Repair Work Pipeline

A page to help me track incoming items to work on. Eventually, these will be converted to posts when worked on.

TODO List

  • MSI RTX 2080 Sea Hawk
    • Check with a thermal camera, as one mosfet seemed very hot in comparison
    • Check with MATS as a second card
  • RTX 3080 TI – check damage phase under microscope, are the DRMOS remains removable? Is there pad damage?
  • EVGA GTX 970 – measurements, gate resistances, resolve shorted phase, replace mosfet and driver
  • MSI GTX 960 4Gb – measurements, mats to blog, is vram chip in stock?
  • R7 265 DUAL X – measure gate, replace drmos, identify failing vram channel
  • Gigabyte GTX 1080 mini – photo & examine blown mosfet under microscope

Incoming Graphics Cards

These are cards bought that have not yet arrived or been tested.

Gigabyte GTX 1080 Mini – The GPU was working fine but now produces smoke and trips the power supply. £21.51

  • Has a short and very blown mosfet!

Graphics Cards WIP

Cards that I am testing or working on, that aren’t blogged.

(working, but fans constantly run at full speed) EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 Black

  • Seller description “The card appears to be stuck in BIOS flash mode with the fans running at 100%. The card runs well despite the fans running at 100%, turns on keeping steady fps and temps are cool. DM for videos of the card, someone with more technical knowledge could fix it.”
  • This description seems accurate. The card runs at high FPS and with very cool temperatures (understandably, due to the fans running run speed !). The BIOS could be wrong, but also the fan controller, as the sensor reading doesn’t say the card’s fans are running at all.

(Error 43, artefacts, faulty B1 VRAM) MSI RTX 2080 TI 11gb Gaming X Trio

  • Seller description “When connected to PC fans spin lights go on but, when windows loads it will not get to maximum resolution and is device manager there is an error. I have tried drivers and still no luck I believe the issue may be with the board itself as it does look a bit bent.  The card has not been opened before as the original seal is still intact. Came from a pallet of faulty items.” – £109.91
  • As described, artefacts and code 43 in windows, driver wont load
  • MATS 400 reveals a faulty B0 VRAM

(No picture, detected) MSI RTX 2080 Sea Hawk

  • Lights up, pump runs, but no picture. Some damaged caps. Possible liquid damage – £85
  • TODO Log resistances
  • Has all voltages, is detected in Windows, suspect crash on driver load (testing limited)
  • TODO See if it is possible to run MATS 400

(Error 43 as 2nd card, no display) Asus GTX 1050 TI Cerberus

  • Seller description “The card powers on but keeps showing lines on the screen.” – £25
  • Bought this one in the hope of using it to fix my other Cerberus 1050 ti that seemingly has a different problem. The card itself is quite dirty and may have signs of liquid damage.
  • Mods will not initialise this card, so MATS has the bad0ac errors.
  • Might be worth combining this card into that blog

(Generally error 43, but can load drivers and then crash) Gigabyte Windforce GTX 960 4Gb

  • Seller Description “I’m selling a GTX 960 graphic card, this was working for a little while, but suddenly it stopped working as it should, I was able to boot into windows with it but the resolution defaults to low settings and it would comes up with a Code 43 in Device Manager.” – £14.69
  • I like the high-memory versions of the older cards (e.g. 7 and 9 series) and this one is pretty much as described, although it will sometimes load the drivers, but crashes soon after.
  • MATS reveals some faulty bits on the B2 VRAM chip.
  • Will log measurements and attempt a fix. There is some physical damage to the cooler, so possibly the card took a whack resulting in some cracked solder joints?

(Artefacts/crashes if twisted, faulty B0 VRAM) MSI GeForce RTX 3070 GAMING X

  • Seller description “This unit is no longer functional. It will boot to desktop but you will experience graphical glitches. MSI Service Center offered to repair but I cannot afford it. Sold as seen.”, warranty sticker intact, £
  • What a lovely looking card! Shame it seems like the previous owner probably let it sag. If mounted vertically (e.g. with a riser), then the card loads drivers and can pass benchmarks, if you decide to gently twist it, then artefacts and sometimes crashing easily follow. From a side view, I think there could be a slight bend and presumably, some broken BGA solder joints somewhere. I expect the MSI repair centre were considering reflowing the card, possibly reballing, I wonder how much the wanted to charge?
  • I am a little divided about what to do with this card, as I got it for a good reasonable price, its actually semi-working (e.g. you could potentially use a vertical mount) and has it’s warranty sticker, so it could resell for a bit more than I paid. On the other hand, it could be a lovely card if properly fixed. However, if the damaged solder joints are under the core, then realistically, this is probably not a repair I would attempt. I think I will test it with MATs and try to decide what to do.
  • Well.. MATS 455, over multiple runs and manual flexing of the card, reveals errors on B1. So, I will attempt to either reflow, reball or replace that chip. Hopefully, no ripped pads of core BGA issues.

(12v short) EVGA Gtx 970 FTW

  • £15 – Seller suspected a short, nice box with all accessories.
  • They were correct! I can see a 12v short on one of the 6 pin PCI-E connectors. It appears there is a short to gate on one of the MOSFETs. Need to log measurements and replace that MOSFET and probably the driver.

(Seemingly working!) MSI RTX 2070 Super OC Ventus

  • Description “This card is faulty and not working and please don’t ask me whats wrong with it as I don’t have a clue”
  • This card appears to be working! Kombuster, 3d Time Spy all running 🙂
  • Will log measurements, clean & repaste – then play testing

(blank screen on flex/load) MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X– Seller Note “Around 6 weeks customer returned computer after it blue screened multiple times. I have reinstalled drivers and installed furmark which seemed to run fine but after around 3 hours it crashed again with blue screen. I have replaced the GPU and computer was running fine again”

  • Card looks really nice, and runs fine on the desktop for me.
  • No crashing, but can blank out and close the application after a few minutes e.g. Kombuster.
  • Twisting the card gently also seems to reproduce the issue
  • I would guess the seller’s customer mistreated the card and maybe cause a solder joint issue that can impact with heat/flex.
  • Should see if I can spot anything in MATS

(artefacts under stress, test with MATS) Gigabyte RTX 2070 Super Windforce OC 3x 8G – £67 seller note “The card has not been used for a few months, it was starting ok then after a while picture would start corrupting. It would then would stop working at all.”

  • Runs benchmarks and games, but soon artefacts
  • Need to test with MATS/MODS

(hot spot, suspected mosfet fault) EVGA GTX 950 2Gb SC – £13.50, Seller Note “Was used in a media PC. However during testing found that games crash after a short time.”

  • Has a ‘hot spot’ that reaches about 100°C+ within a minute or so of load, fairly hot even without load. Suspect it’s a faulty MOSFET, need to investigate.

(very low 12v PCI resistance) Quadro K5000 4GB – £15, Seller Note “Raw return, faulty”

To Sell

Cards to list for sale.

Graphics Cards Back Burner

Cards that require more analysis or repair effort that I don’t want to do now.

(Possible PCB/pad damage, new DRMOS required) Gigabyte RTX 3080 TI 12Gb

  • Bought from facebook Marketplace for £200
  • Failed a Gigabyte warranty repair due to ‘PCB burns’. Seller described what sounded like a 12v short leading up to this.
  • On quick inspection, I can see they had trouble removing a DRMOS. Need to check the area under a microscope, possible pad damage.
  • Card actually displays and loads drivers, cannot stress it too much, but hopefully a good sign 🙂

(gets hot, crashes) GTX TITAN X 12GB – £66 Seller Note “Titan gtx has just been serviced I got recovery screen come up easy fix but I had a spare card so grab a bargain only used for fortnight and red dead” – The seller was of course exaggerating the truth! The card works at first, even passing some benchmarks e.g. Kombuster, but gets pretty hot (80+ core, 96+ Hotspot), then crashing starts.

(serious artefacting, faulty VRAM) EVGA GTX 1060 6Gb SC – £25, Seller Note “Artefacting” (artefacting looks quite light, hopefully VRAM)

  • Artefacts appear more serious. Need to try mats/mods
  • Found failing A0 VRAM chip
  • Replaced the A0 chip, now only a blank screen with backlight on monitor lit
  • Card wont initialise in MODS, so MATS now gets the bad0c errors.
  • This card is nearing the scrap collection…

(occasional blank screens after load, pc still running) Gigabyte RX 5700 XT Gaming OC (Card B) – £50 seller note “random blank screens”

  • Seems as described, only one blank and one frozen screen so far, back feels pretty hot under load (probably normal for a 5700 xt)
  • Seems fine apart from one blank screen when exiting Kombuster HD, windows 10 was still running in the background and even redisplayed the ‘shutting down screen’, so not a hard crash.
  • Subnautica seemed ok for 10 minutes
  • 3D Time Spy passed with an average score, heaven benchmark fine.
  • Temps seem relatively well behaved <65 core, <89 hot spot, <60 memory
  • UVD and VRM temps always read 0 in GPU-Z, not sure if this is normal, can compare with card A (card A has the same problem)
  • Should try testing memory
  • Seems to basically freeze the benchmark screen on exit, but allow the PC/Windows to run
  • This likely has an issue with it’s PWM (Infinion-type with configuration). I am not equipped to work on this type of problem, as I don’t have the USB I2C programmer device.
  • Might be worth combining this with the card A blog.

(Likely PWM/VRM issue) Gigabyte RX 5500 8Gb – £43.29 – interesting card, semi-working

  • I expect this has a PWM issue (infinion-type configurable).

(investigate shorted Vmem rail) Titan Black x2 – £8 each, Seller Note “Dead”

  • Yep! They probably are dead! 🙂 Bought out of curiosity, as they are cheap and was interested in the parts as they are a kind of super 7-series card with 6Gb. However, they both have worryingly low VMem rail resistances, so they may be worse scrap than I’d hoped for. Still deserve a proper investigation.

Bulk Deal (kind of regret buying this! I don’t have high hopes…)

Job lot of 17 cards for £62 total. This is going to take me a while to process! Most are potentially long shots, but still interested to look them all over.

  • GTX 780 — good but needs fans on top of coolers £15 – (This seems false, this card has detection issues)
  • 4xFaulty Video Cards HD 5770, 4780,7950, 8800 GTS) £10
  • Artefacts ** Gigabyte GV-R7870C-2GD £10
  • GTX 960 ** NO IMAGE ** now £10
  • Nvidia 630, R7750C, Zotac GTS 450, Radeon HD 5770 – no video, now £10
  • job lot 2 cards, no video £3
    job lot 3 cards, no video £4
  • GT220, no video £0
  • Potentially a couple of others!

Graphics Cards Working Stock

Often used by family members or kept as backup or special interest cards. Sometimes I might also want to hold a working example to help fix a similar faulty card.

(working) GTX 1080 Sea Hawk X – £120 seller note “Straight out of my current build. Fully working. I do apologize but I didn’t have any compressed air left for blowing out the radiator prior to photos!”

  • Seems to be working fine, even without a fan on the radiator, not sure if the owner realized there should be one. Condition seems fine, warranty sticker still intact.
  • I really like the Sea Hawk cards, I have a scrap one that I was trying to use reuse the cooler on another standard GTX 1070 board. I am hoping this one can help me confirm a few readings.

(working) Gigabyte GTX 750 Ti 2GB Low Profile – £15 “Bought on Facebook Marketplace as an unused graphics card that was working years ago. Plugged it in and it popped and smoked and took my motherboard with it as it died. Don’t know if it’s fixable but the heatsink and fan is still working so could be used as a doner part”

  • PCB appears fine, no burns that I can see or shorts.
  • Passes Kombuster HD, OCCT (mem/3d) and was fine when my daughter played Roblox for an hour or so. The only blips were some blank screens during the GPU-Z render test, possible PCI issue? I would like to repeat the test on another motherboard.
  • This card works fine and is useful in ITX type cases. Could do with buying a SFF IO shield for it.

(working) PowerColor RX 590 8Gb Red Devil – £46, Seller Note “Works fine but has noisy fan” (have a donor card, hopefully just fans)

  • Appears to work fine and test, fans also seem fine
  • Play tested in my main PC, no issues, no noise either.
  • Keeping as a favourite example of the RX590, also I have some other Red Devil RX cards that might need readings.

(fans replaced in use) RTX 2060 – £55 seller note “broken cooler and fans”

  • This appears as described. It can complete basic benchmarks, but obviously gets hot, as the fans are completely seized.
  • New fans ordered.
  • Fans replaced, in my sons PC, many months of happy use.

(Hasnt crashed so far) Quadro K2200 4Gb (£10 – Seller Note –

  • This was supposedly a working Nvidia Quadro K2200 4GB which I bought from another EBAYER but had problems from the outset. The K2200 is an excellent allrounder and I use them for 3D Design software (CNC). Not for gaming but CADCAM and video editing.
  • Symptoms: It boots up and runs fine which is promising but then it can randomly go BSOD or the screen becomes partially garbled on certain applications, it ran hot on GPU-Z. I already use K2200’s in other machines so I can confirm it’s probably faulty not software or drivers issue. I suspect heat damaged.
  • I’ve cleaned out the fan and completely blocked cooling ducts plus replaced the thermal paste which has reduced the overall temperature when running but ultimately not fixed the problem. Might be useful for parts or a repair project if you’re in the know.
  • Komuster HD passed. Thermals seem fine. Twisting under load seems fine. Might be one of those cards that you can never be fully confident about, could be useful for testing.

(clean and respate, working) Gigabyte RTX 3070

  • The seller reported it as crashing in Heaven benchmark.
  • During testing with Kombuster, I noticed a rapid spike in thermals, so cancelled the benchmark.
  • Opening the card revealed dry thermal compound, could get lucky..
  • Rare case of seemingly only requiring a thorough clean and repaste, great 🙂