Through 3 GPUs in 1 Week - Overclock.net

tha d0ctor · 3 Weeks Ago

This hasn't been a good week for me, because of my HWBot ambitions I managed to piss through several hundred of dollars of GPUs for essentially nothing.

1st Casualty:
3 days ago I got a EVGA gtx 295 in from a trade, before even testing it out I decide to take it apart (dual pcb) and apply some better TIM. I do my rounds, apply new thermal pads and put it back together and throw it in my rig.

I then proceed to plug it in, turn on the computer. The first thing I noticed before the screen n would usually activate is that there is a burning smell coming from my computer. I inspect the card the fan isn't spinning. So I take it apart again check everything again, test it out, still dead.

2nd Casualty
The night I destroy the 295 I decide if I can't earn HWbot points with my 295 I'll go ahead and use my old P4 and overclock the crap out of my 6800 XT (no name Chinese knockoff brand from ebay).

After running a few benchmarks and noticing im only a few hundred points away on each from a few HWbot medals I decided to first unlock a few shaders (it worked) and then flash my bios from 1.0 to 1.4 volts, yes on a knock off card. The card booted and responded for all of around 30 seconds before the screen went black. While trying to take off the heatsink to bake the card I ripped of a resistor. Whatever I was planing to suicide run it anyways.

3rd Casualty:
Tonight around 1 hour ago. I dediced to give volt modding a shot on my 8800gt alpha dog. I was just 200 points away from a hardware medal on hwbot for 03 and probalby a few others once I got the clocks set so I decided my gpu core needed more voltage.

First attempt went fine but I decided a 20k resistor wasnt going to be enough, so i tried 18k, it only added .05 to my core (even after bios tweaking) so on my last attempt I decided to put a 10k resistor. This cause my 8800gt to boot and crash shortly thereafter after measuring 1.45 volts.

So, in the process of removing the resistor I firmly piched the wire coming from one of the location on the board and tried stripping some of the wire on the end. Well the plastic on the wire came off but also so did the wire itself off its spot with the resisitor. I go to reattach it and realized my soldering skills had grown to the point where the bond was so stong it ripped an entire resistor off my GPU's pcb. After several botched attempts to repair the missing piece the card when from BSODing w/ code 168 to not responding at all.

***

atleast I found a guy on craigslist with an 8800gt w/ a full cover waterblock, a 360mm rad and a pump he'll be willing to sell for 175$, will I let these follys serve a strong lesson to just leave my card stock.. probably not but in the future I'll atleast try to be more careful...

as long as EVGA doesn't deny more RMA for missing screws on the bracket I wont lose it

Clockadile Dundee · 3 Weeks Ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by tha d0ctor

This hasn't been a good week for me, because of my HWBot ambitions I managed to piss through several hundred of dollars of GPUs for essentially nothing.

1st Casualty:
3 days ago I got a EVGA gtx 295 in from a trade, before even testing it out I decide to take it apart (dual pcb) and apply some better TIM. I do my rounds, apply new thermal pads and put it back together and throw it in my rig.

I then proceed to plug it in, turn on the computer. The first thing I noticed before the screen n would usually activate is that there is a burning smell coming from my computer. I inspect the card the fan isn't spinning. So I take it apart again check everything again, test it out, still dead.

2nd Casualty
The night I destroy the 295 I decide if I can't earn HWbot points with my 295 I'll go ahead and use my old P4 and overclock the crap out of my 6800 XT (no name Chinese knockoff brand from ebay).

After running a few benchmarks and noticing im only a few hundred points away on each from a few HWbot medals I decided to first unlock a few shaders (it worked) and then flash my bios from 1.0 to 1.4 volts, yes on a knock off card. The card booted and responded for all of around 30 seconds before the screen went black. While trying to take off the heatsink to bake the card I ripped of a resistor. Whatever I was planing to suicide run it anyways.

3rd Casualty:
Tonight around 1 hour ago. I dediced to give volt modding a shot on my 8800gt alpha dog. I was just 200 points away from a hardware medal on hwbot for 03 and probalby a few others once I got the clocks set so I decided my gpu core needed more voltage.

First attempt went fine but I decided a 20k resistor wasnt going to be enough, so i tried 18k, it only added .05 to my core (even after bios tweaking) so on my last attempt I decided to put a 10k resistor. This cause my 8800gt to boot and crash shortly thereafter after measuring 1.45 volts.

So, in the process of removing the resistor I firmly piched the wire coming from one of the location on the board and tried stripping some of the wire on the end. Well the plastic on the wire came off but also so did the wire itself off its spot with the resisitor. I go to reattach it and realized my soldering skills had grown to the point where the bond was so stong it ripped an entire resistor off my GPU's pcb. After several botched attempts to repair the missing piece the card when from BSODing w/ code 168 to not responding at all.

***

atleast I found a guy on craigslist with an 8800gt w/ a full cover waterblock, a 360mm rad and a pump he'll be willing to sell for 175$, will I let these follys serve a strong lesson to just leave my card stock.. probably not but in the future I'll atleast try to be more careful...

as long as EVGA doesn't deny more RMA for missing screws on the bracket I wont lose it

Hopefully, you have learned a valuable lesson. What that lesson would be, I have no idea.

tha d0ctor · 3 Weeks Ago

get hwbot points at all costs?

nitd_kim · 3 Weeks Ago

i hope ur not a doctor in real life, lol

manolith · 3 Weeks Ago

epic!

That_guy3 · 3 Weeks Ago

Wow, Fail?

adventfred · 3 Weeks Ago

Fail=Win
well next time dont do it

man03999 · 3 Weeks Ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by nitd_kim

i hope ur not a doctor in real life, lol

Lmao , I would be so pissed.

slickwilly · 3 Weeks Ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clockadile Dundee

Hopefully, you have learned a valuable lesson. What that lesson would be, I have no idea.

Maybe to be more careful around fragile capacitors and resistors.

tha d0ctor · 3 Weeks Ago

yea next time im going to install alligator clips to wires coming from the resistors/solder points and then clip and maybe apply a little solder to resisters inbetween the two clips

not a doctor in real life, but in 3 months my job will entail handling a weapon o_0

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Through 3 GPUs in 1 Week

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