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geforce issues

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by sab_arturo 1 view

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Hi,
a year ago i bought a geforce2 mx 400. Lately, the fan on it broke, and i was forced to replace the stock heatsinc with one from an old processor (don't remember what kind) which (i thought) does the job nicely. For the past few months it has not booted until it was at room temp, which meant waiting 15 min whenever i want to restart. Today, a friend of mine pulled the plug on the computer and now it won't boot at all, the amibios giving me 8 beeps (video problem). Any ideas besides buying a new graphics card?

P.S. Its on an ECS k7s5a mobo with an athlon xp 1800+, if any other info is wanted, just ask.

Thanks,
Martin

6 replies

by thechas

Unfortunately, I think your diagnosis is correct.
You need a new video card.

It appears that the overheat from the fan failing did not destroy the GPU, but did damage it.
Since most GPU heatsinks are glued on, removing the old heatsink may havefurther dameaged the GPU.

I suspect that the spike in the power from the uncontrolled shutdown is all it took to finish off the GPU.

Chas

by sab_arturo

Alright, thanks for the second opinion. Time to borrow a friend's old TNT till christmas I guess...

by cg it

The stock Geforce 2 MX 400 doesn't come with a fan, just a heatsink [at least the Gainward GF2 MX 400]. Not booting up until room temp doesn't make sense as heat is the nemisis of electronics. Cooler the better. Pulling the plug when the computer is running normally doesn't screw up hardware [unless it's the CPU fan plug] but will play havoc with Windows. If you messed with the heatsink on the GPU of the graphics card [by trying to pry the old heat sink off or used a solvent to get rid of the thermal epoxy glue used to glue on the heat sink] you've probably damaged the GPU and your vid card is toasted.

by cg it

Since a brand new GF2 MX 400 is $60.00 [Gainward card at newegg.com] and you like it, probably better [and less costly] to just get a new one.

by cg it

If you have another card you can use, I would wait until the new NVidia Geforce FX card comes out and get one of those.

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