Burnt up my Ti4200

[vassil3427]

Well, lately I've been slightly overclocking my PNY GF4 Ti4200, and it was all good and well till yesterday. As I was surfing the net I got these weird lines vertically across the screen, yellow and green I think. I immediatly restarted my pc and disabled overclocking. Well about an hour later, there those lines are again. I restart once more and.....nothing happens, no display at all, my monitor acted like it wanted to start but couldnt.. ...even though I stopped overclocking it, it died...Well I got an RMA number today.. Anybody think they'll not notice it has been OC'd? I really dont wanna buy a new card..but I think my chances of them not noticing are slim......

(P.S. Yes it was the video card that died,I tried another card in my system, and it worked fine )

 

[young&wild]

It depends, if your card has a burnt smell, or your memory or chipset seems to be burnt(smokey dark in colour) then the warranty is going to be void.

 

[vassil3427]

Well no...it doesnt have a burnt smell, but I removed the heatsink, and there are two little burn marks parallel to each other...maybe they'll just think it overheated...

 

[dani_17]

Well... if the card has overheated and the heatsink and fan works, maybe they'll think it was overclocked. If they notice you took out the heatink, that's also going to void your warranty

 

[Elcarion]

Originally posted by vassil3427
I removed the heatsink

That's more than enough to void your warrantly regarless of anything else.

 

[vassil3427]

But it's impossible to tell it was removed, I took it off, took a look, and put it back on. it was only held on by those cheap plastic things anyway, it looks the same as it did before I took it off...

A simple side question, how do they tell it was overclocked? What if the fan stopped working?

 

[XtR-X]

I say you take out the fan and mess with it, carefully take it apart, and cut a wire on the inside, put it back together and then you can say 'my fan doesn't work or something' and then act like an ***** if they ask about overclocking, just say: 'what's overclokment' or some stupid thing that the guy didn't say. Also, when you took off the fan before (if you did), make sure you didn't put it on backwards, it's obvious that u messed with it.

 

[Rick]

These companies really don't care what you did to it.

Just call them up, ask for a replacement and it is a done deal! If you bought it locally, then go to the store and tell them it stopped working. They will replace it with almost no questions asked every single time.

Be firm and you can get away with just about anything.. EVEN if it is your fault. This is especially true when you are dealing with a chain store rather than the manufacturer. Just don't tell them it was your fault and the card just quit working one day.

 

[SNGX1275]

Originally posted by XtR-X
I say you take out the fan and mess with it, carefully take it apart, and cut a wire on the inside, put it back together and then you can say 'my fan doesn't work or something'

If you want to go that route, then I think personally it would be better to heat up the solder joint and pull. looks like it got too hot or something.

 

[XtR-X]

Originally posted by SNGX1275
If you want to go that route, then I think personally it would be better to heat up the solder joint and pull. looks like it got too hot or something.

Lol, a little much to do but that works even better!

Do like Rick said, and when all else fails, hang up, call again, get another representative, do the math.

 

[vassil3427]

When I bought the card, I bought it from Best Buy so I had to return it to PNY, On the phone the guy didnt even ask me if I did anything to the card, I said I needed to RMA it, he said ok, gave me my number, and I shipped it that day, it should arrive at their facility today, so I'll tell you if they are going to replace it(I'm supposed to get an email from them telling me the status of the card).

And if I wanted to burn up the fan, I'd make it look like it burnt up on its own....Just hook a 20 volt regulated power supply directly to the fan....It would look like it just failed on its own....

 

[acidosmosis]

Not exactly. The manufacturers aren't (well not always) that stupid.

 

[vassil3427]

Actually guess what, I recieved an email just a bit ago informing me that my replacement card had been shipped, UPS's tracking says it will be here tomorrow

 

[vassil3427]

This is so sweet the replacement card arrived just now, and I just installed it, for some wacky unknown reason they sent me a TI4600!!!!!!!!!!! All I had was a ti4200 64mb....and they sent me a ti4600..hahahaha..somebody messed up, but I feel good:grinthumb