Numbers...Everywhere. Dead GPU?

pipinhot2

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My friend needs help i sold him my old pc for $400 bucks, 2 weeks later it died...

Specs
E8500
9800GTX+
P5Q Pro
4GB Ram
couple HDD
650W PSU

When i went to inspect, whenever he booted it up numbers would flood the desktop. like the matrix no joke.
Sometimes it would boot clean, then freeze and crash 10 minutes later, other times it booted an wasn't detecting the video card, and was stuck in 1280x720, or some dodgy res. I tried both slots on the mobo, both came back with the same result.

What is the conclusion, or a possible solution?
 
sounds like a video card that on it way out but if you were inside was the ram and other cards and the heat sink seated fine??
sometime when you move a pc you can rattle something lose. if you reseated ram and cpu/heat sink then i would find a replacement video card..
 

pipinhot2

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Well my mate said he pulled out the RAM and CPU, and even reconnected a lot off the cables and drives inside the case. and it still started up all wonky. so he has gone out and bought a sapphire HD 6850 for $155, should be here by Friday or Monday.

I do hope its the card that;s broken, i hate buying stuff to find out i could have fixed it at the start.
 

pipinhot2

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The new card arrived, installed worked for two hours. no signal to the screen.

We tried both PCI-e Sockets, both hdmi and DVI cables and two different screens 42" and 24".

I have no clue whats wrong all components are fine Motherboard lights are fine. no reboots no beeps. No display....??????

We basically think we need to get a new kit Ram, CPU and mobo, looking for a low end i5 kit.
 

DM186

Splendid
Ok you said your friend took out the CPU. Did you reseat it with new thermal paste? Anytime you take out your CPU you will have to use thermal paste that makes a solid bond for your heatsink.

If you did not do that then it would cause a massive heat issue and you could have burned up your CPU. But if you did use the thermal paste then there would be 2-3 things to look at.

What is the brand name of your PSU?
Are you checking your temps?
Have you done a memory test on your RAM?

Please get back to the questions I posted and we will take it from here.
 
Like DM186, it sounds like a PSU issue more than anything. When you built the computer (I'm assuming you built it yourself) I would think you built it about 4 or 5 years ago based on the age of the parts. The 9800GTX is ancient (but still super awesome) and the E8500 is quite old as well. The power supply may be on it's way out. What brand is it?
 

pipinhot2

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We did reapply thermal paste, it was some leftover copper stuff from a xigmateck heatsink.

ITS a 4 year old Cooler master 650W PSU (IMO it worked flawlessly)
well since we cant get any visual on the screen we cant get virtual numbers, and we haven't got tempgun.
Again if we had a display i would go through bios and run tests. And i cant pull the ram out and put it in my pc as im running DDR3 and he's on DDR2

And yeah i was putting this together during the GTX 260 release, and the Crysis QQ. still the 9800 was a very VERY strong card, sad to see it go.
 

DM186

Splendid
That PSU is on the list of do not buy. So try this all PSU's can inter change with each other so why don't you take your PSU out of the rig you know works just fine and put it in the rig that doesn't.

I know it is a lot of work but it will be worth it in the long run. You can as well test the new card in the rig that hasn't any problems so if some how it went bad. If it isn't the PSU and your GPU.

Then we know those aren't the problem. Then we start look at the RAM and then the HDD and finally the MOBO. Oh one more thing have you pop out the CMOS it looks like a round silver coin.

You pop it out and that will reset your CMOS. If that battery goes dead you will have problems like you are stating. So look into that as well then get back to us.
 

pipinhot2

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Ok i can check the PSU and the GPU in a working computer.

But Ram and a HDD does not stop a computer from sending signal to a screen.
A computer can boot without either of the 2 and still get into the bios, but his computer just doesn't show anything.

and we did pop the battery out and put it back in 10 minutes later
 

DM186

Splendid
They were just examples of the process of trubleshooting and ruling out one item after another. When you check that out then let me know what has happened. Does he have a integrated GPU?

Probably not do to the fact you built the rig. But I had to ask.
 

pipinhot2

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noo, but he has a spare broken pc lying around, it is an amd system but has integrated video and is running ddr2, so i could start swapping things around to get a working config
 

DM186

Splendid
That is good I wish you good luck on this and let me know what you have found out in the next couple of days. I am on here in the earlier evenings just about everyday. I will know when you have posted.

Good luck on using that and I hope it will help.