Is this a knackered video card (pic inside) ?

[Rikki]

Hi guys.

Not used my main pc for a few days and turned it on yesterday to hear a slight clicking sound from inside. It sounded like a fan with the edge of a cable tie caught and after a few seconds it went away.

Today I took the pc sides off and investigated. Turned out the 8800gt fan was catching something as it span so I used a small paint brush and some air duster and cleaned it all out. not much dust in there and it still made the noise when i turned it on - oh well.

After a few minutes though I saw the text on screen shimmer a bit then red dots appear. I turned the pc off and pulled the side off again thinking id maybe knackered the fan and it wasnt turning but on booting up again it was spinning fine. I reseated the card, checked the main memory and the cables etc - all fine.

Booted up and the BIOS screen had red shimmering drop shadow round the text and the windows login screen had weird red shimmering dots only in specific places not randomly.

Downloaded memtest86 and its been running for 40 mins with no errors so I just wanted to check on here that this is defo a case of a buggered video card before i go out and buy a new one tomorrow.

thanks

rik

 

[mmj_uk]

Have you made sure the DVI cable is not loose at all?

edit: sorry didn't see you tested cables... do you not have a spare graphics card you can try with? or another source (Xbox?) to test your monitor with?

 

[Rikki]

I think you may be on to something, the DVI cable to one of my monitors was pulled slightly when I opened up the PC - it was tight on the card itself. Just reseated the end on the monitor and so far (20 mins) everything seems ok.

Never seen this type of thing before, bar an actual screwed card so thanks for pointing me in that direction (and reminding me its a good idea to tighten both ends of cables LOL)!

 

[powdaman]

(facepalm)

 

[Rikki]

I know I know LOL!

Never seen that kinda thing before, just certain pixels affected.

Least I admitted my faux pas, I could have just replied saying "err, cheers mate, but I checked all that" and whistled off into the shadows

 

[kmufc77]

can you post more pics of the random dots you get on the screen please?

At first glance i would say its the GPU or the GPUs ram.

 

[Rikki]

Think we got to the bottom of the problem but here's another pic:

 

[Tealc]

Could just be on it's way slowly to silicon heaven. My old ati 9500 pro did a few lines and dots for months before I eventually retired it, just small things really and didn't affect 3D rendering at all. I could have reseated the cooler and fiddled with the RAM cooling but I just couldn't be bothered trying to raise a long since defunct card.

 

[varkanoid]

if what first alerted you was the fan catching could be the fan is on its way out, is there a lot of play in the fan and does it spin okay by hand or is it a bit sluggish ?

 

[arc@css]

I keep wondering if mine is on it's slow way out. I get some dots (white) on mp (css), but not all maps. Doesn't really seem to happen much if at all on sp games. Desktop seems fine.

 

[Rikki]

Since pushing home the DVI on the bottom of my monitor its been fine the last 2 days.

The noise from the fan is the fan catching on the housing for some reason when its cold - and the weather the last few days has been very cold!

I'll keep an eye on it, dont really want to buy a new gfx card for it as Ill be replcing the system at some point come the turn of the year :S

 

[RockSteddy]

I got the exact same kind of lines appear on my old Alienware M9750 laptop screen. At first I thought it was the graphics card but when I purchased my new OCUK system I attached my new BenQ monitor to the Laptop via the DVI output and all was fine. So it turned out to be Laptop screen it's self that was faulty (gave me a good excuse to upgrade as I fancied getting back into PC gaming with a machine that could run the latest games at a decent framerate ).

 

[lamocuk]

I got tiny little red dots on mine last night and now i have a new thread asking advice on a new one. It completely shut down today,

I did buy a little time by removing it and installing it again, but jthwt doesn't work anymore.

Lee

Ps. Take what i say with a pinch of salt.... I am far (understatement) from and expert