Killed my GF3 -what went wrong?

[Lucky]

The little teeny fan broke on my GF3, so I figured while it was out and I was adding another one I'd take the heatsinks off, clean them up, add AS3, and reattach them. So I did just that, using the freezing (inside ziploc) technique to loosen the heatsinks and adding a small dab of superglue to the edges of the heatsinks to reattach them. Booted up and the dammed thing appears dead. Any clues to what went wrong and if its fixable? Any obvious things to look for?

 

[niggles]

What happens when you try and boot? no pic at all? no sound? at all? Does it even boot?

Have you examined the card, the chips? Did you smell anything when you booted. Can you smell anything in the case?

Have you tried removing the heatsink again? If so can you see any mark in the center of the GPU?

 

[Lucky]

Originally posted by: niggles
What happens when you try and boot? no pic at all? no sound? at all? Does it even boot?

Have you examined the card, the chips? Did you smell anything when you booted. Can you smell anything in the case?

Have you tried removing the heatsink again? If so can you see any mark in the center of the GPU?

Sorry I didnt explain better. System will boot up but no onscreen display. when i put in another card it works fine.

I took the heatsinks off..and the RAM look line. GPU looks fine. I used a razor blade to gently scrap the good off and cleaned it with alchohol.

 

[niggles]

If it looks fine, there was not scorching I'm not sure. Perhaps it was simply a bad chip and your work was just coincidental. I know I personally wouldn't get any liquid near my chips but I'm sure you were careful.
I think when I first started out with PCs I had some sort of electrical field all around me because I became pretty experienced frying hardware. I haven't done it in quite a while but I can usually figure out what I'd done... not sure what you did there. You grounded yourself and everything?

 

[Plester]

did you only take off the core hs? were there ram sinks on the memory and if so did you take them off?

put the card back in and seat it FIRMLY. keeping the side of your case off, squeeze various parts of your card while you boot, ie. squeeze the core then boot etc.

sounds crazy, but when i popped the ram sinks off of my GF3, i screwed up 2 memory chips. i got video, but all garbled up, i was not happy, and was resigned to having broken my video card. a few days later i had an idea so i started booting while holding various chips until i isolated the 2 that were busted, then using clamps and epoxy i was able to fix what seemed like an unfixible card.

you might be hosed, but you also might have broken a tiny solder joint under the core, and compressing the core will make good contact again. good luck.

 

[Lucky]

thanks for the suggestion Plester, but it didnt work. <sigh>. Goddammit I always do this sh!t. :disgust:]


any more suggestions are welcome from anyone.

edit: plester, were you suggesting to squeeze with the heatsinks on or off?

 

[Jeff7]

Exactly how did you go about removing the heatsinks? What amount of force was needed? I usually needed a hammer and knife to remove glued on heatsinks from videocards.
Also, even with a ziplock bag, there was probably still some condensation. How long did you allow the card to set out and dry before powering it up again?

 

[Lucky]

There was considerable amount of force needed. I used a small screwdriver/scredit card for the GPU HS and a pair of pliers for the RAM HS's. It was probably a good hour or 1.5 before I popped it back in.

 

[Actaeon]

Sorry to hear about your loss, hrm.

Really don't know what to say, try the card in another computer, if it doesn't boot, sounds dead to me.

Maybe since you used alot of force, you perhaps pulled some transistor, or cracked the ram? The heatsink on my Ti200 didn't take that much force. Just a little pressure, and a old CC, and poped right out.