PC woes

[nick25]

Hi guys, hoping you can help me out:

I have a shuttle PC which has decided to stop working when I switched it on today (it was working fine yesterday). It sounds like it boots fine but nothing is displayed on the screen so I'm guessing it is some sort of GFX issue as the cable & monitor itself is fine. The funny thing is this exact same thing has happened before (kenny might remember this!) I originally had a GeForce 4 Ti4600 which I took out of an old pc (it was around 5 years old) and that worked fine until the fan died so I replaced it with an iceburg4pro but then around 3 months after that it started artifacting until one day upon switching the PC on nothing would be dislayed. I just assumed it died of old age and so bought a Geforce FX 5200 for £20 (new) which has been fine until today.

Could it be anything other than the GFX? Unfortunately my other pcs all use PCIe so I cannot test.

Have I just been unlucky with two card failures in such a short amount of time or is there something amiss?

Thanks for any help in advance!

Nick.

 

[ZaX]

I'd suggest to get yourself an old PCI GFX card which you can use to test such cases. You can pick these up second hand at any computer fair for two or three pounds.

 

[maverik-sg1]

If I recall correctly the GPU you refer to has a passive cooler? That being the case and the fact that it is in a shuttle, I would think that there is an issue whereby you may just of had bad luck, but more likely the cards are running hot and not enough air is being shifted to cool it correctly.

Buyin a new £20 (agp?) card might not be an issue but the reliability issues you have will probably remain.

I have found that a 60mm fan ontop of a passive cooler works really well, but u may want to look at modding the shuttle case (attach fan or mod the lid to allow hot air to flow correctly).

Scorchio used to use his shuttle case with no lid on at all due to the cooling issues he had.

Can you RMA the FX5200? Benchies

Hope this helps.

Mav

 

[stocky]

So you sure it's not the memory this time? I think go with the PCi card test that Zax mentioned, then you'll always know.

 

[Thor]

I had that but i was using an adaptor on the back of my 6800utra to change the dvi slot to a d-sub, (think thats right), and all that had happened was the adaptor was knackered. Dunno if your using one or not but if you are might be worth checking.

 

[nick25]

Hi guys,

Firstly thank you for all the replies and sorry I couldn't reply earlier. Mav was indeed correct and it is a overheating issue (I think anyway, it is a passive card) I took the case off and it booted just fine, now have the case back on and it seems to be all ok so will just see how it goes and maybe mod a fan on like you said Mav.

Thanks to Kenny for offering me his 5200 PCI card but I won't be needing that now

Nick.