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May have destroyed card

Abes33

Abes33

Abes33

Associate
Joined
1 Aug 2006
Posts
127
Just fixed an Accelero S1 onto my x1900xt, with terrible results. I was having a hard time getting the stock cooler off and during a battle with one of the screws I must've hit the surrounding area; I have no idea whether those tiny yellow squares on the board are transistors or capacitors or something else, but the yellow casing on one of them has partly chipped off. The metal inside doesn't seem to be damaged, but I don't know what is in there :S. I also forgot to get some thermal tape so have stuck the ramsinks on with the sticky stuff that the stock cooler came with for now.

Currently speaking to you in safe mode, but when I try and start-up normally I can only get past the loading screen before my monitor loses signal. I guess what I want to know is whether I can get this yellow thing replaced, or is it a lost cause? Also, for future reference if needs be, if direct contact between the ram heatsinks and the ram chips is essential, without sticky thermal stuff in between?

Cheers
 
Doesn't sound good. Probably borked it. The thermal tape supplied with the S1 should be OK, but sounds like you need a new card anyway.
 
If I had a camera handy to take a picture of the damage I would. Will try soon. It just seems like the casing is damaged, nothing else. Although I might be acting hopeful as I don't really have the money to buy a new one :P. Also, the thermal tape that comes with the sinks, as has been stated many times before, is pretty useless.

As it's likely that I'll have to get a new card anyway, I'd just like to get opinions on whether to just get an X1950 (x1900xt's aren't sold on overclockers anymore or make the £100 jump to an 8800 of some sort (would be handy as I can use the Accelero S1 for that too iirc). I'd only make the monetary effort (argh) to get an 8800 if the performance jump is big. I've been playing Crysis quite happily on high settings up until now, but will up and coming games demand something better than the X1900 series?

Thanks again
 
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At best you havent seated the heatsinks or Accelero properly and its overheating and crashing... at worst youve borked the card... the fact that it boots at all and displays a viewable screen is imo a good sign... Id personally try and reseat with Arctic Silver/Arctic Epoxy the heatsinks and try again.

At worst the card is bin fodder and doing the above will not make matters worse, so id try it myself.
 
If it is a resistor, wouldn't it be possible to replace it quite easily?

I don't know what's happened, but now windows won't load as the 'system' file is "corrupt or missing". Sheesh, my computers falling apart bit by bit :S.
 
if they are SMD resistors/capacitors then replacing them isn't going to be easy... even with access to a lab setup for micro-electronics and someone knowledgeable to hand to advise me it still took quite a bit of time and effort to replace a 1mm SMD and that was only because I just happened to have another spare (older) card with the exact same component to transplant it from... trying to ident SMD components can be quite complicated as they are often only identified by 3-4 digit codes which can point to a range of different components if you don't happen to know what it should be. You can easily destroy other components on the card while soldering too if your not careful.
 
Rroff said:
if they are SMD resistors/capacitors then replacing them isn't going to be easy... even with access to a lab setup for micro-electronics and someone knowledgeable to hand to advise me it still took quite a bit of time and effort to replace a 1mm SMD and that was only because I just happened to have another spare (older) card with the exact same component to transplant it from... trying to ident SMD components can be quite complicated as they are often only identified by 3-4 digit codes which can point to a range of different components if you don't happen to know what it should be. You can easily destroy other components on the card while soldering too if your not careful.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

You need to some quite specialised kit to do a good repair. Of the top of my head you'd need an SMD soldering iron and tip(these are temp adjustable so as not to do thermal damage to the tiny components) you'd also need SMD tweezers and be able to correctly identify the part which isn't easy at all without a digital multimeter. Add the cost of all that up and it would come about the price of a G92 8800GTS.

New card time methinks.
 
Hehe, point taken. Well, I've tried all of the above methods and nothing's worked. Fixing the Accelero S1 is a purely physical exercise isn't it, so I haven't missed anything to change on the card or what-not. Final question, I've been happy with the X1900 XT so far; am I going to see a major difference if I get an 8800 this time round (haven't got Vista, and would hopefully be able to overclock a new X1900 moderately well with the S1 attached)?

Thanks for all the info. chaps.
 
8800GT is going to be twice as fast as your 1900xt and the 3870 not far behind twice as fast... in best case scenario the 3870X2 (which doesn't need a crossfire motherboard - but a x16 PCI-e port is) will be upto 4 time the performance of your 1900xt.
 
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