MASSIVE MASSIVE PROBLEM!

manymatt · 23 Jan 2008 at 23:52

Basically, I've not long bought myself an 8800GTS (G92) for my new build, was aiming for a quiet machine so yesterday I finally got round to buying one of those passive, artic cooling Accelero S1 vga coolers together with some akasa thermal tape. It was cheap and had rave reviews, website said it was compatible with my card so i thought I may as well.

Anyways, I installed the cooler, and started to monitor my temps, not a drastic improvment but it was quiet and it seemed fine, sat there for a little while and temps didnt increase much, so i assumed everything was fine, went downstairs and watched a movie (leaving my computer on)...

After about 1.5-2 hours i come back to find my computer dead... seriously screwed up, no signal from gfx card at all, and the cooler scooooorching hot. I restart the machine, it displays the bios but wen it gets to the desktop... nothing, just some weird green artifacts flicker around the screen a bit and then it goes black.

It does however start in Safe Mode, started nvmonitor to see how hot it actually was, but wen i tried it lists my core temp but it doesnt even register a temp for the gfx card.

HELP! PLEASE! i spent a lot of money on that card and I dont exactly have the cash to replace it atm. I'm not technically inert lol, and as far as i can see there is nothing wrong with the way i installed the cooler.

Any ideas what so ever would be greatly appreciated, i really am in the dark here, i've got no idea why this has happened.

only thing i could do is turn it off and let it cool down. on another computer now.

Thanks matt.

manymatt · 24 Jan 2008 at 00:14

yup, its sitting in a p182 case with three big case fans.

manymatt · 24 Jan 2008 at 00:26

*cries*

manymatt · 24 Jan 2008 at 00:45

I dont think its gonna work, ive let it cool down and i still get the same problem... what on earth could cause this!! defective product? now im left with what looks like a useless card (unless anybody has any ideas) and i think a broken warrenty by changing the cooler. what am i going to do?!!?

lol im dying a little inside

matt.

manymatt · 24 Jan 2008 at 00:48

yeah it was fine. had it for a few weeks.

manymatt · 24 Jan 2008 at 00:59

yeah thanks, ill bear this in mind and get back to you. edited the swear btw heh, was a bit paniced when i wrote that first post.

i cant see it being the driver, it literally worked twenty mins before i put the cooler on and even for a litte while after i put it on, it must have overheated.

im gnna put the old one back on, test it with my other machine and check its okay, i havent got high hopes to tell you the truth.

i bought it from OCUK.

you think i should take the 7900GTX out of the other machine and try it in my new one, just to check there's no damage to anything else?
matt.

manymatt · 24 Jan 2008 at 01:46

well, im on my machine with the 7900GTX installed now and it seems okay, no damage from what i can tell, although i just realised i cant check the old card on my other machine because i dont have an OS for it.

Realisically tho, i cant see it being anything other than a dead graphics card now. What should i do? i mean, i know i violated the warranty of the card, but at the same time the cooler failed to provide adequate cooling even though it said it would... is there any way i can avoid shelling out for a new card??

manymatt · 24 Jan 2008 at 01:58

You're too honest..

lol, ill take that as a compliment shall i?

ive never sent anything back before... what exactly is RMA?
how do i do it and how long does it take??

i suppose even if i get it replaced, im still down the money it cost to get the cooler in the first place... but then again, better that than a 200 quid card.

thanks for the help btw steve.

manymatt · 24 Jan 2008 at 15:20

What did you need the thermal tape for?

Well, although the cooler got 5 star reviews from most people, everyone seemed to have the same gripe that the supplied tape was a bit poo. A quick google for "proper" reviews revealed the same thing.

Last place I'd want to speak about something I got from Overclockers and killed, is on Overclockers forums!

I know but I'm an idiot lol :cool:

If the cooler was scorching hot then it had a great contact with the core, but it shows there wasn't enough airflow onto the heatsink to remove that heat

Thats what i was thinking but there are three big case fans in there and besides the side was off anyways

I was going to say, I've rarely heard of Nvidia cards borking themselves from getting too hot. Maybe something got damaged when you installed it? Not trying to pass the blame or anything though.

You're right, its totally a possibility! although I was pretty careful when i was installing the cooler, lol, and I appreciate the input it's not about blame its about what i can do to get my card working so im grateful for any ideas

Anyways i got an rma number from OCUK so i'll be posting that off today and keep my fingers crossed that they replace it!

I also contacted arctic cooling and they just gave me this.

Dear Mr. McLean, this sounds way like as if you've killed your graphics card. Please remount the old cooler and contact your graphics-card producer or your dealer. Best regardsArctic Cooling Support

So basically just what you guys have mostly been saying... and i had to fill out a form and wait a day for that so i think thats one up for the OCUK community over AC in my book... much more helpful tbh.

thanks
matt.

manymatt · 24 Jan 2008 at 22:38

If it starts in Safe Mode it sounds to me like it is definitely a driver problem or something similar...reinstall the original cooler as others have told you to, and use Driver Cleaner in Safe Mode to get rid of any of the nVidia drivers.

im gnna give this a try.

MASSIVE MASSIVE PROBLEM!!

Oh...you installed a new cooler on a GFX card and it got too hot. Ok.

Id say a complete failure of an expensive device is a pretty major problem, say somthing productive please like all the people before and after you. They seem to want to help, k thanks.

I do hope you mean thermal material

IIRC thermal tape is what you put on RAM sinks to make it sticks to the memory chips on graphics card. For GPU and CPU you need proper thermal material/thermal glue like AS5 or MX2.

Yeah steve, the cooler itself comes with thermal paste already applied to the main heatsink for the chip, the thermal tape was literally just to stick the ram heatsinks on as the tape supplied was poo.

isn;'t the thermal tape ment to be really bad and doesn't even hold it properly?

yup that's why i bought the akasa stuff, i tried it at first and it came off within a minuite of me putting it on. Fairly bad quality.

What are peoples' opinions on my outlook on the situation? I mean, I think ocuk has some responsibility in this, i mean, the cooler is stated as being compatible with my card, and whilst i know that the warrenty is broken... say i got a faulty unit. What am i supposed to do? the failure of quality control on the part of the manufacturer - and in turn the retailer (in this case OCUK) has cost me, the consumer a substantial amount of money. Any number of things could have happened but - in my eyes - the cooler never worked as promised and i was mislead which has put me at a loss. Considering i've spent over £1100 at OCUK i believe that they are partly responsible for this and should reimburse me.
Just out of interest what do you think? It's totally ok if you disagree, I just want to see what the general population of this forum are thinking, so if my RMA is refused i don't call them up and appear to be a complete arse

thanks again everyone
matt.

manymatt · 25 Jan 2008 at 14:05

I'd have to say that it would not hurt to ask but on checking the Arctic Cooling site i notice that the S1 details explain the turbo module must be used with the heatsink when installed on the G92 GTS to guarantee sufficient cooling: http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.p...8&data=7&disc=

The GTS must put out an extra few watts of heat compared to the GT and consequently need the active cooling provided by the turbo module (or zip tied 120mm fan).

Yeah, i noticed that after I started this thread. Should have read up on the actual product website more carefully really, but my point is that it should be highlighted on the OCUK website aswell. Unless it has been changed, there was no mention of me needing a turbo module in order for my cooler to work effectively, only a notice to say that it was compatible with my card.

I would get on the phone (NOT EMAIL) ocuk and simply explain the problem from start to finish and they may well sympathise with you and help out. They are human and have given me nothing but outstanding service

thats what i was thinking of doing, and why i wanted to know what people thought before i got all angry and stuff. And you're right, I buy all my stuff from ocuk and they have been great in the past.

Thanks for all the posotive feedback, never thought this thread would get so big! thought there would be like one guy going "you're screwed" or somthing along those lines. I'll let you know what happens