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Overheated Radeon

A

alyks

Banned
I recently bought an ATI radeon 9800 Pro 25mb card for doom.
Since i was thinking about overclocking it a bit, i decided to put on a better heatsink/fan to cool it. I I bought this one: Heatsink
After i installed it and everything, i played a little unreal, then went to bed, when i woke up, my login screen was covered with artifacts. I rebooted, and everything was fine(note, at this point, i had not overclocked anything yet) so i turned on doom and started playing a bit. After about ten minutes, the screen was covered again, i knew there was a problem, so i turned off my computer, i thought maybe i had put the heatsink on wrong. I took it apart and put it back together. When i put it back on, i ran doom again, for about ten minutes, then again, there were artifacts. So i ran unreal for a while, just to make sure it wasn't doom doing this, and once again, after ten minutes,
artifacts. After that i turned off my computer and took off the fan that i put on it, because i had a fan on the side of the case, and i thought maybe the airflow was messed up somehow. So after, i installed it, ran doom, but it was only worse, artifacts all over the startup screen, same with unreal, and all over the desktop. So i took it out, let it cool down a bit, then tryed it in a different computer, on the second computer, it gave me artifacts all over the login screen. After that, I let it cool down, and took a break, thinking about what i should do. I took it apart, and found out i had put on the nvidia heatsink, which didn't go on the gpu right. With newfound hope, i put it back together using the ati heatsink, put it in the computer to find... artifacts, same as before.
It might have been overheated, but it didn't smell like it was.
So what should i do?
im running:
AMD athlonXP 2500+
768mb memory
ATI radeon 9800 Pro 256mb
Albatron KX600
Windows XP DX9.0c Doom3 hotfix drivers (4.9 i think) beta
 
Sounds like you fried your card by o/c'ing it. Sounds like your out ~230 bucks. Sorry bud. It sounds like at the beginning it was caused by overheating. but then the overheating caused some damage to the card.
 
Should have left it alone stock. Now you're SOL with a $230 piece of junk. You should definitely know what you're doing if you're going to be digging into a computer and modifying things.

I don't think I've ever heard of someone putting an NVIDIA heatsink on an ATI card.... What Nvidia card was it off of?
 
I probably didn't make it clear what i did, i didn't take the heatsink off an nvidia, the heatsink i bought came with one for an nvidia or ati, and no instructions on which is which. I also didn;t overclock it at all
 
Put the stock heatsink back on and retest it. Make sure you are using AS3 or AS5 heatsink compound.
It's obvious the other two HS/fan units are not fitting correctly.
 
oh ok, you said you were GOING to but didn't. sorry, my bad. In that case since you noticed artifacts after you put the hsf on you may have damaged the core. Usually this would result in the vid card not posting at all so it may still be a heat issue. Did you use thermal paste on your hsf?
 
It sounds to me like you damaged your card (probably from heat since you used the wrong HSF). Otherwise, it was already faulty. Did you try testing the card when you first got it, before you put on the new HSF?

Might want to try and RMA it.
 
make sure the fan is blowing down on the heatsink and not away from it. If the connector block pulled off of the PCB, you could have possibly put it back on wrong, and now the polarity for the fan have been reversed.
 
you dont get it, i get it all the time now, i dont think it can heat up that fast, and the fan is on right, im sure of it.
 
removing your heatsink and putting another one on is what damaged the card. i don't think you can rma it anymore (send it back to the company.) since what happend was your fault rather than a faulty card.
 
i hope i can send it back, i have heard people saying they have sent it back after removing the stock heatsink, and i dont think it was putting on the heatsink, it was putting it one wrong and letting it overheat.
 
Originally posted by: alyks
Yeah, it played fine when i first got it, and whats RMA?
Click to expand...

Then it looks like you damaged it while swapping out the HSF. RMA is Return Merchandise Authorization. Basically, it's a process to return the item to where you bought it (if it was online) or to the manufacturer. But I don't know how likely that would be since the damage may have been/was caused by you.
 
I would just return it to ati with the stock cooler and have them fix it under warranty, but i lost one of the screws to the stock hinksink...
 
Originally posted by: alyks
I would just return it to ati with the stock cooler and have them fix it under warranty, but i lost one of the screws to the stock hinksink...
Click to expand...

Also, that's illegal and immoral. Ever heard of taking responsibility for your actions?
 
There was a guy who was trying to rip off newegg because he had fried his card (o/c'ing). Many of us e-mailed newegg and msi about this guy trying to rip them off. Not sure what ever happened. I am going to e-mail them.
 
bah, i was only trying to make improve there cards heatsink, i was getting problems with heat so i wanted to replace it, why are you doing this?
 
Because people who destroy their own computer stuff and then try to blame the company for it costs us all money. It raises prices for all of us.
 
Just RMA it to ATI if you are that worried.. So far, i'm up to 3 i've sent to them to get replaced, they know their card overheats, they know it has issues with heat, so they replace them pretty readily.. I even admitted to them that I removed the stock heatsink/fan and put on a aftermark to get better cooling, and they still replaced that card without any trouble. If you are still within the 30 Days when you bought it, just return it to where you got it, and use the cash towards a 6800gt... Thats what I would do..

I'd say drop a really nice cooler on it, like the Silencer from Arctic Cool, and see how it runs. Usually heat dmg is all or nothing.. Either you fried it, or you didn't, if it runs fine with a Arctic, then keep it. If not, rip off the arctic, put back on the stock sink/fan, and RMA it to ATI.. (assuming you can't just refund it)

Buyers remorse with 9800's seem high lately, especially after benchmarks of them on the latest games are rolling in..
 
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