3 guesses at what doesn’t work.
And all three of them are “graphics card”
Yeah. Oh… I’m pleased as punch. Because sending back a dead card and waiting another week to get another one is just what I wanted.
As I went to install it, I noticed the fan and heatsink were a little “wiggly”. I didn’t think anything of it, most things have a little give in them. So, the card installs fine, the drivers load up, everything is cool. I fire up Battlefield… blank screen with music running before the system hangs. Reboot. It gets to the windows logon on screen. I logon and *bam*, black screen. Ok, must be a driver problem. I boot in safe mode, reinstall old drivers. Nothing. I do this five or six times. Nothing. Then I start thinking it’s lack of power. I have a 400W (it only needs 350W) but I start unplugging everything else. Nothing. Then I take the card out and look at it…. the heatsink and fan AREN’T ATTACHED to the GPU! They’re just kind of hanging there. I’m surprised there wasn’t smoke. They’re loose, floppy, unattached. The sticky part of the thermal pad had obviously become unsticky and wasn’t holding the heatsink/fan on, and when you turned it upside down, gravity was pulling the fan away from the chip.
I considered squirting some Arctic Silver in there, but you know what, this really isn’t something I should have to waste good paste on. That and they’d think I modded it or something if I didn’t work and I tried to return it.
So, on Monday, back it goes. And I’ll be waiting for a replacement.
*sigh*
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