7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

[jfcarbel]

I have a non-functioning XFX 7900GS graphics card. All the caps on it are true polymer (I believe either Chemicon on Sanyo).

But when the card failed it begin to display an odd picture with pink dots and green lines, which then progressed to something unreadable, and then no video whatsoever.

Could this be bad caps? Do polymers of quality brands like Chemicon and Sanyo go bad?

These are all SMT so not sure how easy it would be for me to use a regular solder station to redo these since I hear the way to do this is normally another method using solder paste and a hot gun. But I am thinking the board is already dead so what do I have to lose except for about $11 in caps. This card does not provide a through hole option for these caps and only has the SMT contacts.

Here is a picture of what the card looks like and its caps. Mine is very similar but on mine none of the caps are purple colored and are all light blue.



The 2 blue pictured here are A604,180,16V
4 are A779,1200,4V
2 are A75E,330,16V

I wonder if the purple ones pictured on this board are different brand then my blue ones. However, in zooming in on the picture I cannot make out there model numbers but I do see they are same uF and V.

Too bad there is not a way to test these, so I could figure out just to replace the bad ones.

[yyonline]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

The blue "A" caps are probably united chemicon polymers and VERY unlikely to fail. If you want to post a picture of your board, I can confirm for sure. Your symptoms sound like a GPU or video memory failure.

[jfcarbel]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Looks like other boards similar to mine use the Sanyo for the 1200 and 330.

I have identified the purple 1200 ones as:
Sanyo OS-CON SVP series 4SVP1200M (ESR 12, ripple 5440)

I would think it would be just as unlikely for a GPU or memory to fail. I have read that polymer caps can fail with some brands and series more likely then others especially in high heat situations that are likely when near a GPU.

Wow, that's bizarre, just went to Chemi-con website and their headquarters is like the next town over from me.
How can you tell what series the Chemi-con are from as it seems none of the markings on the cap seem to match their charts for the series?

[PCBONEZ]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

The "A" makes them PSA series. - PS"A"
.
More likely you have a defective nVidia chip.
.

[jfcarbel]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Here is closer image of the caps:

[jfcarbel]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

The "A" makes them PSA series. - PS"A"
.
More likely you have a defective nVidia chip.
.

According to the chart I am looking at the PSA are radial lead type. These are SMT ones, so did you maybe mean to say "PXA" series.

[mockingbird]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Reflow the card. It's not the caps. The GPU is inherently defective, and not only that, the BGA soldering may have fractures.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

I dunno. Maybe. [Too lazy to look right now.]
Either way I've never seen a single Chemicon Polymer go bad.
.
But XFX 7900GS has LOADS of issues as does nVidia about that vintage. [Use google.]

[yyonline]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Those are definitely UCC PXA polymer caps. I have never seen one fail either.

XFX has a lifetime warranty on many of their cards. I'd check if the card is still under warranty.

[jfcarbel]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Reflow the card. It's not the caps. The GPU is inherently defective, and not only that, the BGA soldering may have fractures.

Reflow?

What do you mean by the "GPU is inherently defective"?

I see many issues on google with laptop versions of the 7900 series nvidia, but not many related to PCI-E cards.

[jfcarbel]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Those are definitely UCC PXA polymer caps.

XFX has a lifetime warranty on many of their cards. I'd check if the card is still under warranty.

Thanks.

Unfortunately, I did not realize the card must be registered within 30 days to get the lifetime warranty and XFX is denying warranty on the card.

Luckily on the 8600GT XFX that went bad on me due to bursted caps, I was able to bring it back to life by recapping it. And will be completely recapped of all the cheap FZs once I order the 470uF Rubycon caps from here.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Yeah a lifetime warranty is such a good deal when you go through 4 or 5 to get one that works.
.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/247490-33-product

[yyonline]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Thanks.

Unfortunately, I did not realize the card must be registered within 30 days to get the lifetime warranty and XFX is denying warranty on the card.

Hmm, you may want to do a quick search on the forum for XFX. If I recall, someone here had some sort of inside connection that might be able to assist you with warranty... Then again, I could be remembering incorrectly.

[mockingbird]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Unfortunately, I did not realize the card must be registered within 30 days to get the lifetime warranty and XFX is denying warranty on the card.

XFX is a scumbag company with lots of greasy bastards. I refuse to even look at their stuff.

What I mean by inherently defective is that the chips were produced without an internal mechanism that allowed the transfer of heat from the lithography to the top of the die. I'm not exactly sure of the specific details, but these chips just fail.

Even if you reflow it, and it works, there's no guarantee for how long.

[severach]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

Some redpill reading to get you started.

Inquirer: All Nvidia G84 and G86s are bad
Inquirer: Why Nvidia's chips are defective

[mockingbird]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

I'm surprised the Inquirer covered this. For a site that claimed to be "The site that bites the hand that feeds it", they sure are whores for the computer hardware industry.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

I'm not surprised at all. The Inquirer posts a ton of hardware stuff, half of which they make up. They, along with Fudzilla, are well known in the computer world as sites which should be always taken with a grain of salt.

[mockingbird]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

The three part series on the defective G84 and G86 was spot on though. You should read it.

I used to check their site daily in the golden years '98, '99 but today was the first time I have been to their site in years.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

I'm not surprised at all. The Inquirer posts a ton of hardware stuff, half of which they make up. They, along with Fudzilla, are well known in the computer world as sites which should be always taken with a grain of salt.

You're confused.
Inquirer and National Enquirer are not one in the same.
.

[PincushionMan]

Re: 7900GS card with bad polymer caps?

I have a non-functioning XFX 7900GS graphics card. All the caps on it are true polymer (I believe either Chemicon on Sanyo).

But when the card failed it begin to display an odd picture with pink dots and green lines, which then progressed to something unreadable, and then no video whatsoever.

Not to discourage you too badly, but dots/lines are an indication of memory failure, at least when I've had it happen to me in the past. This happened to my Orchid Righteous 3D card when it was placed in a Cyrix PR200+ machine. Those machines overclocked the PCI bus to 43 MHz, frying the memory and possibly the chipset.

Before that I had a Diamond S3 ViRGE (3D decelerator) that had the memory upgrade put in (2MB to 4MB) - one of the 1MB chips was bad, and as luck would have it, the PC vendor was out of business a month later, and Diamond wouldn't honor a warranty on a card that a third party had placed the memory upgrade in. If you do fix it, we want to know.