teeny piece of metal broke off video card

Dorkenstein · 01-10-2009, 07:10 PM

I was trying to sell my HD4870 but I noticed that a teeny little piece of metal broke off it. It looks like a little ferrite choke, I think. It looks like a very small graphite rectangle with a little dark stripe down the middle vertically. Anyone have an idea of what it is? The odd part is that the video card still works fine. Thanks for any help.

Schadenfroh · 01-10-2009, 07:32 PM

Can you digitally circle a picture of what broke off on a clear picture? If you do not have a camera, you can likely find an image of the card you have on an online vendor's website.

Dorkenstein · 01-10-2009, 07:32 PM

I'll try.

Dorkenstein · 01-11-2009, 09:49 PM

I got a picture of the back of the card and drew a (faint) circle around the exact spot where the bit broke off. You'll have to zoom in all the way, if possible to see it. If anyone can recommend a better clearer method I am all for it. My camera is not good enough to get a shot of the bit of metal, that will have to be tomorrow.

http://i246.photobucket.com/al...98/jmyork/cardback.jpg

SickBeast · 01-11-2009, 10:17 PM

I had a similar incident with my Opteron 165, and it still works, but my maximum overclock seemed to drop a little.

chizow · 01-11-2009, 10:25 PM

Looks like a resistor or something around one of the memory modules. Probably not enough to cause a GPU failure, but if the memory starts flaking out you'll certainly know why.

covert24 · 01-11-2009, 10:29 PM

yea its a transistor. Usually not a big deal just watch for artifacts and if u have any, that's why. otherwise shouldn't be a huge deal.

Dorkenstein · 01-11-2009, 10:31 PM

Damn, it's worse than I thought then. Is that a delayed problem or could it happen any time? I don't know if I could even sell it broken, I have someone interested in it and they know something snapped off it because I told them. But I am wondering if it's better off just staying in a box here.

SickBeast · 01-11-2009, 10:37 PM

I'm sure it's fine. My overclock was affected by 50mhz at the most (I run my CPU at 2700mhz, so it's not much).

Dorkenstein · 01-11-2009, 10:39 PM

Hmm, but are the two things similar enough that if a CPU is fine, a video card is also fine? I just don't want this to come back and haunt me is all.

chizow · 01-11-2009, 10:40 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
Damn, it's worse than I thought then. Is that a delayed problem or could it happen any time? I don't know if I could even sell it broken, I have someone interested in it and they know something snapped off it because I told them. But I am wondering if it's better off just staying in a box here.

I don't think its better off sitting in a box....

You could

1) Try to solder it back on if you have the piece and have experience soldering, then sell it.
2) Send it back for RMA and see if they'll fix it or replace it, then sell it.
3) Sell it at a discount and disclose there's a resistor that fell off, but the card seems to work fine.

HurleyBird · 01-11-2009, 10:41 PM

Well, you could offer for it for a discount. Or you could try to solder it back on.

...Chizow beat me to it.

Dorkenstein · 01-11-2009, 10:42 PM

Okay. I am selling it for a low price and I already put in bold that there is something broken off already, I guess I will just continue with that. I could try and solder it but my soldering iron tip is too large to be precise and I haven't soldered in years. I still have the piece though.

covert24 · 01-12-2009, 11:18 PM

you could sell it at the discounted price with the piece shipped with it and maybe you will get slightly more money if the buyer happens to be a professional solderer....

you could also take it to some computer shop and see if they will solder it back on for u real quick. its a SMT transistor so with a small enough tip it shouldn't be very hard to put back on.

mindless1 · 01-14-2009, 07:08 PM

Not sure why covert24 is saying it's a transistor, it looks almost certain to be one if not two resistors. Look at the silk-screening next to that position, doesn't it look like there are marking something like "R123x" and "R123y" (x and y being numbers I can't read off the picture I saw, the first "might" be R1234).

Whether those being missing effects the card at all, significantly, or completely renders it unusable has everything to do with the function of those parts which I don't know - except that as someone already mentioned they appear to be for one of the memory chips. You may be in luck though, look on your card with it oriented like it is in the picture, roughly 12mm up it appears as though you have the same subcircuit again but laid out in a mirror image of the one below it. In the following picture it looks as though R1243 and R1247 are the corresponding parts. Going by that, if use of a magnifying glass won't allow you to get the markings to determine the values of these resistors, a multimeter may be able to measure them in-circuit, or someone skilled at soldering or with a hot air gun could pull the resistor off to measure it.

What I'd do is put the card back in a system and see if it works. There is a tiny risk doing so with a part knocked off, but it seems worth it to see if it works ok as-is. Then decide whether to find someone who will solder these back on for you, perhaps a friend would do the work for free or a couple beers (would take longer to order the two resistors if that person didn't have them on-hand, than the 2 minutes to solder them on) instead of having a shop charge $60 or more. By shop I mean electronics repair shop, a computer shop does not generally have staff qualified to do this kind of repair. A computer shop might have someone who does such things as a hobby and is quite good at it, but I would be leery of the typical tech at a computer shop claiming they do much SMD repair work, it just isn't the kind of thing a computer shop usually does nor can a shop usually afford to pay someone who has such diverse skills. I'm just saying an electronics repair shop is set up for this kind of work and does it a lot more often, though really anyone with the soldering experience and an adjustable iron with a fine enough tip could do it.

Anyway, here's the picture I was looking at when I made the above comments.
http://www.computeriseasy.com/...s/HD4000/HD4870-bk.JPG

If someone else with one of these cards can assist in identifying the part, even better the value of it or markings, that would go a long way towards fixing it.

Dorkenstein (or anyone else with a close enough match to this card willing to assist), an easier way to get a picture of something like this is to throw it on a scanner and get a zoom of the area at 600DPI or better.

mariush · 01-14-2009, 08:49 PM

use this image and circle what kind of piece fell from it... so we can give better answers...

http://www.ixbt.com/video3/ima...his-4870-scan-back.jpg

Anyways, most likely it's memory related and in the worst case it could cause that chip module to overheat and get damaged in time... or that memory module may not work well anymore and with games with very large textures, when textures get loaded in that chip they're distorted or you get blue screens...

If you're able to run the Fur benchmark with some very high settings, you should be fine.

ps... wow ... 5 posts in 6 years

goes to show i'm pretty much a lurker...

VulcanX · 01-15-2009, 01:10 AM

Gees dude! U really dislike forums hey? 5 posts! wow i even got more and stopped coming here for over 6 months or so, HAHA!
And with regards to the card, i would sell it off to some person and replace it, bcoz i mean even tho it wont cause any harm , i would just like to get it proper and seein how u paid good cash for it, get what u wanted. But then again im not the most ethical person around when it comes to 2nd hand stuff

mwmorph · 01-15-2009, 01:43 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by: mariush
use this image and circle what kind of piece fell from it... so we can give better answers...

http://www.ixbt.com/video3/ima...his-4870-scan-back.jpg

Anyways, most likely it's memory related and in the worst case it could cause that chip module to overheat and get damaged in time... or that memory module may not work well anymore and with games with very large textures, when textures get loaded in that chip they're distorted or you get blue screens...

If you're able to run the Fur benchmark with some very high settings, you should be fine.

ps... wow ... 5 posts in 6 years

goes to show i'm pretty much a lurker...

Hey, comon that's not the spirit, you'll make it to lifer someday, just 11994 years left.