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Problem description: A few days ago, while chasing down another problem (bad stick of RAM), my video card stopped working. It's out of warranty and I'm not sure there is anything left to try except a hail-mary solder reflow attempt (using a heat gun and laser thermometer, basically along lines of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2USIl1blWUM) . . . any advice? Card: SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950 DirectX 11 100352-2L 3GB 384-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16. This is actually a warranty replacement unit from Sapphire; my first one partially died (DVI-out stopped working) a few months after purchase. I have not used this card much at all--in fact I only got around to installing the replacement card a few weeks ago. Used mostly for benchmarks and some Blender renders. I did use AMD's overclocking utility and had it up to 1105 MHz GPU / 1575 MHz memory clock, which seemed to be working fine. Kept tabs on GPU temps with HWMonitor and never saw them climb above 70s-80s during 100% utilization. Was on latest AMD driver, 16.4.1. Card was working fine, until . . . I had the case open to switch around the RAM for testing, closed it up, booted. System beeped like normal, but no video from either DVI or HDMI outputs (just a black screen, no BIOS information, nothing). Shut down, moved the video cables to my onboard Intel HD 4000 video, and system POSTed/booted/ran fine. Have not seen a flicker of life from the card outputs since then. Attempted fixes: Reseated card in PCIE slot. Unplugged and replugged power cables (card takes two 6-pin cables). Tried switching around which PSU cable went into which GPU power socket. Tried card in motherboard's other PCIE x16 slot. Verified that primary PCIE x16 slot works (installed a PCIE x1 card, a TV tuner, which works fine). Re-flashed motherboard BIOS to latest version (was already on latest version when card died). Went into BIOS settings and told the BIOS to look for video from PCIE bus first (instead of "Auto" setting). Looked in Device Manager - Display adaptors. Only the onboard Intel video adapter is listed. Uninstalled AMD drivers and rebooted. Reinstalled AMD drivers and rebooted. The AMD software does not detect the card at all. Removed card completely, booted, then shut down. Reinstalled card. No improvement. Examined card for physical damage: don't see anything bent, charred, that sort of thing. Have not (yet) removed the fan shroud/heatsink to examine capacitors, but as best I can tell from the side none have exploded. Have not tried installing the card in another system--I don't have one available. Also no spare PSU. Recent changes: Yes, a number. Updated motherboard BIOS (not videocard BIOS though). System has been unstable (random reboots/BSODs/errors) for a while now . . . both with and without the 7950 . . . believe I've traced the problem to a bad stick of RAM, now removed. Had system modestly overclocked for a short while (4.2 GHz, temps fine); removed overclock because of Prime95 errors. As stated above, GPU was OC'd, showed no signs of instability. Operating system: Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit System specs: Intel i5-3570K; Asus P8Z77-M; 600W PC Power and Cooling Silencer MK III PSU (80 plus bronze certified); originally 16GB DDR3 1333 (4 x 4GB), now I'm down to 8GB; 120GB Kingston SSD boot drive; 3TB Seagate SATA data drive; Panasonic plasma display via DVI; Dell U2412M via HDMI Location: USA I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes
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Apr 28, 2016 06:08
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 22:36 |
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It sounds dead but how old is the PSU?Manifisto posted:Shut down, moved the video cables to my onboard Intel HD 4000 video, and system POSTed/booted/ran fine. Have not seen a flicker of life from the card outputs since then. The video card was still plugged in at that point? That'd be indicative of it not being fully connected to the motherboard. But you said you reseated it so that's probably not the issue.
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Apr 28, 2016 22:35
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Zogo posted:The video card was still plugged in at that point? That'd be indicative of it not being fully connected to the motherboard. But you said you reseated it so that's probably not the issue. Exactly, the onboard video outputs shouldn't be working at all if the card is detected. But as you say, I've reseated the card, tried it in the other PCIE x16 slot, etc., and the system goes straight to onboard video every boot. Thanks for the feedback though. Zogo posted:It sounds dead but how old is the PSU? A bit over 3 years (bought new in Dec 2012). It's got a 5 year warranty; it'd be nice if it actually was the PSU (except for being without my computer during the warranty return process). Can't really think of how to test it without a spare PSU handy though.
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Apr 29, 2016 00:13
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Manifisto posted:A bit over 3 years (bought new in Dec 2012). It's got a 5 year warranty; it'd be nice if it actually was the PSU (except for being without my computer during the warranty return process). Can't really think of how to test it without a spare PSU handy though. Using another comparable GPU or PSU is the only easy way. You could use a digital multimeter to measure voltages on all the different wires but that's kind of tedious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac7YMUcMjbw
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Apr 29, 2016 22:09
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Well I did it, I baked my video card, and it . . . worked, whadda ya know? v  vBut for how long?
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Apr 30, 2016 23:03
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