So I think my video card died...

Post by **U4EA** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 8:46 am

Have a look at those capacitors again, just to make sure.

Post by **Transient** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 11:57 am

I called up the tech guy and he told me that a bad capacitor would be clearly noticable. It would bulge and probably be oozing brown shit from the bulge. Nothing remotely like that on any of the capacitors. At least I'm 90% sure what I was looking at were the capacitors. Half an inch tall, about a dozen of them, cylinders, almost looked like small AAA batteries with the '-' side facing me.

On a related note, the next piece of hardware I tested was my sound card (just for the sake of testing everything). Since taking it out, not one crash, even when playing games. That was since my last post in this thread...

I jsut put the sound card back in an hour ago and it STILL hasn't crashed, though I don't even know for sure if the sound card had ANYTHING to do with it and it was just a fluke. Maybe with all the poking around I did, I inadvertently tightened a loose connection? I'm really at a loss now, LOL.

Post by **Grudge** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 4:54 pm

Transient wrote: By the way, my guess is it's the processor, because it's charred black from the heatsink failing a few months ago.

hey, this might have been a good idea to mention right from the start, wouldn't it?

Post by **Transient** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 5:55 pm

I said that in the first 2 sentences of my first post.

I've also done more testing (read: playing through HL2) of the sound card. After putting the Sound Blaster Audigy back in and playing City of Heroes for an hour and not crashing, I fired up HL2 and it crashed within 2 minutes. I took the card out and played another 4 hours with no prob. I'm going to take a long nap and then put the card back in and see if the game will run without crashing.

Post by **Grudge** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 6:32 pm

well duh, have you tried putting another processor in there?

Post by **Transient** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:27 pm

I don't have a spare processor around, nor will I risk putting another one in there in the off chance my motherboard is the culprit and it fries another processor. If I can't think of anything else to test and I can't solve the problem, I'll take it to the computer shop for them to test the processor.

Post by **Transient** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:16 pm

I thought the problem had gone away over the weekend, as it never crashed. Then today it started with the funky colors and crashing again. I could smell that nasty acidic smell again and thought I smelled it coming from my monitor, so I tried swapping out monitors. Then I noticed that the smell was definitely coming from the power supply. VERY strong smell! It might have been coming from both places, but I think it was my imagination.

*cough choke*

Bleh, it smells HORRIBLE!

Post by **Freakaloin** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 6:22 pm

sounds like u got nerdanated...

Post by **Transient** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 1:46 pm

So is it possible all these problems were caused by my power supply?

Post by **Tormentius** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 7:15 pm

Transient wrote:So is it possible all these problems were caused by my power supply?

Yes.

Post by **Transient** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:38 am

OK, so an update. I took the rig to the shop and the dignosis is a fucked mobo and power supply. It seems half the capacitors were shot and I just didn't notice it (I was trying to compare normal capacitors to bad ones, but all the ones I was comparing to each other WERE the bad ones).

Thanks for all the help guys. You saved me a lot of time dicking around with the store owner. We were able to get right down to the prob and I should have my PC back with new parts by Tuesday. I'm out $180, but it's better than having to buy a whole new system...