Dead graphics card?

[esg900]

Hello folks.

A couple of nights ago I had an unfortunate mishap, where I dropped some water into my desktop tower. Some water went into the power supply, touched the graphics card's top, as it's upside down in the case, the CPU heatsink, and some other parts. However, the computer was fortunately turned off and unplugged at the time. However, upon turning the computer on after letting it dry for 3 days, with a fan pointed at it, the graphics card seems to be toast. Upon boot up, the screen has lines, little boxes that look like the pictures you scan with your phone, and is mostly obscured. It also doesn't get beyond bios before becoming entirely unreadable. I had a gtx 9600 lying around, with the card in question being a gtx 260, and put that into my computer. No problems presented with that.

Basically, I'm pretty sure the gfx card is toast, but I'm wondering if there's a chance the PSU could have something to do with it, before I'm going to try to buy another card. Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

 

[exeedorbit]

If you switched your GPU, and it solved the problem, then the problem was most likely attributed to the GPU. A power supply has no effect on your display.

 

[inzone]

Just the fact that it started even with the bad card in it shows that the psu is ok and when you put the other video card in it ran ok so there is nothing wrong with the psu.

 

[Kuytre]

Like the others have said, it's definitely the GPU if the backup GPU worked perfectly.

 

[kajabla]

The PSU can cause problems with graphics by not supplying enough power to the GPU, but here I'd say the graphics card's definitely the problem.
Sadly, you may have fried the card by turning it on without letting it dry sufficiently. I've had iPods that partially revived weeks after going through the wash.
Leave the 260 alone for another week and then try it again. If you get the same kind of problem, go get a new card.

 

[esg900]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, sadly it's probably the GPU dead as I thought, but just wanted to make sure my other avenues were covered. It seemed pretty dry, as I had taken it out with another fan pointed at it while it was upside-down, but I'll let it dry some more just in case.

 

[esg900]

Best answer selected by esg900.