6800GS Issues

[Imarif]

So I ordered my stuff Saturday, and it came today. I assembled my stuff up to my video card. Knowing full well that the eVGA 6800GS was rather loud, I slapped on a Zalman heatsink. Followed the instructions, everything looked OK, and I fired her up. It fails to boot up and I'm at a loss for why. I've discovered that some of the PCI-E connection (the gold plating stuff) appears to be gone. Could this be causing my problem?

The fan on the card spins and sounds as though it's fine but yet it doesn't display and my motherboard gives me a "VGA error" with its LED light code thing.

My other parts are
Biostar T6100 Socket 939
Kingston HyperX PC3200 (2-3-2-6)
AMD Opty 144 (CAB2E)

 

[JasonSix78]

Welcome to Anandtech.

Did you take ESD precautions when you were handling the card? Did it work before you changed the heatsink?


-Jason

 

[Mutilator]

Probably doesn't really help at this point but I would recommend in the future to ALWAYS test a part with it's stock cooling first to make sure it isn't DOA... because if you just swap fans because you know the stock one is loud then you pretty much void the warranty right out of the box don't you?

 

[JasonSix78]

Well, one good thing if you change heatsinks/fans Evga still covers the card under warranty. You just have to ship them the stock heatsink with the card if you send it back.

-Jason