No display & fan stopped working (Powercolor Radeon HD 7750 1GB)

[Maclin]

I was playing Dard siders 2. Suddenly I got a call in my mobile. So I left the game running w/o pausing and attended the call. Suddenly I saw my monitor screen went off. I checked the power connections, VGA cable connection b/w the monitor & the CPU. They were all fine. I just can't see anything in the monitor. The monitor LED is showing the status of "no I/p"(LED going on & off). I got confused and tried forced shutdown & restarted the machine. Everything is perfectly normal. Even the beep sound from CPU. But still there is no display. I was wondering whether the problem could be with the graphics card. And later I confirmed it. I found it lying dead inside the cabinet. The fan is not running. Hence I changed the VGA cable from the GPU port to Motherboard VGA port. I saw the machine is ready for login in the monitor screen. Therefore I decided that there is no issues any other components inside the cabinet. I still had a doubt in the PCI slot of the motherboard, Hence I swapped the GPU with another standy GPU ati radeon hd 5450 which I was using before. I got the display from this card too.

Finally I concluded that the problem is with GPU only.

I was shocked since I bought this card for 7500/- INR last month only. Even I changed My PSU which provides 450 Watts, added 4 GB of additional RAM & a additonal CPU fan.

I still dont understand what has caused this failure. I removed the card to see any H/W faults. But there is nothing in the card. It still looks good. When I reseat the card & turn the power on. The fan starts to rotate & stops immediately(spins less than quarter of 1 sec). Can anybody suggest any troubleshooting which can be done from my side.

Or please explain what has happened.........

 

[Cobalt006]

Could not really tell you why the card went bad, But they do sometimes. If you have a warranty on it . I would send it back for a replacement. Seeing as it not your main board . All your other video graphics work.

 

[Maclin]

Thanks..

 

[nismo91]

Few weeks ago I experienced strikingly similar incident where my old nvidia 8800GT stopped working. I was working with something when the screen suddenly turned black and the card turned dead. I was not even doing something 3D or something that is demanding for the card.

obviously, my card is much older, thus I could accept it whole-heartedly. but I get that feeling. it's probably best if you send it for warranty. but hey, now you know what happened when you graphic card turned dead in front of you!

 

[temporae]

Could the video card have failed due to overheating? Presuming the fan on the card was what you saw not working, it could be that it was not running for awhile, and the accumulated damage from heat caused the whole card to fail.

How many fans do you have in your current setup?

 

[Maclin]

I was hardly breathing & my mouth got dried up!! It was like moments b4 a heart attack!!

temporae: I just started to play atleast 10 or 15 minutes b4 it failed.. But your opinion is adding something to the issue which has just happened. The mistake which I usually do is that I never turn the power switch off. I heard the components just keep eating up power even when the machine is turned off.. Most of us would have witnessed this in our home appliances like TV or even your lap. We would have felt the heat @ the backside of a Charging laptop which is turned off.. In the same way my GPU temperature might have increased & gave me a ****........

temporae: I have 1 CPU fan installed which is close to my GPU.

 

[temporae]

temporae: I just started to play atleast 10 or 15 minutes b4 it failed.. But your opinion is adding something to the issue which has just happened. The mistake which I usually do is that I never turn the power switch off. I heard the components just keep eating up power even when the machine is turned off.. Most of us would have witnessed this in our home appliances like TV or even your lap. We would have felt the heat @ the backside of a Charging laptop which is turned off.. In the same way my GPU temperature might have increased & gave me a ****........

The only thing that would keep power consumption active while the PC is turned off but still plugged is maybe the CMOS/clock chip on the mobo. It's not as if the HDD or RAM is being accessed, or the optical drive is in use, so how can they be drawing power and contributing to the heat of the system while it's turned off? Likewise, it makes no sense for the graphics card to be using power in that state while the monitor is off and nothing is being rendered in the first place.

In the case of a laptop where the battery is usually left plugged in and charging, I could see it remaining warm, but it should not be an issue for a desktop (my own experience verifies this- my desktop has never felt warm at initial boot).

I think your setup of having only 1 case fan is asking for trouble, especially if you run CPU and GPU intensive apps like games usually are. The setup I often hear for gaming systems is at least 2 fans, one in the back of the case and one in the front, with a third fan at the top of the fan in some cases. If you have space in the tower, I highly recommend putting in a second fan in a way that blows air in directionally with the first one, so that one is an intake and the other is an exhaust. This should keep air flow maximal and not as clogged up.

 

[Maclin]

Thats quite informative..(y) Thanks for this good briefing... Can u explain why the GPU fan initializes stops all of a sudden?? Does it involves any power related issue? or this is how a ruined GPU behaves?

 

[temporae]

My best guess would be one of two possibilities:

1) There is dust build-up in the fan itself that stops it from freely rotating as it needs to, leading to occasional stoppage. Have you ever air-cleaned the inside of your PC? If not, it's quite likely that the build-up has worsened or even caused the overheating.

2) The power being supplied to the GPU gets interrupted somehow, so it can only operate periodically. maybe a loose power coupling somewhere? Also possibly a malfunction in the PSU itself where it's not delivering power to each of its connectors as it should be.

If you can eliminate both of those, then the last conclusion is that the device itself is fried. Hopefully not the case though, and you can just clean your way to working condition.

 

[dennis777]

Hmmm... in a worse case scenario.... bake your video card, literally. just Google it for the steps.

 

[nismo91]

Hmm the failed 8800gt I described above actually dies from overheating, as the fan is somehow blocked by a stray wire when I tilt the case in landscape position. it was presumably because I removed the plastic frame around the fan and heatsink, allowing stray cable to go in and interrupt the fan.

therefore it's also possible that TS card dies from overheating. it may be faulty fan, or dust buildup.

 

[Maclin]

temporae: First of all, the good news is.. I just got rid of that SMPS which was previously installed since it is covered under warranty..Coming back to the topic, my GPU is a new one which I mentioned that earlier, as you said there's no dust accumulated in the CPU, SPMS, Processor & in the GPU fans. I periodically check them since I don't wannu loose my games just because of ignoring small maintenance activities like these.. Inspite I do reassemble once in 3 months.. So I don't think dust is a prime accused in this incident.

 

[Maclin]

I just received a new card.. But when I play AC: brotherhood, I see a flickering sky.. Is this card dying too. I found a review stating thats its a driver issue. Is this really a drivers issue or a H/W issue?

 

[Lalinda]

Hey Maclin the same issue occurred to me also, did you find out a way to solve this problem, I also did change the bios settings. primary as the PCI still suffering with this

 

[Maclin]

Lalinda, Its a driver issue. Re-install the drivers. If you already had it re-installed, go for driver update. It should resolve everything..