CAREFULLY

The Backplate with thermal pads, hairdryer again and slowly with some wooden wedges (lolly stick or coffee stirrer) start easing it up, but expect to spend at least 10 mins :eek:

Best way it to remove it all when the card is still warm ;)
 
And this story has one last twist to it :)

Recently did an upgrade to a Asus Z87-Ws and a Haswell 4670K. Pic here:

20130707_142324.jpg


After installing everything and powering the system up I started getting crashes. After troubleshooting the culprit turned out to be GFX related. Disabled SLI and ran with just one card - took turns testing all 3.

And when I tested the repaired card I got the crash.....

I assumed that my previous CPU (i7 930@4Gh) was not powerful enough to drive all three cards to the max and with this new Haswell running at 4.7 and pci-e slots all being gen 3 the repaired card could not keep up.

So I removed the repaired card from the loop and put everything back in. Then I took the waterblock off the repaired card and immediately facepalmed myself.

The thermal pad on the memory VRMs still had protective plastic on one side! I went **** and Yay! at the same time. Removed the plastic, re-added the card to the loop and ran a few tests.

My Fire Strike score :) Needless to say I am in a happy place now.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/610793
 
Fixed an overheating Sony laptop years back..Plastic had been left on the CPU cooler, as poor as thermal pads are it shows how much better than nothing or plastic they are :D
 
Wow, This thread is Great and also pathetic as well.

Loved the digs at the Note 2 from Gregster, he is just jealous because he has a terrible iPhone so ignore him. (btw i own a Note 2)

The only thing iPhones are good for today is to provide me with a steady income from repairing them. God they break so easy!
 
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