has my 4870 card died?

Y

yariman

n00b
Joined
Oct 16, 2008
Messages
47
i build my pc around 6months ago and all has been fine. last night whilst browsing the screen flickered, went black and the suddenly the pc powered down. I wasnt sure what to make of it so I turned it back on. It booted fine and lasted 30 minutes before doing the same.

This morning i turned it on to come to hard ocp to find posts related to this found a few involving black screens. I then put the pc in hibernate mode nad left for work. Now tonight when i come back and try to boot up the monitor is not picking up a signal but the pc sounds like its alive and there are no beeps at all. Checked leads between pc and monitor - fine. Checked the monitor works by pluggin in a old laptop and its fine. I opened up the box and noticed that the video card fan is not moving at all plus there was a bit of dust on the fan and grills of the cards heat sink. Cleaned it up but still no lifesigns.

I havnt overclocked the system and i made sure to get a good psu based on this forums users recs.

its an antec eathwatts 650w.
the card is a saphire 4870 512mb.
motherboard asus p5q pro
q6600 cpu with ninja cooling tower.

I dont have any spare cards or psus to find the fault source but i do have an unused multimeter, can i use that somehow to narrow down the source of the problem?? does anyone know whats going on here? is there warranty support with video cards? any help will really be appreciated!.
 
I think your PSU is fine since it has been running the rest of your rig fine (and since it powers on everything but your card)

I'd try it in another PCI-E slot and if it doesn't work your best bet would be to RMA it, using your multimeter wouldn't hurt though!
 
thanks damain. i checked the psu with a multimeter on the pci express cable and other 6 pin adaptor that plugs into the 4870 512mb and the voltage is 12.09 on both so the psu is fine.

I tried pluggin the card into the other pci slot on the motheboard (p5q pro) which is usually used for crossfire. Lo and behold it returned to normal and i could see windows via the display. Then 10 minutes later the view cut out again but hte pc remained on. I checked the card and the fan wasnt running and was very hot.

Im not sure if changing the cards slot on the motherboard did anything or was just a fluke. The fan which never seems to run seems to be the problem. Can i change it easily? i dont know much about changin fans on graphics card though ive done it for the cpu installing a ninja on it.

what does everyone think the problem is? how can i get to the bottom of where the problem lies i.e. motherboard, video card fan etc.
 
What is the speed you're running the fan at? I'd try 60~100%
If it still to hot for your liking, investing in an aftermarket heatsink would do good.
 
Use the multimeter to test the output of the PCI-E connectors on your PSU. Although this sounds like a dead card to me because of you mentioning the fan not spinning.
 
Read your second reply, sounds like a bad resistor on the card pcb, RMA that sucker. Even if it is just the fan that's not your problem because it is under warranty. You shouldn't have to worry about that.
 
Hmm, I have the same card and also have been using mine for bout 6 months, problem free, until today. All through out the day, after playing any game for about 45 minutes it crashes. I haven't overclocked my card or sped up the fan but I am curious if it is getting too hot. What do y'all think?
 
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