Radeon HD 5850 and Zalman aftermarket heatsink

[VoiD87]

I’ve purchased a aftermarket heat sink for my video card. After extreme caution was taken to removing stock heat sink/fan and replacing it with the aftermarket it now does not work. My hard ware specs
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 Rev 1.0 bios version F8
GPU: Gigabyte Radeon HD 5850 using the latest catalyst drivers and stock bios
Back up GPU in use now: EVGA nvidia GeForce 8400 GS
CPU: i7-860
PSU: 850w thermaltake (black widow I think)
Aftermarket VGA heatsink: ZALMAN VF3000A

With the 5850 installed I powered on the pc, my monitor stayed black and the light on the monitor was flashing. There is a debug led on my mobo with 2 numbers. This is what the manual says:
“1. If Early_Init_Onboard_Generator is not defined Onboard clock generator initialization. Disable respective clock resource to empty PCI & DIMM slots
2. Init onboard PWM
3. Init onboard H/W monitor devices”

I at first I thought maybe the fan header on the card’s pcb had to have something connected to it so I replaced the zalman with stock heat sink and plugged stock fan back in to the card but the same thing happened.

My back up 8400 works fine. i have submitted a ticket to gigabyte explaining the problem and acknowledging that I have voided the warrantee and asked if there are any other options left to me.

Any thought’s anyone has on the matter is appreciated.

 

[wa1]

Try re-seat the zalman cooler, it could be not properly attached, and make sure the thermal paste is already applied...

 

[VoiD87]

so I replaced the zalman with stock heat sink and plugged stock fan back in to the card but the same thing happened.

 

[COLGeek]

If your backup GPU is working and your 5850 is not, I suspect you damaged the 5850 during the process of removing the OEM HSF and replacing with the Zalman. I am sure you were very careful, but that is one of the risks of performing such an upgrade.

Do you, by chance, have another system you can install the 5850 in to see what it does there?