290x GPU Help

[Endeavor01]

Hello. I recently sold an r9 290x lightning on ebay in fully working condition, but the buyer reported it was broken and sent it back. Long story short, he took off the cooler (probably attempting to watercool it) and broke the card. Ebay takes the side of the buyer always.

So now the card will post and will boot fine into safe mode but with white bars on the screen in various resolutions.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-ijxrb8WA_DX3I5WnZGS1FBVVk?usp=sharing
Whenever I try to boot normally with it, the card's LED will flicker and Ill get a black screen.
So I'm guessing it's VRAM. Any suggestions or information?
I figured if I could get this card in a working state I could give it to one of my friends going through some not so great times.

Thanks, you're all awesome.

Edit: I forgot to mention I did flash the BIOS but that do anything.

 

[maxwellmelon]

did you check the serial number on the card? they prob switched the boards with there known bad board. sadly there's not much you can do as it looks like you got riped off by ebay. did you open a case vs the buyer as even though you get the item back you can say the item was tampered with as you can tell the heat sink was removed.

 

[Endeavor01]

did you check the serial number on the card? they prob switched the boards with there known bad board. sadly there's not much you can do as it looks like you got riped off by ebay. did you open a case vs the buyer as even though you get the item back you can say the item was tampered with as you can tell the heat sink was removed.

Yea I checked the serial number and it's the same, I called ebay and they wont do anything about it. All I could do was report the buyer. So I'm not selling on ebay again, but does anyone have any advice for fixing the card? I'll probably try baking it next.

 

[pecabyte]

damn, i was actually thinking about selling the card on ebay, u saved me.. looking at your pictures it seems hardware problem, i'm guessing warranty is not there. Or you can try and talk to the card company and get any solution for that.