Graphics card dead? How to fix?

George002000

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Jun 28, 2014
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Hello Tomshardware, I've been having problems with my two Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X's, I think I've killed my two card. I attempted to install a Kraken G10 onto my two cards, All was going well until I plugged them back into my PC. While installing these I was being extra careful and making sure I didn't hit anything (I also installed VRM heatsinks) I followed a YouTube video on how to install these to make sure I did it correctly. I plugged these two cards back into my PC with the Kraken G10's installed onto them and all fans started spinning but my cards didn't display anything.

I then went onto taking these two Kraken G10's off my two cards and installed the default fan onto them, the same thing happened again, all the fans span and no display was shown.

I then went onto installing these cards onto my secondary PC and they didn't work, I then went onto contacting the company I purchased these cards from and they told me they can't do anything about it as I've had the cards for longer then 3 months and I opened them. I was woundering if there's something I maybe could have hit while installing the Kraken G10's which I could maybe repair and fix these two cards as I would hate to lose all this money.

Thanks so much for your help, it means ALOT too me, George.
 
Depending what your VRM cooler was held on with, it may have been conductive. Please check for residue near the VRM area.

The idea of all in one coolers on a video card work well(I have one on my 670), but it takes lots of care. Test each card to see if at least one still works.

 

George002000

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Jun 28, 2014
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Hello Nukemaster, I don't really understand what you mean by reside near the VRM area. So I've taken some pictures of this card their listed bellow:
http://gyazo.com/6a19938d76d1f2afcb0a912ce28ce964
http://gyazo.com/eca500526fee6bf2c4a220d9c6155762
http://gyazo.com/de45d0c40461c2a4d5a15c1844b1bdf8
http://gyazo.com/239ff9a2372bb4818aed5dc3ea33fb7b

Thanks for your reply!
 
Residue by the VRM area would have been left over thermal paste on the transistors(looks clean in the images.).

To the best of what I can see it looks to be clean and good.

The VRM area is that section includes those boxes(coils) to the right side of the image. The small transistors need cooling for sure.

It is hard to see what the core looks like from the images. It is surprising that 2 cards have been damaged in this way. You do not need to tighten all in one coolers too much for video card use.
 

glerox

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Jun 12, 2016
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I have had the same problem... I installed the kraken G10 very carefully on a brand new gtx 1080 and now the gpu is dead, it's not even recognized in device manager...
Waiting for RMA...
I have no idea what I did wrong... Maybe the chip was already damaged