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GTX295 On the blink?

superleeds27

superleeds27

superleeds27

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Joined
28 Nov 2011
Posts
1,883
Okay, so my friend has an alienware PC.

Not sure of the model, but it has a GTX295 in it, aswell as 12GB RAM.

He said to me it wouldn't boot.

I took all the steps you would normally take by checking.

Monitor
Ram
Booting with only one stick of RAM
Booting with no RAM
CMOS Clear
Battery Pull

Anyway, i noticed the GTX295 has a blue lightNear the back.

Upon booting the system, the blue light doesn't appear straight away, theres a delay of around 10-20 seconds, before the blue light appears. I then have to press the monitor power button a few times before i get things appearing on the screen.

Is this normal? Seems rather weird to me?
 
Is there a green one lit too?

Try putting the monitor on the other DVI.

If that doesn't help then the card could be on its way out. Basically they were very hot cards and prone to failure, especially the dual PCB models which it sounds like he has.

Does it have a single fan in the middle? or a blower on the end?
 
I pulled the card and reseated.

The green light is constantly lit, the blue light take upto 30 seconds to light up.

Erm, looks to have a single fan at the far right hand side.

Not sure how up to date drivers and system is etc. He said it happened 9 months ago and hasn't bothered looking at it since.

Bought it roughly 3-4 years ago
 
What sort of Alienware? Predator 2?

sideon.jpg


I know they still fitted the 295 to Alienwares even with the newer model Dellienwares.

TBH the card is likely to be dead. As I said, they were hot potatoes and people did not understand the downfalls of ROHS solder.

Basically at the end of the 8000 series all electronics companies were forced to use solder that did not contain lead. This meant more tin, which meant it was harder. Harder means brittle, broken contacts, dead cards.

This is strongly alleviated by making sure the GPU never goes over 80c or so. It's not the solder that fails, but the flux. Flux is basically an epoxy and it degrades over time.

Not only that but the Predator 2 pictured above had a pretty crappy airflow. It did have a side fan (120mm) and a front intake (120mm) but the front intake fan was far too far away from the GPU to really feed it any air. Couple that with the fact that most of them were liquid cooled and you have heat issues.

If you look at the back of the machine and it is a predator 2 you will notice this cover.

tr19.jpg


This was a huge problem for hot rigs. Basically the trick was to mod it to look like this.

backcover.jpg


As otherwise the hot air would not get out and would end up back in the case.
 
Yeah thats teh same model, well same case etc. Asus P6T Deluxe mobo inside.

I've also noticed that Vista X64 is only showing 8GB, even though it has 12GB installed.

Well its booting now which is one thing. the card does feel rather hot. Im guessing the only way around this would be to MOD, or get cool air to the card. Or replace the card?

He bough this 4 years ago, and spec wise it would still probably beat my Newish machine! haha
 
Hmm.

There are a few reasons that ram can report incorrectly, and one of them can turn out to be fatal.

Basically wrong ram reports can stem from bent pins inside the CPU socket and touching eachother.

And that *may* explain why it is being so temperamental when you boot it, sometimes working sometimes not.

I had that issue on my Foxconn board. It would reset at post, constantly reset my memory speeds ETC and only showed 2gb ram out of 3gb I had installed.

Thankfully with the aid of a magnifying glass and a tooth pick I managed to straighten them, but my mate had the same issue on a MSI BBXP and it cost him his CPU. The pins burnt to blue and burnt the contacts on his I7 :(

Please take the cooler off and take the CPU out and check. A bit of thermal paste is all it will cost you.
 
Oh also. If the silver bits of the case are chrome then it's an ALX and he would have paid several grand for it :eek:

So it's well worth salvaging.
 
ALXAndy said:
Hmm.

There are a few reasons that ram can report incorrectly, and one of them can turn out to be fatal.

Basically wrong ram reports can stem from bent pins inside the CPU socket and touching eachother.

And that *may* explain why it is being so temperamental when you boot it, sometimes working sometimes not.

I had that issue on my Foxconn board. It would reset at post, constantly reset my memory speeds ETC and only showed 2gb ram out of 3gb I had installed.

Thankfully with the aid of a magnifying glass and a tooth pick I managed to straighten them, but my mate had the same issue on a MSI BBXP and it cost him his CPU. The pins burnt to blue and burnt the contacts on his I7 :(

Please take the cooler off and take the CPU out and check. A bit of thermal paste is all it will cost you.
Click to expand...

Ive read it could be because of the OS. Vista SP2 sorted this out for a few people. Will install and check. If not, ill try what you mentioned.

ALXAndy said:
Oh also. If the silver bits of the case are chrome then it's an ALX and he would have paid several grand for it :eek:

So it's well worth salvaging.
Click to expand...

The case is silver and black, green LED's
 
LEDs are changable. It depends on what option he went for, but one board is passive and has three DIP switches on (R G B) and can be used to change the colours and mix them.

The bulbs in it are quad filament RGB bulbs, bloody expensive to replace. You will note one switch is up and two down? that will be the green switch. Try playing with it :)

If not and you have a load of PIC chips? (programmable interrupt controllers) then you can activate it with AlienFX and change them in Windows :)

I know the wee buggers inside out. I should, I've owned about eight of them hahaha.

First thing I would do is put Win7 on there. That will really help (X64).

Also, go into bios and look at the memory banks. See if it says 8gb there. Because with bent pins my bios said I had 3gb but only 2gb was available :S
 
Yeah need to check the BIOS, that was something else i read. Memory banks etc.

Also need to ask him if he wants Win 7 on. If it was me, Id be wiping and installing now!

Edit: Where in the bios can i check memory banks. Not use to the layout!
 
Last edited:
Something somewhere should tell you what's in what bank.

Either that or at the bottom of the page tell you.

Or, it could be under the system information section.

I've never used that particular board. I know that it's a P6T Deluxe though, the red and black legend, so many here should have had one at some stage :)
 
Uh oh...

That's not good man. And, worryingly it confirms what I feared.

The messed up part is your mate probably got it like that.

Yeah, I wouldn't keep messing with it man. Pop out the CPU and have a look at the contacts. Either that or a DIMM socket is bad.

But yeah, that is absolutely typical of bent pins. My bios showed it, but said 2gb available.

Do me a favour. Take a photo of the socket with a decent camera if you can under plenty of light. Sadly I've a lot of experience with it and know what to look for.

I'll see if I can find some pics of a healthy socket.
 
Ah yes, here we go :)

One healthy socket.

healthysocket.jpg


One with a bent pin.

bentpinub7.jpg


Now I would say that if you have up to four or five bent pins you may get out of it. They are like leaf springs, with a tiny pin atop the end.

They can be worked with a wooden tooth pick. Just gently pried across. In my case one had actually folded backward over itself but I still managed to save it.

If, however, they are blue or burnt looking then they are shagged and it'll be a new mobo.

Hopefully there are no burnt or shiny contacts on the CPU itself.
 
OK no problems.

If they are bent I would say they were like that from day one. Bit of a git really.

It's become a huge issue though. Basically board makers refuse to take the boards back and blame it on the end user. Bit different though when Alienware did it !

Now? some sockets have a seal on that's clear and it tells you to check the pins before removing the cover. If you remove the cover you can't send the board back.

I think the OEMs need to realise THEY should be checking the pins, not the poor sod that buys it.
 
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