Hey there folks. A friend of mine was having a few problems with his PC and asked if I could take a look at it. Well, I took his PC home and it seems to be having all kinds of BSODs attributing to the video card. I popped out the card and figured it could be a heat issue as I know ATI tends to goop on tons of thermal interface material on their cards. Well uppon inspecting the card before I took off the heatsink I noticed that there is a row of capacitors that seems to have been knocked off the board. I know they were on the board because there is little slivers of solder left on the pads. Here are a couple of pictures depicting the situation. Picture of front of card... http://img58.imageshack.us/my.php?image=022300060ll.jpg Close up of the bank of missing capacitors... http://img58.imageshack.us/my.php?image=022300074jj.jpg Since be bought this card second-hand a year ago, he has no warranty. Is there any way to figure out what capacitors are used in this situation and have them re-soldered back on? Also, the first picture shows a number hand written in gold pen. I have never seen this writing before except for beta cards that are sent out to reviewers. Would this mean that this card could possibly be a beta card that ended out going back to ATi for RMA and somehow got recirculated back to the consumer market? I would greatly appreciate any help with this. Thank you!!!
That's seriously bad luck Find a high res photo of the card, and read the tops of the capacitors. I've got one of these so I can tell you if the values you can't find a photo. ch424
well how do you think the things came to be missing though? surely they wouldnt have just popped, if so i think if you replaced them the real problem would still be there and it would just happen again surely. thats the weirdest thing ive seen for a while if they did indeed just go awol
They haven't popped. As he said, they've been knocked off, presumably by the previous owner when he fitted the custom cooler. ch424
As ch424 said, the capacitors do not look like they popped. There are no burn marks anywhere. Its as if they have been knocked off the card. This card is using its stock cooling, so they were not knocked off due to a bad heatsink install. Looking closely at the surrounding capacitors of the same size with a magnifying lens, there are no values written on them.
can i just ask. is that a gigabyte card? if it is regardless of when he bought it it will come with a 2 year return to maker warrenty. i had a very similar issue with the same x800xtpe. i sent it back to gigabyte and paid 20 quid for post and they sent it back pristene. i think most card makers will repair a card if it is in warrenty (you can email the maker and quote the card serial number to them) if they say it is still covered you may actually be a happy bunny. worth a try no?
The card is ATi brand. I'm gonna talk to my buddy this weekend about the card and see how he wants to handle this. Could maybe send it back to ATi, or see if Norvac (local electronics place) and see if they could solder some capacitors on.
