Fried cards

[munisgtm]

i was just thinkin if anyone fried his card overclocking or doing something else ?

 

[josh6079]

LOL!! I know of one particular instance with a 7800GT voltage regulator.....

 

[Raduque]

I've (accidentally) used a gf2mx to complete the circuit of a case fan before.......

 

[JBT]

Only thing I've ever fried was a HDD via a little bit of ESD.

 

[SpeedZealot369]

I fried a mobo once, it was my first Pentium4 oc, did 4.3 on a 2.8ghz (the 478 socket) after about 5 minutes I smelled something burning

 

[bradams]

couple years ago fried my p4 mobo doing 3.8ghz with a 2.4ghz... I miscalculated the multiplier...

 

[mikek753]

Chernobil

lets hope you'll never try OC at such scale
who knows what power usage will be needed in next 20 -50 years to power up GPU?
could be 1 Mega Watt that comes from build in mini nuke ...

 

[munisgtm]

i was thinkin of oc'ing my 7900gt , wondering if it cud get damaged by it............

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: munisgtm
i was thinkin of oc'ing my 7900gt , wondering if it cud get damaged by it............

Ocing doesn't normally damage something. If you see graphical errors back the OC down a bit.

The thing that kills components are voltage increases...

Don't get me wrong something could die from OCing but normally only from an increased amount of heat.

Either way something dying from just increasing clock speeds doesn't happen much.

 

[mikek753]

Originally posted by: JBT

Originally posted by: munisgtm
i was thinkin of oc'ing my 7900gt , wondering if it cud get damaged by it............

Ocing doesn't normally damage something. If you see graphical errors back the OC down a bit.

The thing that kills components are voltage increases...

Don't get me wrong something could die from OCing but normally only from an increased amount of heat.

Either way something dying from just increasing clock speeds doesn't happen much.

it doesn't apply to 7900GT - IMHO
if you just OC no vmod - your card dies in days
if you don't OC then your 7900GT dies in weeks
based on evga and other forums

to be on safe side with your OC
1. make sure you have option to return / replace it with in 15 - 30 days (Fry's, BB, CC, etc) - you can't return to monarch without loosing $$$!!!!
2. OC is covered by warranty - eVGA brand, etc.

any way - if no "hard" damage done you can replace it in case something happens to the card.

it isn't the rule - just IMO

 

[flashbacck]

Just last night I tried flashing my radeon 9800np to a 9800pro. Bad idea. Even after reverting to the old bios, I get blocky artifacts everywhere (even non-3d apps).

Ah well... I was thinking of getting a new card anyway.

 

[redbox]

Originally posted by: josh6079
LOL!! I know of one particular instance with a 7800GT voltage regulator.....

Yep I fried one of my 7800gt's by overvolting it. The sucker caught on fire and I hade to blow it out before my whole computer got toasted. I tried it with another one and was very carefull on how I turned up the volts. It is now sitting happy at 540/1250 a nice little overclock from 400/1000. It wasn't really an issue with overclocking more of an issue with overvolting.

 

[Melted Rabbit]

I killed my X600XT, which is like a 9600XT only in PCIe form. I managed to do this even though I only had it overclocked infrequently, and only for benchmarking. Granted I was running the core at 635 MHz and the stock frequency is 500 MHz. This was on air mind you. One day the card just kind of died. It was however great fun when I ran that fast. It was for a while the highest scoring X600 series card in 3dMark03.

 

[munisgtm]

thanks all ppl for ur advice!!!ill just keep it stock, i dont want to lose it

 

[redbox]

Originally posted by: munisgtm
thanks all ppl for ur advice!!!ill just keep it stock, i dont want to lose it

Now I don't want to discourage you from the fun that is OCing. I fried my card because I was stupid and overvolted much more than most people do. A milid overclock usually doesn't hurt at all and improves frames quite a bit.

 

[munisgtm]

but wud it decrease its life ? even if i do it midly

 

[mikek753]

OCing isn't purpose
OCing is life style ;-)

you will not be so satisfied playing game with 10% more fps
as after your own OCing

So, good luck with your OCing

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: munisgtm
but wud it decrease its life ? even if i do it midly

The higher voltages is what can potentially damage your component, but even those have a decent limit on most modern hardware. I think what redbox tried to tell you was that he thought he was monitoring the voltages correctly with a voltmeter, turned the volts way beyond the boundries for any hardware component, and then gave it power. :evil:.

What exactly are you overclocking? The only thing you really want to watch for when overclocking is temps. As long as they're good, you will be able to get a nice overclock. Overclocking can degrade the life of your card, but most of the time it doesn't have any effect. Only when your overclock is unstable can it potentially harm you hardware in the long run.

 

[bennny]

I overclocked my geforce2 gts, that i put a coper hsfan from a cpu on, and it was great, up until the hs/f fell off (why dont gfx cards use better mounts?) and then it went to hell quickly. It was fun, i mean i got maybe geforce 3 performance outa it, but think about it this way. Assume you oc your 7900 or what ever you get, and it does shorten the lifespan. At the speed of tech these days, you are going to be selling the 7900 and buying the next 8900 or what ever comes out next before you even touch the end of its life. Just keep in mind, raising voltage is scury, and heat is the enemy. Air flow is everything, unless you go to a water or phase setup.

 

[munisgtm]

ill keep your advice in my mind josh and bennny thanks alot!

 

[ForumMaster]

it's very rare to damage a card from OC'ing as long as you have stock volts. This is because the GPU will automatically lower the speed if it gets too hot.

 

[zinfamous]

This looks like a good place to post this....

So what is considered too hot for a vid card? I have a crappy therm/fan controller installed in my case that defaults to a max of 50C. While that's fine for a CPU, I feel that GPUs can tolerate much more...and often do. I have to reset the max temp for my GPU to 60C everytime I turn off my system.

However, very recently Guild Wars reset on me (despite memory problems I've had which are somewhat fixed--posted elsewhere) to what looked like video issues. (Black screen, audio buzzes, intermittent fuzzy color lines). The temp was reading 54.4C. How could this be too hot? ...is it? I live in a small, non-AC apartment that depends on cross-ventilation; and it's going to be hot the next few weeks. I've noticed problems like this in the summer before.

I did once fry a pre-FX nVidia card after running Premeire heavily. It was a crappy factory fan/heatsink. Smelled like burning....