How to diagnose if my GPU is fried

theaznguylol

Distinguished
Jul 20, 2011
8
0
18,510
Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I've worked with computers, so forgive me for anything that may be incorrect. I'm currently very far away from my desktop in question, but I want to ask you, the community, about an issue that I was trying to diagnose with my graphics card before I left for college.

I started off with a XFX Radeon 6850. It was a pretty sweet card, but unfortunately the fan died. It was a few years after I purchased it, so a warranty was out of the question. As a naive teenager who was obsessed with cooling, this practically warranted a purchase of an aftermarket GPU cooler - something that I, at the time, was looking very deeply into, though I was always scared of "frying my card" or something along those lines.

I picked up an ARCTIC Accelero S1 VGA cooler, which was basically a giant heatsink, and got it onto my card. I put a few 120 mm fans on it for super cooling power, and although I had to support the card using zip-ties so that it wouldn't break off from it's PCIE slot due to its sheer weight, it was pretty awesome.

the issue
I left for college, and came back around 8 months later. I tried to start up my machine with the aftermarket GPU, and although everything seemed to be running pretty well, there was no startup screen on my monitor - my monitor was just black.

I dropped in another graphics card, and somewhat unfortunately, I got a picture going on my screen. I repeated this inserting/removing process of the two graphics cards, ensuring that I didn't, for some reason, miss something, such as inserting some power cables or something. Still no picture from the 6850.




tl;dr
I turned on my computer that hasn't been used in several months. The XFX 6850 (out of warranty) with aftermarket cooling didn't seem to send a video signal to monitor, another card did. What do I do next? I'd rather not scrap the card, and if I can fix it somehow, then that'd be great.
 

StirB

Reputable
Jul 16, 2014
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4,660
Are you sure no one used or touched your computer while you were gone. Parts don't die from sitting around, maybe your power supply could have died and can't supply enough to support the video card.

Try the card in another pc you know can handle the card. If it works then you know it's not the card. If it doesn't then the card is toast. You can try some driver troubleshooting but other then that nothing I can think of.
 

theaznguylol

Distinguished
Jul 20, 2011
8
0
18,510


The PSU should be way more than enough to power the card, considering it's relatively new (some OCZ 750 watt). Also, was unsure if it was fried due to whatever I did in applying the aftermarket cooler.

Is there any way to test if the card itself is fried rather than the rig? Is there anything I could do if the card is toast, considering its out of warranty? I'm assuming I would need superior knowledge of the chips and whatnot on the card in order to diagnose exactly what went wrong