GTX 780 TI chip dammage

[_Blade_]

Hi,

I have two ZOTAC GTX 780Ti OC for which i will install water-blocks. After removing the stock cooler i noticed that on one of the boards a GPU SMD component was missing. Probably it was not soldered well and it fell of. I was really careful with the boards.

Anyway, the card is working fine without it. 3DMark 11 is yielding the expected results, no artifacts and such, the card is stable and blowing heat and GPU-Z is reporting normal clocks and everything.

Can anyone with experience tell me what the actual SMDs are for. Are they capacitors that stabilize power delivery to the chip or are they resistors enabling various functionality on the GPU?

 

[YouWhat]

Firstly, are you sure it fell off?

Some components are not added depending on features that are or aren't enabled. You might possibly find that it has disabled some of the CUDA cores or the memory cache that is onboard the chip, or something of equal note, you might not notice it as mention, it might just disable certain aspects of the chip.

They are more than like surface mounted capacitors to smooth out power delivery that you have highlighted, have you checked the thermal clag that come off with the heatsink to see if it is stuck to that or not?

Worst comes to worst and you are feeling adventurous, just grab a soldering iron and close the gap in it, although this in itself may prove to be risky, but at the end of the day, the choice is yours.

Personally, I would be searching for images of the same chip online to check against what I have infront of me to see what if anything is missing or damaged.

 

[Seb.F]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 

[_Blade_]

Firstly, are you sure it fell off?

Some components are not added depending on features that are or aren't enabled. You might possibly find that it has disabled some of the CUDA cores or the memory cache that is onboard the chip, or something of equal note, you might not notice it as mention, it might just disable certain aspects of the chip.

They are more than like surface mounted capacitors to smooth out power delivery that you have highlighted, have you checked the thermal clag that come off with the heatsink to see if it is stuck to that or not?

Worst comes to worst and you are feeling adventurous, just grab a soldering iron and close the gap in it, although this in itself may prove to be risky, but at the end of the day, the choice is yours.

Personally, I would be searching for images of the same chip online to check against what I have infront of me to see what if anything is missing or damaged.

I have two identical cards. Same vendor, same product number. One has the component and one does not. In GPU-Z they both report 2880 CUDA cores. I checked the clog and it is clean.It could have been damaged during assembly, and passed the tests anyway.

I have the tools and surgeon hands and can easily solder it back. If it is a capacitor and i short the leads the chip might go kaput. This is the dilemma, what is it capacitor or resistor? Called ZOTAC and they told me that they do not have such info and NV will not give it to me because this is R&D stuff.

I will let if bake in 3DMark for a couple of hours and put some more OC in it to check for stability.

 

[YouWhat]

I have two identical cards. Same vendor, same product number. One has the component and one does not. In GPU-Z they both report 2880 CUDA cores. I checked the clog and it is clean.It could have been damaged during assembly, and passed the tests anyway.

I have the tools and surgeon hands and can easily solder it back. If it is a capacitor and i short the leads the chip might go kaput. This is the dilemma, what is it capacitor or resistor? Called ZOTAC and they told me that they do not have such info and NV will not give it to me because this is R&D stuff.

I will let if bake in 3DMark for a couple of hours and put some more OC in it to check for stability.

If you have a multimeter you could put it across that and see if it resistor or not, but if it is running fine for now, stick card back together and ebay it quickly

 

[_Blade_]

OC the card to 1228 Core and 1790 memory. Ran Furmark and 3dMark 11 for an hour each. Temps never went above 67C with 100% fan. The card is rock solid. Someone will have fun with it. Hope to sell it quick.

 

[shambles1980]

a lot of caps are smoothing caps, (they make the power supplied to the component more regular)
if it works without it then i would not replace it.

if it did not work without it then i would replace or bridge "it if it wasnt a card i cared about" as it was obviously needed to complete the circuit..
i would ONLY use a grounded iron. not a chap one yo get from hardware shops..
"not sure what i mean? grab a led and solder the - leg to ground. then take your non grounded soldering iron and solder the + leg.. you will see the led lights up, You do not want that near sensitive components)

and that is a capasitor in the picture.