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Help! GFX card not working

Dr_Evil

Dr_Evil

Dr_Evil

Soldato
Joined
7 Jun 2005
Posts
3,035
Location
SE London
I just "cleaned" my computer a bit, and took the video card out. It has an Arctic Silencer installed and i disassembled the cooler to clean the dust inside the heatsink. I then put everything back togeter, as I did when I installed the cooler 2 years ago, and the card seems dead. The fan doesn't come on, also the monitor doesn't recognize a signal. the pc no longer starts up.

I tried re-seating the card a few times, also different power connectors, no luck.

Any help appreciated...
 
Did you remove the heatsink?

I think you might need to re-apply the thermal paste like you have to when doing the CPUs heatsink, although I don't see how not re-applying the thermal paste would make it not boot at all.

Just a thought.
 
Here's what I did:

1. remove the gfx card
2. remove the arctic silencer
3. cleaned the GPU and heatsink with TIM
4. applied arctic silver on GPU
5. installed arctic silencer
6. put the card back in the PC

This is how it should be done. However, i can't remember if I used arctic silver last time or the thermal paste provided with the arctic silencer (MX-1). Could this be the cause of the card no longer working perhaps?

HHEEEEEELLLLLPPPPPP!
 
However the heat sink is mounted, you'd always get a bit of picture before it overheated, no?

What card is it? PCI-E or AGP? Is the motherboard giving you any clues with beeps?
 
It always worked fine. When i got my new case (about 9 months ago), i had the exact same problem after re-building. I re-seated the card, then it worked fine.

About 3 months ago, the problem re-appeared. Again, i re-seated the card and it worked fine again.

The card never really overheated - it goes up to abour 65C max. as it has the Arctic Silencer keeping it cool.

The PC Starts, you can see drive detections and CDrom/dvdrom initializations. The strange thing is that after the drives initialized, the drive activity light stays on. The monitor displays the "no signal detected" message, and the video card fan doesn't come on. The computer locks.

The system is about 2 years old now (Intel mobo, P4 3.0e and Gigabyte 6800GT card) but has always been cooled very well (2x120mm casefans, 400W PSU).

I find it very strange a system that has worked very well, and has no "cheap bits" in it, all of a sudden stops working.
 
do you have a chance to get/use a cheap gfx card in it? If it is not showing BIOS, then it must be a card problem (assuming the AGP slot is clear from dust, etc...)
 
melbourne720 said:
do you have a chance to get/use a cheap gfx card in it? If it is not showing BIOS, then it must be a card problem (assuming the AGP slot is clear from dust, etc...)
Click to expand...

I can try that tonight, however the spare agp gfx card i have uses a regular monitor cable, which i don't have. I should be able to see if the pc starts up though...

COULD THE CAUSE BE THAT I APPLIED ARCTIC SILVER TO THE GPU ?!?!?
 
melbourne720 said:
Doubt it, to be honest. Did you put much on?
Click to expand...

nope - small drop, size of a tiny pie. What's the lifespan of a 6800GT usually? Is it quite common for it to just die after 2 years?
 
Dr_Evil said:
nope - small drop, size of a tiny pie. What's the lifespan of a 6800GT usually? Is it quite common for it to just die after 2 years?
Click to expand...

Hope not - I've had mine for about a year, replaced the heat sink with a vf900 and no problems.

Hope it is just a seating problem - can you run the fan from a spare mobo connector or molex with adaptor?
 
melbourne720 said:
Hope it is just a seating problem - can you run the fan from a spare mobo connector or molex with adaptor?
Click to expand...

I hope so too - re-seating caused a problem once or twice, but it always worked straight away after i re-seated. This time no luck - i reseated numerous times.

Say if i attach the fan to a mobo fan header, I start the PC and the fan starts working, yet the PC still doesn't start up. "hat will that prove? Would the card fail to start if the fan isn't working?
 
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