OK, long story short. Computer that I built for my ex's brother.
It (last summer) apparently got turned off by the switch at the back rather than shut down. After which it would not turn back on again.
Rather than comming to me first he (and his mum) tried to 'fix' the computer. I don't know what they did, they said all they did was clean out the dust.
When I was finally told about the issue I took a look, the CPU heatsink was pretty hardly making any contact to the CPU and the graphics card seemed dead.
On my PC i managed to get a scrambled screen with the graphics card so I sorted out the rest of his PC and a GTX 560 (non ti) was ordered. My old 8800GT went in is computer and everything was left to fun for a couple of days untill the new card turned up to make sure everything else was ok.
Everything was fine, 560 arrived. 8800GT was swapped out for the 560 and everything went fine.
A few months passed and I got round to messing about with the busted 9800GT. Cleaning did nothing. New paste did nothing. Then all of a sudden it started working properly. This was great, I tried a few things and all was well.
Then later that night, scrabled screen again. At which point I figured it must be some bad solder balls on the GPU or maybe the memory.
Since then I have tried it again a few times and got nothing but a scrambled screen on post and windows was usable but with blue lines going accross it. Windows couldn't detect the card so no drivers were installed.
Today, I figured I would give it another go. I dissconnected the fan with the mad idea that if the core got hot enough it might, just might fix the problem. Scrambles screen at post. Lines on the screen in windows...... Then it suddenly found the drivers. Rebooted and post screen was fine. Got into Windows, 1080p, perfect picture.
I loaded up GPU-Z and watched the temp hit 105c. Turned the PC off, reconnected the fan. Plugged the card back in. Everything booted fine.
So right at this moment I have furmark running in a 1080p window off screen. The fan is at its minimum and the temp is 97c. Task manager says the uptime is almost 1 hour.
The questions running through my mind. Is it fixed. What caused it to die in the first place, was it coincidence with the power switch flip. Is/was the problem actually the solder balls and if so can this stupid high temo idea of mine actually heat it up enough to fix it.
This is such a weird gtaphics card problem.. but if the card is sorted its some extra folding power
P.S. I didn't do a very good job at keeping the post short
Edit:
I'm just shareing this whole weird experience. I'm not expecting any divine knoledge to tell me exactly what happened, although its fun to speculate..
The card just finished a 3DMark 06 and Vantage bench. No problems at all.
It (last summer) apparently got turned off by the switch at the back rather than shut down. After which it would not turn back on again.
Rather than comming to me first he (and his mum) tried to 'fix' the computer. I don't know what they did, they said all they did was clean out the dust.
When I was finally told about the issue I took a look, the CPU heatsink was pretty hardly making any contact to the CPU and the graphics card seemed dead.
On my PC i managed to get a scrambled screen with the graphics card so I sorted out the rest of his PC and a GTX 560 (non ti) was ordered. My old 8800GT went in is computer and everything was left to fun for a couple of days untill the new card turned up to make sure everything else was ok.
Everything was fine, 560 arrived. 8800GT was swapped out for the 560 and everything went fine.
A few months passed and I got round to messing about with the busted 9800GT. Cleaning did nothing. New paste did nothing. Then all of a sudden it started working properly. This was great, I tried a few things and all was well.
Then later that night, scrabled screen again. At which point I figured it must be some bad solder balls on the GPU or maybe the memory.
Since then I have tried it again a few times and got nothing but a scrambled screen on post and windows was usable but with blue lines going accross it. Windows couldn't detect the card so no drivers were installed.
Today, I figured I would give it another go. I dissconnected the fan with the mad idea that if the core got hot enough it might, just might fix the problem. Scrambles screen at post. Lines on the screen in windows...... Then it suddenly found the drivers. Rebooted and post screen was fine. Got into Windows, 1080p, perfect picture.
I loaded up GPU-Z and watched the temp hit 105c. Turned the PC off, reconnected the fan. Plugged the card back in. Everything booted fine.
So right at this moment I have furmark running in a 1080p window off screen. The fan is at its minimum and the temp is 97c. Task manager says the uptime is almost 1 hour.
The questions running through my mind. Is it fixed. What caused it to die in the first place, was it coincidence with the power switch flip. Is/was the problem actually the solder balls and if so can this stupid high temo idea of mine actually heat it up enough to fix it.
This is such a weird gtaphics card problem.. but if the card is sorted its some extra folding power
P.S. I didn't do a very good job at keeping the post short
Edit:
I'm just shareing this whole weird experience. I'm not expecting any divine knoledge to tell me exactly what happened, although its fun to speculate..
The card just finished a 3DMark 06 and Vantage bench. No problems at all.
