9600xt died, vga silencer the culprit?

mynameisyoung · Post by **mynameisyoung** » Wed May 05, 2004 9:47 pm

Well I was playing counterstike for about 30 minutes today and my monitor suddenly flashed and had the "no signal" screen up.

After the initial panic I brought it over to a friends house since I didn't have an extra system around to find the problem. After testing my monitor on his system we realized that wasn't the problem.

Then we swapped equipment (his card into my comp and mine into his). We realized the video card has crapped out, the strange thing is there doesn't seem to be any physical evidence that it has overheated or anything at all.

I ran my 9600xt with a VGA silencer rev.3 and the temps seemed to be fine when I first installed it, which was about 3 weeks ago. I always kept it on low. I really don't know what the problem is. I can't RMA it since I altered it with the Silencer so now I'm stuck with my friends crappy old 32mb geforce2.

Anyone have any idea if my card can be rescued, or the cause of the problem?
Another question is, should I invest in a card that's on the market now?
Or is the line of ATI cards going to have a midrange card like the 9600? (Can't afford a top of the line card)

Any advice is appreciated, sorry if I kind of rambled on there.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Wed May 05, 2004 9:58 pm

I think the only way that the VGA Silencer could have "caused" this, is if it wasn't making decent contact with the GPU die core (via thermal compound). If you are confident that the silencer was mounted to the core properly, eg, getting warm under load, then I seriously doubt it could be the culprit.

You might have just gotten unlucky with a bad video card. Can you remove the silencer, put the original heatsink back on and RMA it? The silencer isn't exactly permanent..

mynameisyoung · Post by **mynameisyoung** » Wed May 05, 2004 10:33 pm

The original heatsink's wire got chewed up by my dog after I forgot to put it away after the swap, so I can't go that route. I'm sure I made good contact with the Silencer because that was one aspect I was worried about when I bought the cooler.

I'm not so sure about the bad card thing though, I've had this card since December, with no problems what so ever.

Since my card wasn't overclocked (but I did have overdrive on), I don't see how it could've actually been heat related, and counter-strike isn't actually a graphic intensive game. I'm thinking maybe a bad AGP slot? Anyway of checking this? The current card is running fine so far.

Oh and by the way the VGA Silencer still spins but I just get the no signal thing on my monitor.

Pjotor · Post by **Pjotor** » Thu May 06, 2004 1:10 am

Sorry for being a boring adult, but trying to RMA something which you have altered when giving the impression it is "un-altered" constitutes fraud, at least here in Sweden.

I can't stop anyone doing it, but suggesting or encouraging illegal (yes, illegal) actions publicly on these forums is not the way to go.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Thu May 06, 2004 9:23 am

I hardly think installing an alternate heatsink is FRAUD, it is no more FRAUD than returning a failed Intel CPU where I (gasp, shock) did not use the Intel OEM heatsink.

Get over yourself.

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Thu May 06, 2004 10:45 am

Wumpus - there is more than one point to what Pjotor has raised.

Having had this argument (oddly enough, just about Intel CPU's) countless times, I'll recount it again, and hope I can make clear that both sides are right and wrong (as is so often the case).

Facts:

1: Intel's "boxed" CPU's (the only ones meant for retail to "us lot") come with a stock heatsink. Those have 3 yr warranty.
2: Inte's OEM CPU's (which are exclusively MEANT to go the types of Dell, HP, and so on) don't come with heatsinks. Their warranty depends on the agreement with the OEM, but usually is 6 months, if I recall correctly.

<Note: I said "MEANT/SUPPOSED" because this is one of those "theory vs. practice" arguments again. OEM CPU's are not supposed to end up being sold to end customers>.

3: Intel has tested (pretty much "to death") their stock heatsinks with the respective CPU's, thus have validated the solution. Hence their guarantee "Use THESE parts that we give you, and we're confident that for at least 3 years you'll have no problems".

4: Oddly enough, Intel DOESN'T test (by and large) other's heatsinks - be it a shoddy "5 bucks for the dozen" or a Zaalman or Thermalright part. They don't. Period. They won't either, as it'd simply cost too much in resources (human + financial) to "validate" these items (or to fail them).

Therefor, Intel (again - reminder - just using them as the parade example, the same applies to ATI, NVIDIA, and so on) takes the very understandable stance (intellectually speaking) of:

"That which we have not tested, we do not validate. That which is not a validated thermal solution, voids the warranty."

After all, why should Intel pay up for the "5 bucks the dozen"-sort of heatsink, when it (intends to) prodive(s) you with a perfectly good heatsink.

Now - the fact that the heatsink might not be to our LIKING - be it for OC'ing or silence-terms or whathaveyou - doesn't interest Intel a whit. "Use this, and you're under warranty. Mess around at your own risk."

Thus, we do mess around at our own risk. And thus, have to accept responsibility for it.

Now - admittedly - mynameisyoung has had rather ill fortune with his setup. The VGA-silencer "may" or "may not" (though likely isn't responsible, IMHO) have fried the ATI-card slowly, over a course of time, until it died a horrible death.

Could the AGP-slot be responsible? Well - it's a bit of a long shot (I've not run into one of those claims being genuine in a fair bit of time), but a chance is there. It seems somewhat more likely than his VGA-silencer being the direct cause (assuming he's applied it properly, which he sounds to have put a lot of effort in).

Again - both sides are both RIGHT and WRONG.

That manufacturer's essentially react with "lalalalala - I don't hear you" as soon as you mention having changed out component XYZ (even if you know it's superios / just as good) makes sense. They've never validated it, and it's somewhat doubtful (understatement) that they will.

On the other hand, it'd be nice to see them working closer with "other" manufacturers - i.e. - see Intel/AMD work closer with Zaalman/Thermalright/Coolermaster and so on. It'd be nice ... but is it going to happen? I very much doubt it.

This has a whole swathe of reasons which I believe anyone can figure out with a bit of thinking for themselves.

So, in the end, Pjotor's point is a good one - morally alone (I shan't discuss the legality of it - that's a personal choice).

Let's face, at the end of the day, sometimes "mods" that we do go bad. It sucks, but it does happen. There's a flipside to everything, and in our case - when things "go fry", we're pretty much without warranty.

Simple truth.

Hope I've not bored anyone to tears now

.

wumpus · Post by **wumpus** » Thu May 06, 2004 10:51 am

It is extraordinarily unlikely that the failure of this video card, running at stock speeds and voltages in a stock PC, had anything to do with the heatsink replacement.

Similarly, if an Intel CPU in my machine fails (no overclocking, overvolting, etc), it is very unlikely that the heatsink I chose to use had anything to do with that.

Therefore, there's no moral ambiguity here. To the best of our knowledge, nothing we did caused the failure. Compare with a heavily overclocked and overvolted CPU which fails. Big difference.

shathal · Post by **shathal** » Thu May 06, 2004 10:55 am

Quite likely true and I agree with you.

However, "our" sort of modders with "good conscience" who care for their hardware are pretty much flooded out in numbers by the aggressive OC'ing "kids".

And being a manufacturer, would you rather risk upsetting (possibly) a "single" unlucky end-user, or the hundreds/thousands of aggressive GHz/MHz-junkies that are out there?

At the end of the day, it's simple numbers, probabilities and RMA-costs

.

mynameisyoung · Post by **mynameisyoung** » Thu May 06, 2004 1:13 pm

My opinion on my specific situation about the RMA issue is that from what I can tell I have not mistreated the video card in any way. In fact I think I've been quite kind to it by purchasing a better cooler for it, excluding the fact that I was trying to silence it.

So because of that, I would have no trouble replacing the heatsink and sending it to ATI for an RMA. If I spent 200 dollars (or my girlfriend did, it was a christmas gift) for a video card or any computer part for that matter, I expect it to last me a few years, and it hasn't. ATI has not built a quality product. And this seems to be a problem with them, infact I actually had a 9500pro that died as well. ATI says my PSU was the cause of this, when it was a quality Antec SL350 that I still have in my girlfriends setup.

You can actually check www.rage3d.com forums, ATI seems to have a problem with quality of their products.

BUT... it seems my original post has been lost in the whole RMA debacle, does anyone have any opinions to my questions regarding which video card to purchase. I was actually concidering the new Nvidia 5900xt, but I'm not sure if the VGA silencer will fit on it, since I still have that and I love it's performance (which I'm now convinced is not responsible for the card dying).

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Fri May 07, 2004 7:01 am

Hard to recommend a card without knowing how much you want to spend, what games you're going to throw at it, and how long you want it to last.

I did see an ad for a 9600 for only $99 today. It was an ATI but it was from Fry's and I'm sure they will either have only 5 in stock or find a way to claim the ad is really for the 9600se and not a 9600.

You could do what I did and buy the card with passive heat sink installed. My 9600xt was more expensive but if it fails I can send the entire thing to Sapphire. I forget how long my warranty is.

In regards to the side topic - as much as it's unlikey the after market cooler caused the problem, how can you be 100% sure? It was working at one point but maybe it wasn't the day the card died and is working now.

mynameisyoung · Post by **mynameisyoung** » Fri May 07, 2004 11:09 am

Well there's always the chance that the aftermarket cooler killed my card, but it could possibly be any other various factors, but it just seems hard to believe it did. Concidering after my card died I researched to see if anyone else encountered the same problem with the VGA Silencer, and couldn't find anything, I searched atleast 10 forums.

As far as getting a new card I think I'll wait for ATIs and Nvidias new offerings. Maybe get there low end cards for around 250-300 dollars, atleast that's the projected pricing.

I figure I might as well get a card that will last me a while and have the newest technology available. Atleast that can be some sort of silver-lining in this debacle.

As far as silencing them, Artic Cooling is apparently making new VGA Silencers for the new cards. You can find the thread in this forum.

Thanks for reading this long drawn out thread

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Fri May 07, 2004 3:53 pm

It's not a bad silver lining really. I just got my 9600xt so I can't justify a new card for a long time!

Good luck.