Can my 5900XT be fixed ? - my own fault :(

[Smagma]

I wanted to get better cooling on my Leadtek 5900XT and had been working on chopping an old socket 7 HS. The HS does not clear all the ram on that card. Since it idled at 34C and my best guess is that load was about 50C I did not want to mess with the stock pad. So I (obviously not thinking) started grinding on the HS with my roto tool. I hadn't come up with a way to attach the ram sinks (don't want to use thermal adhesive) so I put the card back in and cranked up the system. I was seriously bummed. broken horizontal lines on the dos screen (between the text) - 4 or 5 vertical green, yellow, sparkly white (all next to each other)and matching thick black lines that you could see only where they went through the logo. many vertical thin red lines in windows
(XP)

I wish I hadn't left my brain at the cleaners that day :rolleyes:

out of desperation I tried flashing the bios with a save I had made a while back. No joy.

Think there's a way to recover it ?


Smagma :t

[MJCfromCT]

I'm doubting it.

[widget2003]

yea no sounds fatal to me, and i dont know if this is at all a possibilty but maybe you could flash the bios with something??? :confused: i dunno if that possible at all but wont help if infact you've actually damaged the hardware itself

[Someone Stupid]

Try the original heatsink and see, but I highly doubt it.

[ukulele]

Can you post a picture? Did you nick the board with the rotary tool? You may have damaged a trace on the board. You might be able to solder the trace if that's the case.

[Midknyte]

bummers, man. did you put any ram heatsinks back on again? I know there are 2 separate pieces.

were you grinding with the heatsink on the card or not? the vibration from the grinding might have screwed up the card.

see if you can get a new one under warranty. try to make it look as stock as possible. it's worth a shot.

[ukulele]

Originally posted by Midknyte
see if you can get a new one under warranty. try to make it look as stock as possible. it's worth a shot.

Yep, it's the American way. :rolleyes:

[RGraze]

Sounds like a good thing to me, now you have a reason to go out and get a 6800 card. Just looking on the bright side. :)

[Midknyte]

Originally posted by RGraze
Sounds like a good thing to me, now you have a reason to go out and get a 6800 card. Just looking on the bright side. :)

At least one person around here is the "glass is half full" kind of guy. :D

[Smagma]

I don't think I ground on a trace but I did take just a shade off a couple of ram chips. I don't think it's any where near enought to damage the chips though. Can't make it look stock again cause I had finished grinding some of the fins down so the ram sinks would fit. :( I will check the traces to see if I did nick one or more. I think that I probably gave the card a big static charge and it's probably just toast. sigh

Speaking of the bright side though :D I'm debating biteing two bullets and getting a 6800 or just one bullet and getting the same card again for somewhat more than $100.00 less.

Thanks

Smagma :t

[Midknyte]

The 6800 is a pretty solid card and will be way faster than a 5900xt.

You're already more than half way to a 6800 as it is. :r

[Midknyte]

Newegg has the Leadtek 6800s in stock. $278

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-122-193&depa=1

You won't have to mess with the heatsink on that one. It is freaking massive. ;)

[ukulele]

I'd get the same card again. You'll have plenty of spare parts. :D

BTW...You user name begs the question, "How did it get past the scum filters?"

[Smagma]

Yeah, your right, but other bills come into play.

I was just looking at this and see that I did scratch the surface of the board. There are no traces there but it looks like copper underneath the green. Looks like I may have just caught the edge of one or two small surface mount (caps ?) c82 and c83 or 5 (chopped off the top half of the numbers) Not sure how I would go about fixing that.

Smagma :t

[Smagma]

Sorry ukulele I was typeing my last one. ya got there before I did.

Anyway, my user name, Hmmm.... I was not aware of any bad connotations. I was thinking in terms of "it's magma"

Now I'll have to look around for other possible defs

Smagma :t


Gotta take off to do some stuff for my sis and brother in law.

Free chow woo hoo :r

[ukulele]

I'm only ribin' ya. It was banned in Hawaii as a vanity license plate so I looked it up myself. :eek: