Can a possibly damaged graphics card damage the rest of my PC?

Torran

Honorable
Apr 6, 2013
8
0
10,510
I am going to be buying a brand new PC soon as I'm convinced there's something wrong with my old one that keeps breaking everything i put in it. However, I cannot afford a new graphics card so I have settled on using my old one.

At first I thought it was damaged, and after putting it in a different PC, discovered this was not the case but I am worried that in the process of swapping the graphics card around that I may have actually damaged it this time.

So I was wondering, is there any way the graphics card, if damaged, could damage the rest of my new PC? It has no visual damage, and unless I really messed it up, has no noticeable damage when being used. But paranoid me keeps thinking that there is just a small chance it may be damaged.

What I believe was the cause of me thinking it was damaged in the first place was a dodgy motherboard.
It's currently sitting in a box after being moved from main pc to backup pc to main pc and then box.

Thanks
 

pyr0_m4n

Honorable
Feb 4, 2013
950
0
11,360
Define damaged. If the card has a short, it could cause a surge that could damage the PCIe slot and the motherboard. If you literally damaged it (broke a capacitor or something else severe) it could overheat, spark, or possible cause a fire. That's very rare though. Unless you smacked the thing so hard the heatsink separated from the board, I doubt it would do that. However, the surge issue could still happen.
 
So. your card may have been damaged by a faulty motherboard.
The way it would have been damaged is probably by a surge from the mobo.
It is unlikely that a card damaged by a mobo surge would damage a different mobo, the card would just not work, the new mobo should be safe.
What was your question?