Palit Geforce 4 4200 Suddenly Dead

[shadow]

I got a Palit Geforce 4 4200 that has suddenly died.

It was working one day in the morning and when the PC was turned on in the evening, there was no signal on the monitor.

It is confirmed that the graphics card is at fault. I had to put in another one as a temporary replacement.

I was wondering what could have gone wrong with it for it to fail suddenly?

I looked over the whole board thoroughly and I can not find any burnt out components.

However there are three bulging caps on it. The card is populated with Canicon 1000uF 6.3V caps.

Could the fix simply be replacing the capacitors?

[gdement]

Re: Palit Geforce 4 4200 Suddenly Dead

Clearly the caps are involved. Replacing them might fix it, might not. Depends if they caused any collateral damage.

[shadow]

Re: Palit Geforce 4 4200 Suddenly Dead

That's what I thought. I guess what I am asking is whether others have had a similar situation happen to them and what was the problem.

[linuxguru]

Re: Palit Geforce 4 4200 Suddenly Dead

As gdement said, replacing the caps might fix the problem some of the time. It would almost certainly have worked if the caps had been replaced the moment the card started showing symptoms - including garbage on the screen, flaky sync, etc. I would be surprised if it worked perfectly right up to the moment it died.

[Scenic]

Re: Palit Geforce 4 4200 Suddenly Dead

had the same problem with a GF4 Ti 4200 (made by PNY)
no video from one day to another..
had a few bulging GSC caps (known crap).

replaced all of them and it works fine

[shadow]

Re: Palit Geforce 4 4200 Suddenly Dead

Cool. I will have to source the capacitors.

The local RS Components outlet has Panasonic FC in stock.
I will probably get those.

Only issue is that I don't really have too much time to drive there and get the capacitors. I guess I will have to make time on Wednesday I guess.

[shadow]

Re: Palit Geforce 4 4200 Suddenly Dead

Well I got the Panasonic FC capacitors now.

The local RS Components Trade Outlet has moved location and it is now a lot closer to where I live!

Hopefully all goes well.

[shadow]

Re: Palit Geforce 4 4200 Suddenly Dead

Just an update. The recap has failed. The graphics card is still dead.

Unfortunately the card fell a distance of about one meter during the recap.
I think that just cemented its death.

On the plus side, my test system (a late model P3 system) recognises the video card (there are no missing video card beeps from the motherboard). However no signal is detected.

I have got a before picture but not an after picture yet.