I recently gave my friend a couple-year-old graphics card, and several difficulties emerged when he tried to boot it up. On the first try, he said there was a BIOS message of some sort saying that the power supply PCIe cable needed to be plugged in (even though it was) and, on the second try, the GeForce GTX light on the graphics card lit up for a second before a snapping sound and the entire computer abruptly shutting down. Now, it's not been able to boot whatsoever with the power supply refusing to even turn on once connected to the motherboard. I've used a power supply tester on the PSU to test if it's even operational still, and it did turn on in that scenario.
I've had two ideas as to the cause of this, but I'm not sure what definitively it is or what should be done to troubleshoot. The potential causes are as follows:
I've had two ideas as to the cause of this, but I'm not sure what definitively it is or what should be done to troubleshoot. The potential causes are as follows:
- The friend in question lost his PCIe cable that came with his PSU beforehand, so I lent him mine. It had entirely slipped my mind that his PSU was a much different model to mine (his: Corsair CX 550M, mine: EVGA G2 850W) and I remembered the risks of mixing and matching PSU and cable brands. I would think, however, that this would fry the power supply if anything, so it confuses me that it still runs with the tester.
- Around a day before I gave him the graphics card, a separate friend actually dropped the card from roughly waist height onto carpet, landing mainly on the metal plate with display ports. The only visible damage was the slots that slide in to the left of the motherboard being slightly bent, but gentle finagling with a tweezer appeared to straighten out the plate. Regardless, I didn't know if it would be possible that the card had damage under the surface and somehow fried any other components.