Graphics Card Autopsy - MSI 980 Ti "Golden Edition"

RazorWind

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 11, 2001
Messages
4,646
Folks! I've got another card on the bench today, and that's this MSI 980 Ti Golden Edition. This card came to me as part of a lot of dead graphics cards, and it's the least promising among the bunch, so we're looking at it first.

I made a video for those who prefer such things. As an aside, if the mods don't approve of spamming my own videos here, I hope they'll reach out and warn me before I get banned. I couldn't find a list who the actual video card forum mods are. There use to be one, back in the before time...


Anyway, on to the card. This card is mainly interesting because it comes with this really neat all copper heatsink, which is sort of unusual. From the outside, the card looks pretty clean, and there's no obvious damage visible to explain why it doesn't work. I always liked this generation of MSI's cards - I think they're nice looking. In case it doesn't come across in the photo, the shroud protecting the fans is also copper colored, unlike the red shroud you get on the regular versions.


What the seller told me is that the system doesn't even power up with this card plugged in. That is a sure sign that we have a short through our 12V power plane. Before we attempt to test the card, we should check on this, as the potential exists to damage the card or some other part of the test system if it's the case.

We can do this without disassembling the card by testing the pins at the connector. I really prefer to use the solder joints, but this card has this handsome backplate that's in the way.
backplate.jpg


Resistance on the far connector... The 290X from our last thread is on the bench here to remind me which pins are ground and which are not.
far_connector.jpg
It's interesting that it's pretty dead on 750 ohms. That's unusually low for a 12V rail, but I wonder if there's some sort of current monitoring shenanigans going on that requires it. Nvidia loves to prescribe that kind of thing, whereas AMD seems to like to just over-build the card and let it run really hot if it needs to.

Resistance on the near connector. As I suspected, basically a dead short.
near_connector.jpg

We can't reach any of the solder joints to diagnose what failed with the heatsink on, so we'll need to remove it.
disassembly.jpg

With the card disassembled, it's pretty obvious that we've got some serious damage going on.
bare card.jpg
Here's a couple of close-ups of it. The PCB got so hot in this area that it burned the coating off, and also melted the solder holding that dual MOSFET package on. See how the pins are bridged?
damage1.jpg
damage2.jpg

What we're seeing here is a textbook example of the high-side MOSFET failing and shunting 12V into somewhere it doesn't belong. I bet this smelled amazing.

The component that looks the most suspicious is a SinoPower SM7320 dual N-type MOSFET package. This isn't really a power stage, but rather just a high side and low side MOSFET together in one little package. We're clearly going to need to remove it, but let's take some resistance measurements first.

The Vcore rail. This isn't out of the question as a sane resistance for GPU this size, but it is a little bit low.
vcore.jpg
The memory rail. Looks... Sane, at least.
Edit: Shoot, I lost the image from this one. It's about 65 ohms.

Probably 3.3V from the slot connector. Important thing is we don't have a short.
Edit: You'll have to take my word for it that this was 365 ohms on the nose. Voltage monitoring of some sort?

This card doesn't have the great big memory controller rail like AMD cards of similar vintage do, so that's pretty much all the measuring we need to do for now. Our memory rail looks like it's probably undamaged, and given that the failed MOSFET appears to be part of the Vcore VRM (that is, the biggest one), it's probably a safe assumption that our damage is limited to that. As bad as the damage to the PCB looks, it is possible that the only actual short is inside that MOSFET package. Let's get the burned components off the board now, and see what happens with our short. Hot air station, go!!
hot air 1.jpg
hot air 2.jpg

After letting the board cool down a bit, we'll check our 12V resistance again. Presumably, we want to see something like 750 ohms, if they're doing the same current monitoring on this rail as they did on the other.
short_2.jpg

Unfortunately, our short is even worse now. With the MOSFET removed from the board, the next most likely suspect is the damaged PCB itself. I did some picking to see if it's just the outer layers touching, and ended up with this...
after_sanding.jpg

I also checked resistance on our removed SM7320. What we're looking at here is the resistance between the pad that gets 12V and the one that supplies the output to the GPU. With no voltage to the gate, we should several million ohms here, but we see instead is zero. This means we had 12V sent directly to the GPU circuit for some length of time, and if we assume the user tried to start the system back up, probably more than once. It also implies that the damage to the PCB probably happened later, as a result of this, and not the other way around.

deadmosfet.jpg

At length, I was able to get the resistance through the board up to about 30 ohms. I suspect that if I got more aggressive, and Dremeled the top couple of layers in the damaged area, I could clear the short, but I'm doubtful that would be productive, given the likelihood of the core having taken 12V on the chin several times.
final_resistance.jpg

At this point, I think it's safe to conclude this card is beyond saving. That said, I've got a pretty awesome heatsink for it now, so I may revisit this card later if I can find a less totally destroyed card to use that heatsink, or any of its other parts on. I'm open to offers if anyone happens to have a dead MSI 980 Ti lying around. :D

I talked in the video about how I suspect this card died as a result of hamfisted overclocking coupled with, potentially, a weak power supply. This is basically the same mode of failure (at a grander scale) that we saw on the 690s last year, and I think a quirk of this card's design, where the gates appear to be driven with 12V, instead of 7V from another regulator, exacerbates the potential for the same thing to happen here. So, IMHO, if we've learned anything, it's that one should keep an eye on the health of one's power supply, as in some cases, relying on it to be healthy is the only thing keeping this from happening.
 
That card looks like it got mega-toasted. Shame too, that was an expensive card back then, look at that before settling on my gigabyte 980 Ti.
 
Yeah, you can see the copper layer PCB next to the VRM that exploded. I had an XFX RX 580 that did this. Boy did it leave a smoke show when I fired it up (no pun intended). Its beyond repair but a good model GPU for a wall or something!
 
I have the regular edition (red heatsink) version of this card, which died similarly, but has no obvious visible damage to the PCB or any components.

Want to take a look at it?
 
I have the regular edition (red heatsink) version of this card, which died similarly, but has no obvious visible damage to the PCB or any components.

Want to take a look at it?
Sure! Figure out what it's worth to you, including shipping, to me in 78660 and send me a PM.

Yeah, you can see the copper layer PCB next to the VRM that exploded. I had an XFX RX 580 that did this. Boy did it leave a smoke show when I fired it up (no pun intended). Its beyond repair but a good model GPU for a wall or something!
We're obviously not going to be able to repair that such that it would be like new, but if we could clear the short through the board, we actually may be able to get the card to run with the remaining seven phases. There's nothing really stopping it from working that way if the core is good, especially with a VRM design like this that's not particularly smart.
 
Sure! Figure out what it's worth to you, including shipping, to me in 78660 and send me a PM.


We're obviously not going to be able to repair that such that it would be like new, but if we could clear the short through the board, we actually may be able to get the card to run with the remaining seven phases. There's nothing really stopping it from working that way if the core is good, especially with a VRM design like this that's not particularly smart.


That is true. the PCB was overkill, it would work fine with the 7 phases.
 
At this point, I think it's safe to conclude this card is beyond saving. That said, I've got a pretty awesome heatsink for it now, so I may revisit this card later if I can find a less totally destroyed card to use that heatsink, or any of its other parts on. I'm open to offers if anyone happens to have a dead MSI 980 Ti lying around. :D

Chiming in here, I've got a recently deceased MSI 980 Ti Gaming over a year out of warranty :(

Mosfet Q502 (AON 7403) died with a puff of smoke, taking down one of the power inputs. (Doesn't power on when the left 8-pin PCIE power is connected, fans spin but doesn't post with the right 8-pin only)

1590874269431.png


I tried to remove it but it crumbled to bits as soon as I touched it and took some contact pads and left its bottom plate.

1590874339223.png


One further attempts went worse. Lost R502 (though the contacts look ok) and lifted more of the top layer.

1590874462160.png


Any chance this is still salvageable with jumps/chaining a mosfet some where?

Also, I'm in Austin (near Arboretum). I don't suppose you offer any repairs services as a side business? :) Wish I had found this thread before I attempted to work on it myself as I'm guessing its original state was easily repairable...

Thanks!
 
Chiming in here, I've got a recently deceased MSI 980 Ti Gaming over a year out of warranty :(

Mosfet Q502 (AON 7403) died with a puff of smoke, taking down one of the power inputs. (Doesn't power on when the left 8-pin PCIE power is connected, fans spin but doesn't post with the right 8-pin only)

View attachment 249285

I tried to remove it but it crumbled to bits as soon as I touched it and took some contact pads and left its bottom plate.

View attachment 249286

One further attempts went worse. Lost R502 (though the contacts look ok) and lifted more of the top layer.

View attachment 249289

Any chance this is still salvageable with jumps/chaining a mosfet some where?

Also, I'm in Austin (near Arboretum). I don't suppose you offer any repairs services as a side business? :) Wish I had found this thread before I attempted to work on it myself as I'm guessing its original state was easily repairable...

Thanks!
With no offense intended, you should stop messing with it before you make it worse. I gather you did that with a soldering iron?

I'd have to have the card in my hands to say for sure, but I suspect that's probably still salvageable, assuming there isn't any other damage. I don't offer graphics card repairs as a service for hire, mainly for the reason that it isn't really practical to do as a business, but also because I fail more often than I succeed, as was the case with the card in this thread. That said, I once offered to look at a card for another [H] member for free, with the understanding that the possibility exists I may it worse, and that I'd make some content for the forum and Youtube.

If you're OK with those terms, I could probably offer the same deal to you. That would be a pretty good way for this thread to conclude, now that I think about it.
 
With no offense intended, you should stop messing with it before you make it worse. I gather you did that with a soldering iron?

I'd have to have the card in my hands to say for sure, but I suspect that's probably still salvageable, assuming there isn't any other damage. I don't offer graphics card repairs as a service for hire, mainly for the reason that it isn't really practical to do as a business, but also because I fail more often than I succeed, as was the case with the card in this thread. That said, I once offered to look at a card for another [H] member for free, with the understanding that the possibility exists I may it worse, and that I'd make some content for the forum and Youtube.

If you're OK with those terms, I could probably offer the same deal to you. That would be a pretty good way for this thread to conclude, now that I think about it.

No offense taken. I had only started after being unable to find a place to send it in for repair (having asked manufacturers first then third parties).

It was with a butane soldering iron that I had used before for some thru-hole capacitor replacements on motherboards but it was definitely not right for working a small SMD.

I’m totally fine with those terms. It’s only good for a wall hanging right now. If it burns in a YouTube video that’s more glory that it would get otherwise.
 
No offense taken. I had only started after being unable to find a place to send it in for repair (having asked manufacturers first then third parties).

It was with a butane soldering iron that I had used before for some thru-hole capacitor replacements on motherboards but it was definitely not right for working a small SMD.

I’m totally fine with those terms. It’s only good for a wall hanging right now. If it burns in a YouTube video that’s more glory that it would get otherwise.
Ok. I'll send you a PM in a minute.
 
Here's the longer version...

Based on Solan's initial description, I knew that we have a short to ground on one of our card's 12V inputs. We know this because he told us that it doesn't allow the system to power up with a cable connected to one of them. What that means is the system actually is powering up for just a moment, seeing massive current draw through the board, and then shutting down to avoid damaging the power supply or causing a fire.
We can test this with some simple resistance measurements.

First, the far 12V power connector. A few K is what we're looking for here, so this looks good.
12v_far.jpg

Next, the near power connector. 2.6 ohms is basically a dead short.
12V_near.jpg

It turns out that the area that Solan's pictures show, which is visibly damaged, is connected to our shorted power rail directly. There are two MOSFETs in that area. One is connected to the 8 pin power connector as shown here. The other, as it turns out, is connected to the PCI-E slot connector.
wiredupdirectly.jpg

At first, I thought maybe the remaining mosfet that Solan did not remove could be shorted, but some probing around the board indicated that neither side of this power balancing circuit is connected to ground. So, I removed the heatsink to get a look at the front of the board, expecting to see something similar to our poor Golden Edition.

Lo and behold, though, the front of the board looks ok. There's nothing visible here to indicate where our problem is.
heatsink_off.jpg

So, I cleaned up the area as best I could. A bit of flux and solder wick allowed me to see what's going on with that mutilated pad. That's the remains of the original mosfet there, somehow permanently fused to the underside of the pad, which has gotten so hot that it's lifted off the board. We can also see that the gate pin pad has mercifully survived, but the source pin pads have gotten ripped off the board.
pad_cleanup.jpg

I also removed the other MOSFET, just in case it's somehow actually the cause of the problem.
mosfet_removed.jpg

But it's not. The board is still hot in this photo, hence the even lower resistance.
still_shorted.jpg

At this point, we have to resort to somewhat less gentle techniques in order to locate our short. This involves installing a surrogate power supply onto the board and supplying current in sufficient quantity to make whatever is shorted get hot enough to detect. Professionals would normally use a thermal camera for this, but being an amateur, I don't have one. Instead, we'll use isopropanol, which is cheap, readily available, and arguably better anyway.
Here, I've soldered the leads from my bench power supply onto our affected power connector.
ps_hookedup.jpg

For better or for worse, I dialed the power supply up to the full 12V that the card should get on this rail. In retrospect, I should have at least tried 1V first. Anyway, we got nothing when looking at the back of the card, despite all the visible damage.
We're actually passing about 70 watts through the board in this shot. See the puddle of isopropanol under the red wire?
no_fire.jpg
 
We didn't find our short on the back of the board, so we'll switch to the front. Alcohol on...
alcohol_on.jpg

With the power supply on, we can clearly see our problem. Can you spot it?
boiled_off.jpg
 
6th MOSFET VRM from the bottom?
Yes! The component in question is a Sinopower SM7320 dual N-type mosfet package. Two MOSFETs in one package.

In this case, our isopropanol short detection method worked really well; it doesn't always give us such clear results. In person, there was actually an audible pop and a visible puff of vapor that came off of that. And yes, I know there's a risk of fire when using isopropanol for that. We do what we have to.

So, now we know that we need to remove that SM7320. Off it comes.
mosfet_off.jpg

Next, let's check and see if we've cleared our short.
short_cleared.jpg

Yep! That looks good. Let's check our removed MOSFET. Here, the red probe is on the +12V input from the power connector. The black probe is the output pad, which connects first to the GPU through the choke. This is definitely in short.
dead_mosfet_big.jpg

Now, we need to cannibalize an SM7320 from our dead Golden Edition.
new_mosfet_off.jpg

And solder it on to our patient card. Flux on...
flux_on.jpg

New SM7320 on.
new_mosfet_on.jpg

I also cannibalized the AON7403s and R503 from our donor card, and installed them on our patient. The lower (upper in the photo) one has had its pads butchered, and will require some additional work, but I don't think it's critical for basic function.
current_balance_on.jpg

Next, I installed the heatsink so the GPU won't cook itself.
DSCF4578.01_14_36_06.Still023.jpg
 
It turns out that the area that Solan's pictures show, which is visibly damaged, is connected to our shorted power rail directly. There are two MOSFETs in that area. One is connected to the 8 pin power connector as shown here. The other, as it turns out, is connected to the PCI-E slot connector.

That's interesting and explains something, when I was first troubleshooting and trying different PSU, powering on with either one PCI-E cable,etc. I had also tried no cables to see if I could get one of those friendly "please plug in the power cables messages", the mosfet may have actually burned up (or at least burned more) in that cycle as that one had visible smoke.
 
That's interesting and explains something, when I was first troubleshooting and trying different PSU, powering on with either one PCI-E cable,etc. I had also tried no cables to see if I could get one of those friendly "please plug in the power cables messages", the mosfet may have actually burned up (or at least burned more) in that cycle as that one had visible smoke.
Interesting. I suspect it tried to power the card fully via that MOSFET when you tried to power it up that way, and because the VRM was in short, it tried to draw essentially unlimited amps (in reality, probably more like 30 or so).

Anyway, I got interrupted mid-stream a few days ago. After I installed the heatsink, it was time to test the board for basic function. I wanted to do this as soon as I could in order to make sure I wasn't just spinning my wheels. So, I plugged it in to the system, hit the button and was greeted with signs of life!
it_lives.jpg

Next, it's time to fix the damage to the power balancing circuit on the back of the board.

First, I trimmed the damaged trace material off and removed the conformal coating from the what remained by scraping with the blunt back edge of an x-acto knife.
cleaned.jpg

Then, I made some new traces out of copper tape. Here, they're soaking in isopropanol to remove the adhesive.
Newtracers.jpg

I epoxied the new traces on the board using CircuitWorks CW2500 high temperature epoxy, which is the green stuff you see in this photo.

newtraces_on.jpg

The epoxy is fully cured now, and it's time to reflow the solder under it to fully connect the traces, and then install the FET back on them. Fingers crossed, I'll make time to do that this evening.
 
Success!

donesoldering.png

With great difficulty, I was able to get the tiny MOSFET soldered back on the card. The silver you see next to it is solder used to tin the upper side of the traces. Being thin copper, it seemed prudent to reinforce them a bit in case this carries more current than I think it does. I debated whether to epoxy coat it, but I think I'll leave it bare for now, at least until I've had a chance to really test the card with a game.

I cleaned off most of the flux residue and tested the card briefly, and it still seems to work, so our next step will be to reassemble the cooler. This is unfortunately, one of the more time consuming parts of the process, because I have to move the camera around a bunch for the sake of the video. Stay tuned...
 
Well... Crap.

I got the card assembled.
assembled.jpg

I plugged it in and started the system up, and it was working fine. This particular card is super stingy with its fans by default, and doesn't even spin them up until the GPU hits 60 degrees (so it runs pretty hot), but other than that, it seemed normal.
looksok.jpg

So, I started up Heaven, which is my go-to test for freshly repaired cards. The first time, the system crashed and then mysteriously rebooted. I assumed (wrongly?) that this had something to do with updating the driver, so I started up Heaven again, and after maybe two seconds of actually running, there was a sickening sizzly-pop sound from the card, a faint puff of smoke, and the the system kept running.

I powered the system down, removed the heatsinks, and found this.
blownmosfetagain.jpg

The same MOSFET appears to have failed, in exactly the same way, but slightly more visibly.
 
Last edited:
That's a card that very much wants to stay dead.
I know, right?

The really frustrating thing is that, if I just remove the dead MOSFET, it should work fine. I wouldn't recommend overclocking, but it does run. Can't really call that repaired, though.

Something I've noticed is that the bootstrap circuits, which act as a sort of power supply for the high side MOSFETs seem to be pretty weak on this card. There's supposed to be a capacitor that charges up, and the energy it stores is used to help turn the high side transistor on. The datasheet for the phase controllers calls for a 270nf cap, but the only ones I can find on here are 100nf.
 
Bad build perhaps? Or I wonder if they went cheap for some reason... I can't imagine a slightly bigger cap is that much more expensive... I tend to trust your analysis.
 
There’s a Russian repair video on YouTube with one of those front mosfets needing replacement.

The q502 AON7403 mosfets on the back I thought were common to burn out. I think I read some reddit threads for those going bad on EVGA cards.

Interestingly the card died overnight just idle on my PC (which is how it was for weeks outside of some gaming maybe 6 months prior). I don’t think it was ever pushed hard, just ran at stock clocks and power limits. I had a profile to keep minimum fans at 30% scaling to 100% as it reached 80C
 
There’s a Russian repair video on YouTube with one of those front mosfets needing replacement.

The q502 AON7403 mosfets on the back I thought were common to burn out. I think I read some reddit threads for those going bad on EVGA cards.

Interestingly the card died overnight just idle on my PC (which is how it was for weeks outside of some gaming maybe 6 months prior). I don’t think it was ever pushed hard, just ran at stock clocks and power limits. I had a profile to keep minimum fans at 30% scaling to 100% as it reached 80C


You mean this one?

You're right that that's basically the same problem, but his is obviously way worse - so bad in fact that he had to grind away a large portion of the board to clear the short, and only got it working about the same as I did.

The real problem that he had, and he didn't really address, is why this happens in the first place. I think he probably assumed, like I did originally, that the failure is the result of hamfisted overclocking, but it's obviously not if your card just died while it was idling.
 
Last edited:
Yes that’s one of them. I may have also been thinking of a German one that happens to also be a MSI 980 Ti having an issue with one of those mosfets.



Huh. I hadn't seen that one. It's interesting that the only thing he had to change was the DrMOS package. Your card definitely has something else wrong, since it keeps killing them. I actually replaced it again after I posted about it yesterday, and it killed that one after just a few seconds.

I feel like the problem pretty much has to be related to the bootstrap circuit, but I can't find anything obviously wrong with it. I gave up on it for a while yesterday afternoon, but I'll look at it again soon.

This thread is amazing,
Thanks, I'm glad you like it!
 
Huh. I hadn't seen that one. It's interesting that the only thing he had to change was the DrMOS package. Your card definitely has something else wrong, since it keeps killing them. I actually replaced it again after I posted about it yesterday, and it killed that one after just a few seconds.

I feel like the problem pretty much has to be related to the bootstrap circuit, but I can't find anything obviously wrong with it. I gave up on it for a while yesterday afternoon, but I'll look at it again soon.


Thanks, I'm glad you like it!

These are fun threads, thanks for posting them! You really put some effort into reviving this card. Ever considered buying a kraken G10/12 bracket so you don't have to totally re-assemble the HSF to test?
 
These are fun threads, thanks for posting them! You really put some effort into reviving this card. Ever considered buying a kraken G10/12 bracket so you don't have to totally re-assemble the HSF to test?
I'm ashamed to admit that that had actually not occurred to me. That's a good idea, though.

Do the Kraken brackets fit the oddball non-reference designs like these MSI cards? I seem to recall they're mainly meant for reference boards.

I've thought about setting up an X99 water jacket on some really long hoses that I could zip on to the cards really easily, but I don't actually spend that much time putting the heatsink back on. It's the diagnostics that are hard and time consuming.
 
I'm ashamed to admit that that had actually not occurred to me. That's a good idea, though.

Do the Kraken brackets fit the oddball non-reference designs like these MSI cards? I seem to recall they're mainly meant for reference boards.

I've thought about setting up an X99 water jacket on some really long hoses that I could zip on to the cards really easily, but I don't actually spend that much time putting the heatsink back on. It's the diagnostics that are hard and time consuming.
It's hit and miss with the Kraken's, but usually they are meant for reference boards unless otherwise specified.
 
I'm ashamed to admit that that had actually not occurred to me. That's a good idea, though.

Do the Kraken brackets fit the oddball non-reference designs like these MSI cards? I seem to recall they're mainly meant for reference boards.

I've thought about setting up an X99 water jacket on some really long hoses that I could zip on to the cards really easily, but I don't actually spend that much time putting the heatsink back on. It's the diagnostics that are hard and time consuming.

They work on lots of cards, though some definitely wouldn't fit. Honestly you could achieve similar results just by buying 4 long screws and some nuts/washers with a 120-140mm AIO. Since this would only be for testing purposes the only thing you would really need is solid contact. After installing one myself recently I realized how rudimentary the setup is and how much easier it is to install/remove than the stock HSF.
 
Hey Op, interested in playing with an RX 570? I have no idea why it won't post. I turned off the machine, pulled power cord out, pulled the video card out, moved to new machine & no post. Then moved back to original machine, no post.....
 
They work on lots of cards, though some definitely wouldn't fit. Honestly you could achieve similar results just by buying 4 long screws and some nuts/washers with a 120-140mm AIO. Since this would only be for testing purposes the only thing you would really need is solid contact. After installing one myself recently I realized how rudimentary the setup is and how much easier it is to install/remove than the stock HSF.
You know, now that I think about it, I have two 295X2 cooling units (four gpus' worth of water cooling!) lying around from cards I couldn't save. They have an oddball screw spacing that doesn't even fit other AMD cards, but I bet if I can get my hands on an nvidia-shape bracket, I could rejigger one to serve test bench duty. That's a good idea to use a CLC.

Hey Op, interested in playing with an RX 570? I have no idea why it won't post. I turned off the machine, pulled power cord out, pulled the video card out, moved to new machine & no post. Then moved back to original machine, no post.....
Probably. Figure out what it's worth to you to ship it to me in 78660 and send me a PM.
 
Hi RazorWind. I've got an EVGA GTX 980Ti with the same issues reported here, as soon as I apply plug in the 8pin power connector it keeps my system from powering on. I've troubleshot it to the 12v pins being shorted...likely a mosfet issue. I've taken the card apart and there is no visible damage anywhere. If there was, I'd try to replace that component. However, with there being no visible damage anywhere, my skills are not good enough to troubleshoot further. Would you want me to send this one to you to take a look at as well? Next step is trash. It's been sitting here for a few months now and I'd like to fix it to put in my son's computer. If you can't fix it, oh well. I've read your terms and am fine with them. Given this one has no visible indicators of damage, I figure it may be a good one to show us how you troubleshoot it to figure out where the actual problem is.
 
Hi RazorWind. I've got an EVGA GTX 980Ti with the same issues reported here, as soon as I apply plug in the 8pin power connector it keeps my system from powering on. I've troubleshot it to the 12v pins being shorted...likely a mosfet issue. I've taken the card apart and there is no visible damage anywhere. If there was, I'd try to replace that component. However, with there being no visible damage anywhere, my skills are not good enough to troubleshoot further. Would you want me to send this one to you to take a look at as well? Next step is trash. It's been sitting here for a few months now and I'd like to fix it to put in my son's computer. If you can't fix it, oh well. I've read your terms and am fine with them. Given this one has no visible indicators of damage, I figure it may be a good one to show us how you troubleshoot it to figure out where the actual problem is.
Yes, but... it may take me quite a while to get to it. I've got another card that someone sent me that I haven't even touched yet, and I obviously need to finish up with Solan's and give it back to him. So, I'm happy to look at it, but I can't promise anything resembling a quick turnaround.

I think the forum won't let you send me a PM since you haven't been around very long, but my email is in a post in this thread. Send me your email address, and I can send you shipping instructions. I assume you're not local to me here in Austin, like Solan is.
 
Back
Top