Need answer ASAP!

define break

I don't know exactly how it "broke." A friend had my computer for a year, and he told me that a month ago he found out that the CPU had been overclocked (this is 11 months after he first started using it) and this resulted in the GPU cooling fan to break. He said it broke because it was trying to compensate for the extra heat. Does he speak the truth? I am inclined to think that he overclocked it, because I have had this computer for three years prior to him using it. Suddenly and magically it becomes overclocked and breaks my GPU cooling fan???...this seems sketch to me. But what do I know..this is why I am asking.

In a word:

NO.


Breaking a GPU when overclocking your CPU is like breaking your breaking your arm because you ate too much turkey and puked. :roll:


The ONLY thing I can think of that even might remotely be related is that your buddy messed with the PCI-e BUS or volts in BIOS. And that's a stretch.

More than likely your buddy tried to be some overclocking hero, decided to OC your GPU and pooched it. GPUs are FAR more sensitive to injury on overclocking that CPUs. You mess up a GPU and your card could have permanent artifacting, etc. You overdo a CPU and your comp shuts down, you clear CMOS, and start again, no love lost.

Any "extra heat" generated by a CPU overclock would be handled by the CPU heatsink. And in order for a GPU fan, set to Auto to "overcompensate" for the ambient waste heat generated by a CPU heatsink, your CPU would long since have burnt up by exceeding its limit ALOT. The case would practically have to be a furnace for that to happen.

Sounds like either your buddy is a complete noob and broke something and won't fess up, or he tried to be an expert and got caught with his hand in the cookie jar  

Is there a way for me to check to see if my CPU or GPU have been overclocked? The cpu is AMD Athlon 64 3200 and the GPU is nvidia geforce fx 5900.

Is that what the fuss is all about? nevermind the investigation, just go buy a 50$ card, it'll probably outperform the FX 5900

plug another video card into the system, if it starts up then your CPU is fine.

plug the supposedly broken card into another system, if it works then the card is fine.

If both test fine put them back together, then reset the CMOS and it should be fine, if it doesnt work..... well you have another problem

I just want to know whether or not I can call him on his lies. He told me the overclocked CPU resulted in the GPU cooling unit to break. We have established that that was a lie. Now I just wanted to know if I could get some evidence. Maybe a way to check the system to see if it still is overclocked or what. I know the system is old and needs parts replaced. I just want to call him on it thats all.

Well, if we're gonna split hairs here, then let's truly split hairs:

Saying the GPU fan broke from a CPU overclock is incorrect. It's not necessarily a lie. Like I said, maybe your buddy is a complete noob and simply doesn't know better. That is simply ignorance, he can't be blamed for not knowing and offering a foolish theory.

However, if your buddy knows a fair bit about computers, then it may be a lie, because he tried to overclock the GPU and broke something.




NOW, let me give you a pearl of wisdom that has nothing to do with computers. I'm not your father, so I'm not gonna lecture you. But I will try to teach you something very valuable right now:

$H!T happens and people make mistakes. And people get embarassed. And people get ashamed. And people lie. It happens, we're ALL HUMAN. Have you never made a mistake or done something foolish? I SURE HAVE. So, the question you need to ask, is whether your friendship is worth $50 (the price of a vid card)? That's the real story here. Can you talk to your friend without blowing a gasket, and get him to tell the truth, regardless of whether he broke it or not? Are you willing to look past something that may or may not have happened and decide that you'll both learn from this and will that make your friendship even stronger?

Sorry to sound preachy or something, but trust me kid, $50 ain't worth it. There's far bigger problems to come in your life, with far more than $50 at stake. Trust me. Been there, done that MANY TIMES.

So HOW you approach this and what you DO is far more important that the trivial details. Remember that. Time will pass, circumstances will change, dates will differ, people will vary, but your attitude and how you move forward in life will make the difference. Not a vid card. Remember that.  


[/end speech]
8)

Thank you for the help

Sound like the fan on the vid card shit the bed and it overheated and fried. Not uncommon. Fans die.

Hes trying to fuck you over

Your friend is being a tool & trying to lay the blame on you. If you didn't have it overclocked during the 1st 3 years & then sold it to him it didn't magically overclock itself. Besides the CPU would have fried the system long before the case got so hot as to break the gpu fan. A consideration is that if the vid card was 4 years old the fan may have dies naturally or been over clogged with dust & crap that it stopped working & burnt up. Old parts do break after a while

I'm inclined to go with skyguy here.

Like OCnewb said its not uncommon for a fan to give out. It could be that is simply what happened. If it fried the GPU in the process then your friend might be "innocent" yet be worried that you'd be upset with him since it blew while he had it.

In other words its not pointing to him lying to cover something he did necessarily. It might be for all we know. He could also just feel bad, not know exactly what happened and just not want you to be mad at him when he possibly did nothing wrong to your system.

Just ask him if he tweaked anything at all and see what he says. If you're really good friends he'll confess if he thinks there will be no backlash(assuming he was lying to begin with).

I'd hate for you to go for the throat on this just because everyone is saying hes trying to mess you over when it could have simply been a fan dying and not his fault. Investigate further, find the truth and proceed from there.

Oh btw, get a better card if at all possible.......hehe.

this 'friend' isn't you is it?  

Yes. You can call him on it. Heck, give me his number and I'll call him on it!

As far as evidence goes, the best way to tell if his system is oc'd is to either 1) check the BIOS and settings, or 2) get CPU-Z and see what it tell you.

Good luck!

I agree with Skyguy, for what it's worth. The friendship is more important than the money. Besides, it's an excuse to upgrade!

Friendship would be worth it, but this friend stole the harddrive out of my laptop, sold my other friends xbox controlers to Blockbuster and told them his dog ate them. Stole a stack of my DVD-Rs. On the plus side...I do get to upgrade.

True friends own up to BS. I can call a friend on his bs before he even starts it easy. Sounds like you know your friend has a problem stealing and lying. If whatever he brings to the relationship is worth it then just tell him he is fos and move on. No need to really get into it when you know exactly what you are dealing with. Being heated over stuff & debating with an idiot is futile & only wears You down. It isn't worth it...nothing is. Being happy is what matters.

There are programs that can change fan speed, volts to your cpu & gpu. However, oc a cpu obviously does not break a gpu fan. Gpu fans do die & they are easy to replace but you will be happier just getting a new card anyways so it isn't really worth it.

Goodluck  

You should tease him and say ok Let me oc your GPU and see if your CPU fan breaks lol.

No way can a OC'ed processor harm a GPU fan, the monitoring system for the PCI or Agp are seperate from the CPU diode. The Diode for the CPU is under the cpu in the socket. The GPU has its own sensor for temps and the speed for the fan is attached to the power plug of the video card to the fan, The video card reads its data from the data in the GPU bios when the temps of the video card reaches its limits the volts are reduced to protect the GPU and the fan stays full untill the GPU cools to the safe limits.
He is a lier, and like said feels bad he damaged your card or fan

Over the past several years I've seen had several cooling fans go out on cheap nvidia cards I've purchased. This occurred on machines that weren't overclocked. It just happens, especially if you're buying cards with cheap coolers and leaving them running all the time.

It is possible that an overclock resulted in higher ambient temperatures, and that those temperatures contributed to a more timely demise of the fan... but who knows. Fans go bad, regardless.

The guy had the thing for a year. If he's trying to blame you for simple equipment failure he sounds like a bit of an a**.