ATI Sapphire 4870 1GB boot failure

[griffinous]

Hi everyone,

This is the first time that I have posted on a forum to help with an issue, I hope that you can help.

I built a computer roughly 3 months ago. Specifications :-

Intel i7 930 @ 4.2ghz with Thermaltake Frio heatsink
8gb DDR3
ATI Sapphire 4870 1GB GDDR5 running 2 HP 23" displays
Asus Rampage II motherboard

It's runs 24/7 except for the occasional restart for updates ect.

A couple of days ago, I walked into my office, turned my monitors on and they showed no signal. The PC was humming as usual. So I restarted the machine. The graphics card fan screamed at me and didn't stop, the PC beeped one long and then 3 short beeps. I then removed the graphics card and replaced it with a Nvidia 7800gtx which proceeded to work fine, the computer functioned properly.
After googling the issue, I found that it could be linked to insufficient power. To test this, I placed the graphics card back in my machine, but connected a secondary PSU to just the graphics card so it had it's own power supply. Switched both the PC and the secondary PSU on, and the card is still not functioning.

FYI, the card has 3 status LEDs. 1 and 3 are permanantly lit and 2 isnt.


Is it buggered? Or have I missed something somewhere?

 

[nforce4max]

To put it simple you got a brick and that you need to either RMA or purchase a new card.

 

[Frizzo]

sounds like the beeps of death to me. ie. the card is dead. and what specific power supplies are these?

 

[griffinous]

ToughPower 1000w and the backup is a 700w Atrix peice of crap BUT I know that it can power this card because I used it originally. The power definatly isn't the issue, the card had a PSU all to itself.

So it is bricked But Why? She wasn't even overclocked!

 

[nforce4max]

It doesn't matter that if you didn't because these higher end cards typically have parts that are very poorly cooled on top of other problems. Power vrm is likely damaged on your card or one of the vram modules don't respond to the gpu. Seeing that one light is on tells you that the card is partially alive but it won't be functional enough to use at all. So you have two options.

 

[griffinous]

Which are?

 

[griffinous]

Oh I see. I think I'll ebay it for parts

 

[Frizzo]

which heatsink does it have? can you paste a link ?

 

[The_King]

Oh I see. I think I'll ebay it for parts

You can try baking it that worked for my 8800 gtx and 8800 gt

 

[nforce4max]

Nividia cards of that era and before used a lead tin alloy while ATI for some time have been using a higher quality of bonding which raises their production costs but uses a silver tin alloy. It will take higher temps to bake the card to melt out the micro fractures.