[Venting] EVGA Video card problems

terrancelam · Post by **terrancelam** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 8:34 am

Sorry guys... just needed to vent. Soo pissed off right now. I haven't bought new hardware in a while and my videocard fan started to go, I thought it would be a great time to get a new videocard (it gave me enough of a push to finally get rid of my 8800GT). So I went and did some research and found that the GTX 460 was the best bang for buck atm and decided to go out and get one. I couldn't get my hands on a super clock version, but ended up with an EVGA GTX 460 stock version with external exhaust (supposedly good).

Anyways long story short, I popped it into my system only to find out it was DOA. Originally I though it was my PSU (OCZ 700W gamexstream), but after checking the rails and everything, I noticed I was getting a BIOS posting error of no videocard instead of the long beep that usually indicates insufficient power. Now I've got to go back to this computer shop and deal with the owner to get either a replacement or a refund... sigh.

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 9:25 am

It always sux to buy something and it be DOA... Hopefully they will exchange it with out problems. Good luck and good to see you around!

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 9:41 am

look at the bright side.. eVGA is still in business and has a excellent warranty program which a DOA card will show up on tests as to never have been run beyond factory runs.

loop2kil · Post by **loop2kil** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 3:02 am

As Ken said, it's gotta suck to get new hardware only to have it be dead.

In my couple of years building PC's, I've never had a big item DOA <knocks on wood>>

terrancelam · Post by **terrancelam** » Fri Sep 17, 2010 4:07 am

True to all the above (thanks ken!)

The sweet and short of it:
The comp shop owner tested the card on tuesday and said it was working. It posted and I was left speechless. I ended up buying a 1000W PSU to be extra sure and did tests on not only my machine at home, but also at on two different machines. I once again could not get the card to post with any of the test systems, so I brought it back to the shop again on wednesday (thank god I have access to computers at work). I told them about the problems and the tech there was getting all pissy with me because I was back a third day in a row. At this point I talked to the owner and told him I wanted a new card and I had already tested the card in three different systems; it didn't work in any of them. The tech tried it out on another machien and it didn't post for him. He attempted to boot it three more times with various different PSU and finally gave up telling the owner it was DOA (which I said from the start). So after 3 days and 10 hours of sleep split between the nights,I finally got a new card that worked in my system like it should have in the first place.

Ahhh what a battle.... thank god I'm competent when it comes to computer tech & store policies, otherwise I'd be ripping my hair out trying to figure out what was wrong with everything.

Sava700 · Post by **Sava700** » Fri Sep 17, 2010 10:13 am

hmm.... so you saw it post that one time for the owner?? Weird! Was he posting from onboard video and not the video card by mistake then saying it was fine?

terrancelam · Post by **terrancelam** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 1:52 pm

Initially I thought that was the case too, but I looked at the motherboard and it didn't have any onboard video and I saw the connector was hooked up to the videocard.
This was such a weird case of hardware failure, but my take on things was that a capacitor or some pathway on the PCB board was bad to begin with and although it might have turn on once or two, it probably would have crapped out shortly afterwards. I thought EVGA had better quality checks in place but who knows. I guess there is a first time for everything, but man I'm just glad I didn't end up holding the puck with the bad videocard. I can't imagine what a regular guy without access to various computers would do to test a card with a problem like that.

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 4:07 pm

Any card can come in DOA even with quality checks.

Shinobi · Post by **Shinobi** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 6:37 pm

terrancelam wrote: ...This was such a weird case of hardware failure, but my take on things was that a capacitor...

Shinobi · Post by **Shinobi** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 6:48 am

Video cards are strange like that, when they have a defective component on them. I have two Nivida video cards that my Dad recently gave me. He told me that one did not work well. Sure enough, that particular one freezes the whole computer after 15 minutes whne I try to play any first person shooter type games. In windows 7 alone, no freezing issues except for when after authenticating in Windows 7, the screen goes to black and comes back again. Tried new drivers same thing. The other Nvida card that he gave me, same model memory ect.. no issues at all.

terrancelam · Post by **terrancelam** » Mon Oct 04, 2010 4:52 am

The issues with the black screen things sounds like a cooling problem. My older 8800GT had cooling issues and would do funny things in Win 7. Any gaming would cause it to either blank the screen or crash to the desktop, but turning on the computer and doing regular desktop work would be ok.

Shinobi · Post by **Shinobi** » Mon Oct 04, 2010 9:54 pm

terrancelam wrote:The issues with the black screen things sounds like a cooling problem. My older 8800GT had cooling issues and would do funny things in Win 7. Any gaming would cause it to either blank the screen or crash to the desktop, but turning on the computer and doing regular desktop work would be ok.

Thanks, not trying to jack your thread, but I may take the big heat sink off of one of them and try to put some heatsink compound on the GPU, if I cannot get BFG Tech to replace both cards. They did have a "lifetime warranty" for a long time in regards to video cards, until recently they change that policy from what I've heard. I believe that in this case, that warranty policy is "grandfathered". If not, I'll go the heat sink route.