Mr Whippy
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| posted on 27/2/24 at 01:33 PM |
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Best suggestion for duff graphics card
Hi,
I got a nice computer (a very big black box) off a guy at work for learning Blender on.
All was going very well for a week, finding Blender quite amazing  till one night I came in and the machine would not respond  . Basically the
graphic card has went kaputt, just fantastic FFS!  I tried taking apart and cleaning the card etc. but to no avail, its still fooked. It's not
a very powerful graphics card either nor do I know anything really about these things, but I see there are places to fix cards for about £80 - £100,
if they can be fixed... or maybe I could buy a refurbished card from somewhere reputable? i.e. not Ebay...
My budget for fixing is £200 as that is all I can be arsed spending on a stupid computer since I have no interest in using it for gaming (I have an
xbox for that)
I'm currently running the computer just with the normal motherboard and tbh I was surprised that it seems to be ok, slightly slower definitely,
but not cripplingly so. It does have a huge ridiculous heatsink strapped to the processor.
Any idea's or suggestions?
I'm not bothering my co-worker over it as really its not his fault and as I now gather, graphics cards are the evil spawn of Satin and explode
all the time.
Cheers.
Fame is when your old car is plastered all over the internet
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McLannahan
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| posted on 27/2/24 at 02:41 PM |
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CEX sell a range of GPU's and they also offer a 2 yr warranty with all their kit they sell too.
It'll be refund or store credit if they don't have another similar model to offer....but it's better than nothing and often longer than
the original warranty offered with the product.
https://uk.webuy.com/search?productLineId=7&productLineName=Graphics%20and%20Capture%20Cards
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mcerd1
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| posted on 27/2/24 at 02:46 PM |
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what is the spec of the dead card ? / what's min. spec you'd want for a new one ?
quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
...but I see there are places to fix cards for about £80 - £100, if they can be fixed... or maybe I could buy a refurbished card from somewhere
reputable? i.e. not Ebay...
personally I think you'd be better off with a known good working s/h unit - I don't think re-furb ones
are worth much unless they come with some pretty amazing warrantee
Also is it worth even paying £80-100 for attempting a fix - when that much would would get you a S/H GTX970/980/1070/1080 or similar....
I've got my old GTX970 in the loft thats still got plenty life in it for most people - but they are only worth ~£90 buy the looks of things
now
(I've not decided if I want to sell it yet as I might need it for another build... )
Alternatively if you really don't need much power you can buy older designs brand new for fairly cheap
something like a GT730 GT1030 is £75/85 - these are really meant to be fanless cards in office machines that just need a little more than the CPU
alone can give or running multi screen setups
or at the top of your budget - £190-220 takes you into the lower end of modern - RTX3050 / RX6600V2 etc....
(there are a few in-between 100-200 that might be worth a look too - mostly old stock GTX1050 / 1650 etc... )
^^and thats sticking to trusted brands - you can always risk one of the no-name direct from china ones for a fair bit less £
[Edited on 27/2/2024 by mcerd1]
-
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Slimy38
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| posted on 27/2/24 at 04:28 PM |
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I'd be tempted to leave as is until it becomes unbearable. I run Blender, Unity Fusion 360 and various other 'middleweight' packages on
an AMD based laptop with built-in graphics and it's fine.
Having said that, I do have a 1060 tucked away that is £200 card when I bought it many moons ago, and for some bizarre reason is £200 now. As you say
you can tell the difference when you've got a separate card but for me it's not life changing.
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Mr Whippy
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| posted on 27/2/24 at 05:01 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by mcerd1
what is the spec of the dead card ? / what's min. spec you'd want for a new one ?
quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
...but I see there are places to fix cards for about £80 - £100, if they can be fixed... or maybe I could buy a refurbished card from somewhere
reputable? i.e. not Ebay...
personally I think you'd be better off with a known good working s/h unit - I don't think re-furb ones
are worth much unless they come with some pretty amazing warrantee
Also is it worth even paying £80-100 for attempting a fix - when that much would would get you a S/H GTX970/980/1070/1080 or similar....
I've got my old GTX970 in the loft thats still got plenty life in it for most people - but they are only worth ~£90 buy the looks of things
now
(I've not decided if I want to sell it yet as I might need it for another build... )
Alternatively if you really don't need much power you can buy older designs brand new for fairly cheap
something like a GT730 GT1030 is £75/85 - these are really meant to be fanless cards in office machines that just need a little more than the CPU
alone can give or running multi screen setups
or at the top of your budget - £190-220 takes you into the lower end of modern - RTX3050 / RX6600V2 etc....
(there are a few in-between 100-200 that might be worth a look too - mostly old stock GTX1050 / 1650 etc... )
^^and thats sticking to trusted brands - you can always risk one of the no-name direct from china ones for a fair bit less £
[Edited on 27/2/2024 by mcerd1]
Its a Palit NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB GPU Graphics Card, although I know not what any of that means tbh, their about £150 second hand on ebay
Fame is when your old car is plastered all over the internet
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Mr Whippy
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| posted on 27/2/24 at 05:06 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by mcerd1
what is the spec of the dead card ? / what's min. spec you'd want for a new one ?
quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
...but I see there are places to fix cards for about £80 - £100, if they can be fixed... or maybe I could buy a refurbished card from somewhere
reputable? i.e. not Ebay...
personally I think you'd be better off with a known good working s/h unit - I don't think re-furb ones
are worth much unless they come with some pretty amazing warrantee
Also is it worth even paying £80-100 for attempting a fix - when that much would would get you a S/H GTX970/980/1070/1080 or similar....
I've got my old GTX970 in the loft thats still got plenty life in it for most people - but they are only worth ~£90 buy the looks of things
now
(I've not decided if I want to sell it yet as I might need it for another build... )
Alternatively if you really don't need much power you can buy older designs brand new for fairly cheap
something like a GT730 GT1030 is £75/85 - these are really meant to be fanless cards in office machines that just need a little more than the CPU
alone can give or running multi screen setups
or at the top of your budget - £190-220 takes you into the lower end of modern - RTX3050 / RX6600V2 etc....
(there are a few in-between 100-200 that might be worth a look too - mostly old stock GTX1050 / 1650 etc... )
^^and thats sticking to trusted brands - you can always risk one of the no-name direct from china ones for a fair bit less £
[Edited on 27/2/2024 by mcerd1]
Interesting thanks I'll look into that
Fame is when your old car is plastered all over the internet
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Mr Whippy
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| posted on 27/2/24 at 05:09 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by McLannahan
CEX sell a range of GPU's and they also offer a 2 yr warranty with all their kit they sell too.
It'll be refund or store credit if they don't have another similar model to offer....but it's better than nothing and often longer than
the original warranty offered with the product.
https://uk.webuy.com/search?productLineId=7&productLineName=Graphics%20and%20Capture%20Cards
You know they have a store in Aberdeen, actually I think I have been there and bought a Wii for the kids and games. Thanks for the heads up, iirc they
had a heap of second hand stuff the last time.
Fame is when your old car is plastered all over the internet
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gremlin1234
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| posted on 27/2/24 at 07:40 PM |
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if I remember correctly, a few years ago, many (probably most on the market) second user, high end graphics cards were sold after having had a very
hard life of 'mining' for prime numbers for cryptography and cryptocurrencies
[Edited on 27/2/24 by gremlin1234]
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gingerprince
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| posted on 28/2/24 at 09:03 AM |
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So that's a pretty old crappy card so certainly no point in paying to repair it.
What about the "locost" approach?
If it's dead anyway, try this...
https://www.overclockers.com/the-oven-trick-repairing-your-broken-video-card-with-an-oven/
I did it myself several times with my old laptop graphics card, and it worked!
Basically it's a broad-brush solder re-flow technique, which, if the issue is caused by dry solder joints, may bring it back to life.
It's very "ghetto", but if it's already junk what harm can it do? Success obviously depends on the root cause of your failure.
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coyoteboy
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| posted on 28/2/24 at 09:08 AM |
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Just don't make the mistake I did, by putting it on a baking tray while it heats in the oven. The baking tray did that wonderful diagonal ping
due to thermal expansion, and cleanly removed every single component from the board in one ping 
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Slimy38
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| posted on 28/2/24 at 11:00 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by coyoteboy
Just don't make the mistake I did, by putting it on a baking tray while it heats in the oven. The baking tray did that wonderful diagonal ping
due to thermal expansion, and cleanly removed every single component from the board in one ping
LOL, I've seen sausage rolls jump when that happens, electrical components must have been quite a show!!
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Mr Whippy
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| posted on 28/2/24 at 12:17 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by coyoteboy
Just don't make the mistake I did, by putting it on a baking tray while it heats in the oven. The baking tray did that wonderful diagonal ping
due to thermal expansion, and cleanly removed every single component from the board in one ping
That's one way to get spare parts I suppose. I'll probably give that a go just to see if it comes to life, or what happens. I did spot a
tiny pin connection next to a chip had some corrosion damage. It was so small (approx. 0.2mm) I could not work out how to fix it.
Fame is when your old car is plastered all over the internet
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gremlin1234
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| posted on 28/2/24 at 05:10 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by coyoteboy
Just don't make the mistake I did, by putting it on a baking tray while it heats in the oven. The baking tray did that wonderful diagonal ping
due to thermal expansion, and cleanly removed every single component from the board in one ping
this did make me laugh, I guess it
continued to not work after this experiment.
but I have just retrieved a broken hp laptop from my scrap pile, and will try the oven trick on its main pcb
ok 1 hour later...
the tape on the pcb pulled away many components as it shrank and curled away!
oh well it was scrap before and very definitely scrap now
 
hp
[Edited on 28/2/24 by gremlin1234]
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nick205
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| posted on 29/2/24 at 02:35 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by Slimy38
quote:
Originally posted by coyoteboy
Just don't make the mistake I did, by putting it on a baking tray while it heats in the oven. The baking tray did that wonderful diagonal ping
due to thermal expansion, and cleanly removed every single component from the board in one ping
LOL, I've seen sausage rolls jump when that happens, electrical components must have been quite a show!!
Agreed - with some years experience of PCB design and assembly, I can imagine that emptying the board pretty effectively
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coyoteboy
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| posted on 29/2/24 at 04:13 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
quote:
Originally posted by coyoteboy
Just don't make the mistake I did, by putting it on a baking tray while it heats in the oven. The baking tray did that wonderful diagonal ping
due to thermal expansion, and cleanly removed every single component from the board in one ping
this did make me laugh, I guess it
continued to not work after this experiment.
but I have just retrieved a broken hp laptop from my scrap pile, and will try the oven trick on its main pcb
ok 1 hour later...
the tape on the pcb pulled away many components as it shrank and curled away!
oh well it was scrap before and very definitely scrap now
hp
[Edited on 28/2/24 by gremlin1234]
Ouch!
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Mr Whippy
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| posted on 1/3/24 at 07:22 AM |
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Hi I tried the oven thing last night and all went fine, however sadly the card showed no improvement. Worth a try...
Cheers.
Fame is when your old car is plastered all over the internet
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coyoteboy
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| posted on 1/3/24 at 04:51 PM |
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Bah, frustrating.
There should be some decent options in the above posts though, which won't be crazy money. Blender shouldn't be too hungry, I've used
it fairly successfully on a modern i5 laptop with integrated graphics, but I wasn't animating anything.
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