My 4870 stopped working

[Oriental Sniper]

Hi guys, I own a 4870 and it used to heat up a lot, the only solution available was to increase fan speed, but dear god, it sounded very loud even with my headphones on. So I surfed the net and people recommended aftermarket cooler, the Accelero S1 R2 in special, so I bought it and installed, after a few days, when playing CoD4, the loading screen messed up (like whole screens of artifacts), I restarted my PC, and Vista loaded up but with Standard VGA and CC said it didn't find any ATI compatible card, so I'm like wtf , but my screen was still connected to my 4870. So next thing is I shut it down and now it never turns up, my MSI motherboard stops at the light where it initializes the display card. Someone please help me. I don't live in USA,my whole rig was brought from there.

[boogah]

Your 4870 is dead unfortunately. What country are you in ?

[Sasqui]

Perhaps not - is the aftermarket heatsink loose? Did you monitor the temps after you installed it? Perhaps there's something else wrong with the installation like excess thermal paste, etc...

[boogah]

My 4870 died with the same symptoms but there was a pop... What was the pop ? The VRM were overheated and burnt causing too much voltage to go to the GPU and thus killing the GPU.

[Oriental Sniper]

Well, last night I applied some ARTIC thermal paste into the VRM and the Ram's . What do you mean with "pop", btw I was monitoring my temps, they were like 60 for core 70 for both vrm and memory.

[Fastmix]

It sounds like you fried your card.

[Oriental Sniper]

Hold on, doesn't the 4870 have this magical thing that if it's too hot, it shuts down by itself, and I live in Panama just for reference.

[DOM]

ARTIC thermal paste which one ?

[MKmods]

by the way, what program were you using to check the temps?

Acceleros RULE! (but are worthless if case airflow sucks)

[boogah]

haha no magical thing.... best solution is to get a buddy in the US to do an RMA on it for you.

[Sasqui]

Originally Posted by Oriental Sniper

Well, last night I applied some ARTIC thermal paste into the VRM and the Ram's .

Most thermal past (Arctic being one) is electrically conductive. If you got any on metal contacts, etc, you could have a short.

If that's the case, it doesn't mean for sure you've fried your card. With some cleaning, it may come back. There's another scenario where you may have ruined the BIOS, and a flash can get it back.

[Oriental Sniper]

I think it was the Artic Cooling MX-2. I used Everest, GPU-Z and Ati Tray Tools. I swear I really saw the auto-shut down thing.

I think the thermal paste was non-electrical conductive and how can the BIOS be damaged? :S

[Sasqui]

Originally Posted by Oriental Sniper

I think the thermal paste was non-electrical conductive and how can the BIOS be damaged? :S

If the wrong thing was shorted... but MX-2 is supposedly not conductive. Did you double check the installation and make sure everything is secure - the heatsink it evenly pressed on the GPU core?

[Oriental Sniper]

Well the basic story is: I installed it last night, I double checked the screws on the heatsink, I took off the paste and put back heatsinks, but I only did that and I fell asleep, right now I'm working (tech/repair) and I created new thread in front of the customer, I was just trying to get some ideas from you so I know what to do tonight.

EDIT: Btw, here's the paste http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835186020

[MKmods]

have you tried the card in a different comp yet? (just in case its a driver prob)

did I read it right, you put MX 2 on the VRMs and Rams? (how were they able to stay?)

[Oriental Sniper]

I truly doubt it's a driver issue, it doesn't even reach to POST, my MSI board tells me it stopped when it initialized the display card (through some leds).

[boogah]

yah like i said before the GPU chip itself is fried.

[MKmods]

Originally Posted by Oriental Sniper

I truly doubt it's a driver issue, it doesn't even reach to POST, my MSI board tells me it stopped when it initialized the display card (through some leds).

like the others have said its probably dead. But its cant hurt to cover all the bases, better safe than sorry, etc...

PS: what PS are you using?

[Oriental Sniper]

I can't try my card on another PC, it's at my house, I'm gonna try it tonight, I'm using Coolermaster 650W PRO

[erocker]

Originally Posted by Oriental Sniper

Well, last night I applied some ARTIC thermal paste into the VRM and the Ram's . What do you mean with "pop", btw I was monitoring my temps, they were like 60 for core 70 for both vrm and memory.

Do you have heatsinks on all of the ram chips and vrm's?

[Oriental Sniper]

Yeah, I covered them all with the thermal paste, I seriously don't know what happen, temps were normal, just the thermal paste.....

[tigger]

Did you put the little black spacers on the S1 before fitting it?

[erocker]

Originally Posted by Oriental Sniper

Yeah, I covered them all with the thermal paste, I seriously don't know what happen, temps were normal, just the thermal paste.....

So you just put thermal paste on them?! That will not help with temps at all and most likely will make them worse! If you are using the stock cooler, it needs to use the pads that came on it. Most likely there is no contact between the heatsink and the chips now. If you are using an aftermarket cooler the chips need to have copper or aluminum heatsinks on them.

[Oriental Sniper]

I don't know what spacers are you talking about, can you please post a pic?

Well I did make sure my heatsinks made contact with the VRM's and the RAM's, I thought the paste would help conduct the heat.

EDIT: Oh no! lol When I meant "just the thermal paste", I was referring to the only change I made.

EDIT Again: What I'm really concerned is if the paste could had short my card, it was applied on top of the VRM's and Heatsinks. I'm pretty sure the temperatures were normal. I'm just worried lol

[MKmods]

MX2 is not conductive so you should be safe. But it is NOT an adhesive either so it can not attach heatsinks to the memory either.

when you mount the Accelero there are 4 small spacers that go between the Accelero cooler and video card, usually mounted by sticky stuff. (they keep the mount square to the surface of the GPU for proper contact)