video card

[leafer]

Is there a way to check if a video card is fuctioning without plugging it into a mobo? I don't have a spare comp to plug it into.

 

What happened was my screen kept freezing up and became pixelated, and after a couple of cold boots, I decided to open the case and found the fan on the video card wasn't spinning -- there was a wad of dust that kept it from spinning. So I restarted but after about five minutes or so, the screen would freeze again. So another cold boot but this time the screen went black before it got into windows. The "on" light on the monitor was flashing as if it wasn't getting any signal from the video card.

 

Please don't tell me the GPU is fried.

Edited April 22, 2009 by leafer

[Kuky]

I think it is... if you had no cooling on it working, the card has had to overheated and got damaged

[leafer]

You're right. My vid card is as good as a dead toad. Sighs... I just found out this morning that yester happened to be the hottest day so far in Thailand this year. The temp on the CPU, at one point, reached 59 celsius when I checked before the GPU quit. I think that is around 120+ fahrenheit. Ouch!

[EtherealN]

Well, 59 isn't all that dangerous to most CPU's. It's higher than I personally prefer (I like my overclocks to stay below 50 under load).

 

But yeah, GPU's do seem to be even more sensitive. I almost fried my GPU the other week when I was tinkering a bit with the new drivers to see if I could get myself a better overclock on it, accidently reset the fan speed to 30%, which is the standard. (It sounds like a jumbojet when at 100%, but damn is it effective then...)

 

With the card under a workload and the fan speed suddenly getting locked to 30% I saw artefacts on-screen within a minute, and by the time I got everything shut-down and had the control app up to check fan speed the temperature had gone all the way to 79 Celcius.

 

So yeah, on modern GPU's I'd say you really should do a monthly check on them to ensure that there's no dust buildup - if the card is under load and the fan gets stopped completely I could see it frying faster than you have a chance to notice that it's happening.

[leafer]

It was my stupidity the GPU fried. If I had stopped and think what could have caused the artifacts which was all over the screen the first time, I would have realized the GPU was over heating. But I kept cold booting the comp three times, each time the comp ran for at least 5 mins before the pixelation begins, before I opened the case.

 

duh!

[EtherealN]

Well, we learn from our mistakes. I've certainly fried a lot of components in my days. :P