Did I kill my brand new 4870?

[Beefareeno]

In the bonehead move of the century, I dropped one of my raptor 150gb HDDs straight onto my sapphire 4870 1gb from about 2-3 feet above it. One of the screws that I think attaches to the core of the gpu BROKE and fell out. (One in the group of four that stick out a little and have clear plastic on them). The card powers up and I get a display, but it gets extremely hot to the touch just sitting in the BIOS setup screen. I haven't installed an OS yet so I haven't tested it, but assuming there is no other physical damage, how fatal could this broken screw be?

 

[Aberforth]

4870 is usually very hot, remember to set the fan speed to 40% after you install the drivers.

 

[lavaheadache]

which part is very hot?

 

[josh6079]

If one of the four screws attaching your heatsink is missing, it could affect the temps.

Without using your finger as a thermometer, do you know its idle temp?

 

[thilanliyan]

Clear plastic on it? Which screw exactly are you talking about? I have the reference 4870 and don't remember and clear plastic covering the 4 screws that attach the core heatsink.

 

[SSChevy2001]

Like josh6079 said, if it's one of the 4 gpu mount screws then you need to fix that before using the GPU. Can you provide a screenshot?

 

[Beefareeno]

Thanks for the input - I'll post a pic of it after I get home from work today.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Would it make sense for the OP to get an aftermarket cooler since his current one is broken? Or would repairing his current one do the job?

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
Would it make sense for the OP to get an aftermarket cooler since his current one is broken? Or would repairing his current one do the job?

If it were me, I would first check into any support that may be of current service. If you purchased a warranty plan from the seller that would be one avenue, but if you didn't I would try contacting Sapphire and see if your situation is possibly covered at all.

If you don't have any product support, I'd then see what your temps are with 3/4 screws in place. To keep a close eye on them you can open your Catalyst Control Center (CCC) and record your idle temp every 10-15 mins for a period of one hour. If those look good, try running a game for 5-10 mins and stop to look at the load temps. You can continue to do this for however long of a period you wish, but just make sure to not let it run too long at load without supervising its temperatures until you have a history of expected ranges in which it fluctuates.

Also, while you can check temps with CCC, I myself use ATi Tray Tools since it has a monitoring program that you can easily minimize and it will record a table of your temps as well as the corresponding time in which the GPU reached them. Note, either method works; it's just personal preference.

If temperatures seem fine, I'd think about how the card is positioned. In a normal ATX case, over time, the heatsink may separate from the GPU slightly since it's both hanging and missing a screw. In a BTX case, the heatsink lies on top of the GPU and may not be as apt to separate. Depending on your situation, this may or may not alleviate some concern.

If temps aren't fine, then don't use the card. At this point, purchasing an aftermarket cooler would be on way to salvage the purchase.

Again, all of the above is what I would do. Feel free to do as you wish. For what it's worth, you'd be surprised with how well a heatsink can still perform even when missing a screw and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the card and its temps should be fine under your circumstance. That said, knowing myself, I'd be too anal to let that fly in my rig.