Graphics glitch on friends computer

[mothballd]

Hello,

A good friend of mine who lives several states away (making onsite troubleshooting tricky) is having an unfortunate error with his PC. It's a custom built machine put together about 2-3 years ago by a guy with questionable parts sourcing, so I don't trust the quality of any of the parts in that machine. My instinct is that his video card is dieing, based on this graphics glitch occuring during system boot as well as when the OS is running.

Here's an image (attached) of what it looks like during initial system boot. Any help/opinions on what the problem most likely is would be much appreciated.

 

[Tmagic650]

The video card is failing... The fan may be clogged with dust, or the thermal compound between the heat-sink and video processor needs to be replaced

 

[mothballd]

Thanks for the reply and the confirmation. Want to be sure before I tell him bad news. Hopefully it's just dusty/dirty but seems likely a new card is in his future.