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Sparks from videocard, HELP PLEASE.

Tags:
  • Graphics Cards
  • Overclocking
Last response: in Overclocking
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November 15, 2011 5:55:43 AM

So this is what happened:

I was just overclocking my gtx 560 ti slightly (Core Clock from 822mhz to 900mhz) and I up'd the voltage to 1.1 with msi afterburner. I then ran the newest FurMark and in a minute I then started seeing lit up sparks shining on the right side corner where the power supply plugs into the video card. I took a random gtx 560 ti picture off google just to show you where exactly it is and what it looks like this:



Except in my video card it's closer to the corner, but the black square thingy is almost identical to what it looks like where the sparks came from.

Now this is what's going on so far after that incident,
my computer is working fine, windows boots perfectly and everything is running fine, BUT i'm very very scared about what might or could happen in the future of my pc.

My PC specs are:
CPU: i5 2500k oc'd to 4.3ghz with evo hyper 212
Mobo: Gigabyte z68x
VideoCard: gtx 560 ti
PSU: 850watt corsair
SSD: intel 320 series 120gb

The temperatures are all idle'ing 30-40c on both cpu and gpu.

I also have gpu-z and cpu-z and hwmonitor looking at all the speeds and they're still intact.
I defaulted my gpu back to normal and all looks normal.

The question is, what should I do at this point? I'm quite scared :(  Those sparks make me wanna kill myself. Can't wait to hear from anyone thank you.

More about : sparks videocard

November 15, 2011 6:03:44 AM

I honestly thought maybe I lost a memory chip or something where it would lower the memory count reading on my videocard but it still shows the dedicated video memory of 1024 mb gddr5
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November 15, 2011 6:04:51 AM

May the PC gods bless me, I just built this PC and i'm not trying to break it already. I just bought MW3 and now I have to deal with this. It's heart breaking :( 
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November 15, 2011 6:15:42 AM

oh and there is also a burning smell, but my huge fans just blew it away already.
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November 15, 2011 7:20:56 AM

So i've been doing non-stop research and I came up with this picture I found where the circled part looks like that part I circled on my video card which is called the dual link dvi transmitter?




Does anyone have any input on this? Halp.
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November 15, 2011 7:32:22 AM

ehhh nvm idk.. but if anyone has any input anything can help...
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November 15, 2011 7:47:22 AM

I did even more research and it can be a small black resistor/transistor/mosfet that's burnt out and it may not be lethal? Anyone know anything?
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November 15, 2011 8:06:42 AM

Only 1/4 of it (1 side) of little metal legs are kinda burnt out and on top a little black plastic square of it is a little melted.. does anyone know anything
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a b U Graphics card
November 15, 2011 10:37:38 AM

1.1v is high V. If it runs fine now, it will fail in the future, just like all computer hardware, OC'ed or not. How long? No one knows. Depends on your luck and you are freakishly lucky. Only time can tell.
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November 15, 2011 11:32:19 AM

You are extremely lucky to still have a working graphics card.

The FIRST rule of overclocking is do it incrementally until you reach the point that the card becomes unstable. At that point you crank it back down.

My first attempt would have been to take it from 822 to 830, then 835 and so on. In between jumps you stress it to see if it can handle it. Even if someone else has the exact same card and reaches 900 that is no guarantee yours will make it even past stock clock.

Maybe your card had some extra solder that got too hot, or maybe you burned out something critical. At this point after what happened I would leave it at stock speed.
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November 15, 2011 5:47:24 PM

Okay i'm thinking of just RMA and getting a new card?
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a b U Graphics card
November 15, 2011 8:04:14 PM

good luck with that. overclocking a card and burning it out isn't covered by warranty.

Next time don't take shortcuts.
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a b U Graphics card
a b K Overclocking
November 15, 2011 8:05:23 PM

Geez! RMA it! nordlead, how would they know if it was OC'd?
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November 15, 2011 8:09:46 PM

Maybe your card is rejecting MW3 ;) ...You should RMA this card immediately before you burn your house down. I do not agree with overclocking current graphics cards yourself, mostly cause the trade off of this is 5 possible frames in many games in exchange for possibly damaging you GPU when you are not an expert at overclocking anyways. You would be better off going with a sure bet and just buying 2 560 Ti s if you really want that performance. GPUs are not made with much headroom cause manufactures want stable performance all the time. Shouldn't you have maxed out the clocks on core voltage (with stability) before having to tweak the voltage anyways.
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a b U Graphics card
November 15, 2011 8:37:12 PM

DelroyMonjo said:
Geez! RMA it! nordlead, how would they know if it was OC'd?


They probably won't really know, but when they see the burn marks they can probably reject the RMA.

On top of that, it is called being honest. I know something that most people don't seem to care about any more unless it is the other person not being honest to them. It is part of the reason we are getting really crappy return policies because many people feel like it doesn't matter if they deceive a company or not.
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