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Graphics card runs but gives no signal to Monitor!

Tags:
  • Water Cooling
  • Graphics Cards
  • Monitors
  • Sapphire
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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September 18, 2014 10:26:50 PM

Hey everyone,

this isn't really as urgent as some of the other posts in the forum, this is more of a discussion and things I can learn from the more experienced people on this site, but I have a few questions in regards to installing a closed loop liquid cooling to my graphics card.

So I had this Sapphire Radeon HD 7870, and I've decided to liquid cool it using the NZXT Kraken G10 Graphics card liquid cooling bracket with the Corsair H90i liquid cooler.

Here are my specs before I continue (I know I didn't have to list everything, but I did so anyways to help factor in the accuracy of how much power is being consumed):

CPU: AMD X8 FX-8320 (125W) Eight-Core Socket AM3+, 3.5GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 Socket AM3+ AMD 970+SB950 Chipset
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2133MHz CL10 Dual Channel Kit (x2; so total 4)
SSD: Intel 530 Series 120GB 2.5" SATA3 6Gb/s Solid State Drive
HD: WD Blue 500GB and a Seagete 1 TB
Graphics Card: Sapphire (11199-19-20G) Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB GDDR5
CD/DVD: LG (GH24NSB0) Internal 24x DVD-Writer
PSU: Thermaltake TR2 700W
CPU Cooling: Corsair H110i Liquid Cooling
GPU Cooling: Corsair H90i Liquid Cooling

The Installation
So how I installed the liquid cooling for my graphics card is first unscrewing the 4 screws at the back and then unplugging the cord of the GPU fans to the card (which came off quite easily), then I removed the thermalpaste left on the GPU chip. After that I reapplied the thermal paste and carefully screwed on the bracket from the back of the GPU to the front where the Kraken G10 bracket with the liquid cooling plate would touch the GPU chip.

The Results
Now here's the thing, for the first 10-15 mins, the computer worked fine, I mean the temperatures were sitting around 20's to low 30 degrees Celsius. Then bam, the monitor losses signal, however, when I opened the side of my computer case the graphics card fans are still running and it looked like the GPU was still working. So after several attempts to restart the computer to no avail in getting the graphics card to give signal to the monitor, I started to uninstall the liquid cooler and re install the original graphics cards fan. Then suddenly the monitor started getting signal again but this time after I started to run a game it stopped receiving signal, and that was the last time the graphics card ever gave signal to a monitor.

The Questions
So here are my questions, why did the graphics card stop giving signal to the monitor? Did removing the stock fans ruin any components? Theoretically everything should have worked fine when I was handling it very precisely and gently, so what difference does it make if I switch the stock fans with liquid cooling? Isn't it only the small silver GPU chip that needed to be cooled? Or do the other black chips around the GPU also needed cooling? If so how come the stock fans only had the copper plate for the GPU chip and no other metal pieces touched any other part of the graphics card? How likely is it that my graphics card decided to just not work for that precise moment? Is is possible that one of my graphics card capacitors went bad? Was it because I did not have enough power to support two liquid coolers? Does this only happen to Sapphire products (are they really sensitive to these kinds of stuff)?

More about : graphics card runs signal monitor

a c 188 U Graphics card
a c 115 C Monitor
September 19, 2014 6:10:03 AM

Why there is no signal, is pretty clear, the card is dead. I'd test it in a second system just to be sure. You should only need to cool the main video chip. Sapphire cards are fine, they are as reliable as any other brand. Since this all happened after you started playing around with modifying the card, it's likely whatever you did damaged it, even if you were carefull. It's impossible to know for sure what happened without the manufacturer looking at the components and doing an analasys. Anthing anyone on a forum can suggest are just guesses same as yours.
September 19, 2014 6:29:39 AM

hang-the-9 said:
Why there is no signal, is pretty clear, the card is dead. I'd test it in a second system just to be sure. You should only need to cool the main video chip. Sapphire cards are fine, they are as reliable as any other brand. Since this all happened after you started playing around with modifying the card, it's likely whatever you did damaged it, even if you were carefull. It's impossible to know for sure what happened without the manufacturer looking at the components and doing an analasys. Anthing anyone on a forum can suggest are just guesses same as yours.


I don't know if the fans on the graphics card is a reliable indicator if the graphics card itself actually still runs but it's just that it gives no signal to the monitor.

Hmm, for future, reference, what should I watch out for when installing liquid cooling to the graphics card?

P.S I took it to a computer shop and they tested it and confirmed that there was an error in the graphics card.
a c 188 U Graphics card
a c 115 C Monitor
September 22, 2014 5:54:38 AM

5trawberrymilk said:
hang-the-9 said:
Why there is no signal, is pretty clear, the card is dead. I'd test it in a second system just to be sure. You should only need to cool the main video chip. Sapphire cards are fine, they are as reliable as any other brand. Since this all happened after you started playing around with modifying the card, it's likely whatever you did damaged it, even if you were carefull. It's impossible to know for sure what happened without the manufacturer looking at the components and doing an analasys. Anthing anyone on a forum can suggest are just guesses same as yours.


I don't know if the fans on the graphics card is a reliable indicator if the graphics card itself actually still runs but it's just that it gives no signal to the monitor.

Hmm, for future, reference, what should I watch out for when installing liquid cooling to the graphics card?

P.S I took it to a computer shop and they tested it and confirmed that there was an error in the graphics card.


From how you described what you did, you should have been fine, but who knows what happened. Maybe you had it on not quite right and burned out the chip or you knicked a trace on the board, or maybe it just decided to go bad unrelated to what you did (that's a bit smaller chance but still possible)>
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