Cap fell off my 6800...

[Tyrant222]

Yeah so I was tearing down my watercooling today. Gonna go pci express soon.

anyway the stupidly designed agp locking mechanism on the dfi nf3 would not let go of my card. I just kinda put my finger where I shouldnt have, guess it happens. the silver capacitor just fell. Looks like the ends are still in tact. I hope i can solder it well enough to work again.

add to the fact that the northbridge fan died in a month and I had to slap a small fan on it but it makes getting to the tab to let go of the card impossible.

it was more of a stupid move on my part. I had forgotten on the tab works to use it effectively. but that dont excuse its stupid design.

circled one fell off

guess while im here, im gonna be buying an epox 9npa+ ultra and a x1800xt.
right now just want the most performance I can get for the money as I dont intend to sell my agp stuff.

 

[BlacKJesuS]

HA!

or something

 

[estew33]

Originally posted by: Tyrant222
Yeah so I was tearing down my watercooling today. Gonna go pci express soon.

anyway the stupidly designed agp locking mechanism on the dfi nf3 would not let go of my card. I just kinda put my finger where I shouldnt have, guess it happens. the silver capacitor just fell. Looks like the ends are still in tact. I hope i can solder it well enough to work again.

add to the fact that the northbridge fan died in a month and I had to slap a small fan on it but it makes getting to the tab to let go of the card impossible.

it was more of a stupid move on my part. I had forgotten on the tab works to use it effectively. but that dont excuse its stupid design.

circled one fell off

guess while im here, im gonna be buying an epox 9npa+ ultra and a x1800xt.
right now just want the most performance I can get for the money as I dont intend to sell my agp stuff.

Mine also fell of, luckily I was able to rma it to newegg, alas didn't have any more in stock, so they gave me my money back

 

[Griswold]

The poor capacitor

 

[Tyrant222]

fixed it up, looks perfect. gonna try it now on my secondary system.

 

[Boonesmi]

a couple times ive soldered caps back on video cards (and motherboards) from ones that either got knocked off, or ones that started bulging/leaking. but each time the videocard/motherboard had no problems afterward

 

[imported_Imp]

AGP 'lock' really does suck. Almost cracked my card (old and slow) tearing it out, and when it did come out, the metal bracket nailed the onboard sound chip. Got lucky that time.

 

[nitromullet]

I once bought a Visiontek GeForce3 that had lost a cap from CompUsa. I had run the card flawlessly for a day or two before I noticed it floating around in the anti-static bag. I don't think the caps are really doing anything, they just put them on the card to make em look all high tech an' stuff...

 

[2Xtreme21]

Doesn't eVGA offer a lifetime warranty? Or is that only for cards purchased after when they announced it?

 

[TheRyuu]

In all likelyhood, the card may actually work fine if you just left it alone.
It'll probably still work.

 

[Tyrant222]

ahh guys bad news.

Stuck it back in and its making the beeping noise like there is no video card present.

I would love to revive the thing I mean its going into another system im building. If it dont work out It will have a rage128 instead in there.

The card looks perfect too. Im stumped as to whats up with it. The fan spins and runs fine, but I get no video and the internal speaker is giving me the 'no video card here dude' beep.

 

[Avalon]

Rofl Sy, I saw this thread title and the first thing that came to my mind was "PNY" and their 6800 debacle where people where buying their cards from CompUSSR and finding floaters in their box.

So you managed to solder the cap back on and it still doesn't work?
Is the contact good? You may want to retry the solder job.

 

[Tyrant222]

When it first fell off I had some metal to make a contact with, but just at an odd angle.

anyway after poking it a few times it broke off but at the TIP of the cap so i basically have nothing to solder to.

it might be possible to run some wire to the cap then to the board. I will try again with that method since it seems its the only one that has a chance at working at the moment.

this cap seems vital to the board as it wont show video. unless i screwed something else up. not sure how that is possible nothing else looks like it broke off ( i got pics of it when it worked). Power was off to power supply whole time.

went ahead and just checked for curiosity, bought this card in 11/04.

Did i mention how the agp lock actually works on the DFI nf3? You have to press up from the bottom, then pull the card out. meaning using your index finger, you press straight up (not outwards, or sideways like every other god damn mobo) ADD to the fact its not a lever design, so it doesnt stay up when you press up. You have to press up, hold up with that finger and use your other hand to get the card out. This becomes impossible with a card like the 6800 ultra and its HUGE ass heatsink in the way + I have thick fan on my northbridge.

 

[Raduque]

Ouch, sorry to hear bout that. I had a mobo with a lock like that, I would have to yank my ram and lift the lock with my fingernail and use my left hand to pull the card... PITA. And I also once had a cap fall off a vidcard, my old GF3. I didn't even solder it back on, just stuck the legs through the holes in the correct parity and bent them back to hold it in place. As far as I know, it's still working in a friends old rig.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Avalon
Rofl Sy, I saw this thread title and the first thing that came to my mind was "PNY" and their 6800 debacle where people where buying their cards from CompUSSR and finding floaters in their box.

So you managed to solder the cap back on and it still doesn't work?
Is the contact good? You may want to retry the solder job.

hmmm... sounds familiar.

 

[Tyrant222]

ugh no luck yet with it.

re-soldered it this time, actually went to a professional to do it. still giving me the 'no video card present' beep code.

I guess its possible I have a short on the board somewhere since I had to install the stock heatsink fan on. I will try it tomorrow with my waterblock back on it.

 

[MatthewF01]

ah this happened to me, was pulling out an IDE cable and knocked a capacitor off my 6800GT...it broke VERY close to the butt of the cap too.... i had to sorta build up a little 'solder string' to get it connected right... very stressful and difficult, and be careful the cap gets HOT while soldering!

you could try a small amt of wire... or could take it somewhere? jeweler maybe? tv repair shop?

 

[xSeongminx]

I'd take it to a tv repair shop as they can do these type of operations since they have some experience with caps. I had a transistor fall off of my X850XTPE and it still ran fine .

 

[Tyrant222]

well I decided to pack it up for now.

bought myself an x1800xt and a dfi nf4 ultra-d.

I suppose the next step would be to replace the cap itself. Its possible it could be screwed up somehow.

Does radioshack carry caps that might work? I dont mind giving it another go when I get more free time.

I also tried it in my p4 system, in that system I get no beep codes, the fan spins, just no video.

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally posted by: Tyrant222
Yeah so I was tearing down my watercooling today. Gonna go pci express soon.

anyway the stupidly designed agp locking mechanism on the dfi nf3 would not let go of my card. I just kinda put my finger where I shouldnt have, guess it happens. the silver capacitor just fell. Looks like the ends are still in tact. I hope i can solder it well enough to work again.

add to the fact that the northbridge fan died in a month and I had to slap a small fan on it but it makes getting to the tab to let go of the card impossible.

it was more of a stupid move on my part. I had forgotten on the tab works to use it effectively. but that dont excuse its stupid design.

circled one fell off

guess while im here, im gonna be buying an epox 9npa+ ultra and a x1800xt.
right now just want the most performance I can get for the money as I dont intend to sell my agp stuff.

You should never try to solder the capacitor back onto the broken wire. You should go to Radio Shack and buy a replacement capacitor. (They're not more than a couple of dollars) Remove the old wire from the board by heating the solder with your iron. Pay attention to the polarity markings on the board and match them up with the polarity of your new capacitor. Solder the new capacitor back into place. Thats pretty much all there is to it.

However

If you reversed the polarity when you tried to solder the wires, you may have already ruined your card. A new capacitor won't fix that.

 

[Tyrant222]

yeah i made sure not to reverse polarity. I have a big plus mark in permanent marker on the right side of it. Also that picture you see is when I just got the card back in 04. so I knew how it was suppose to look.

also the first time I knocked it off the ends where completely in tact, which made it easy for ME myself to solder. It was like they were not on very well to begin with.

after I noticed it was not on very well I pretty much broke it off at the cap end and had a professional do it.

My father works in the defense industry down here on the space coast and his friends do soldering all day long. So I had him take it for me and it looks like they worked a miracle with it as far as the soldering job but its still not working.

thanks for the input though I will have to try the radio shack cap soon.

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

My father works in the defense industry down here on the space coast and his friends do soldering all day long. So I had him take it for me and it looks like they worked a miracle with it as far as the soldering job but its still not working.

Sure, it can be resoldered. However, you're completely missing the point. Its much easier and safer to simply replace the cap. And sure, your defense industry friend was successful in soldering the wire to the cap. But if you had asked him, he would have likely told you to replace the whole cap instead. The likelyhood is you blew the gpu the first time power was supplied to the card after the cap fell off.

Anyway, good luck. I hope you're able to revive it.

 

[Tyrant222]

detroit, I apologize for my ignorance.

I did not know simply popping it off would destroy the cap. if that was the case I would have gotten a new one in a heart beat. My intention was not to save 2 bucks, my intention was to revive my card.


in any case i appreciate your feedback. I will try my best to get it going. simply boggles my mind what happened. I always treat my hardware with the best of care but that damn agp lock made me not as careful as usual.

detroit, I must mention it since you seem confused. Power was off to the power supply when I took the card out. Remember now I had a waterblock on the thing. Card was NEVER turned on without the capacitor. after it broke off I was able to get the card out with more time. then I went to solder it back, then stuck it back in.

went like this, power off on PSU, took card out, broke cap, dismantled waterblock, solder cap, put back air cooling, try card, no go, resolder, try card, no go.