Hi there, I have recently just built my first pc.
I bought a used gigabyte reference vega64 off ebay and the heatsink for it was completely damaged, causing overheating. After ripping on it a little, it looked like this.
I plugged the card in and it ran far better. ~50 degrees C at ~150W load of furmark for a few mins
Sadly, afterwards , I decided to leave the computer unattended and turned on at idle for over an hour and by the time I come back the card is just dead. No video output, No GPUTach LEDs, it wonāt get past BIOS and I canāt feel the card warm up when i turn on the PC
Is there any way I can fix this issue and of not, will I be able to get gigabyte to RMA the card?
Iāve already tried rebooting the card. And nothing happens. I highly suspect youāre right in that I toasted my VRMs since they were running at about 96 degrees C under 150W load when I first booted the card up.
Guess I shouldāve been more patient and waited for a delivery of heatsinks to come in.
Im the UK and weāre currently under lockdown again , so the local hardware shops are shut.
Anyways, thank you, I have messaged the eBay seller for the purchase invoice and also gigabytes UK rma dept ([email protected]). Hopefully they get back to me and iāll see what I can do.
Cheers
Would make them uncoolable. Imagine if the 3080s 600mmĀ² die with its 300W power draw was to output another 50W from VRM switching.
Run it in oil submersion of not run it at all.
Well, unsurprisingly, gigabyte refused to repair the gpu, and now iām left here with a dead vega card and very little idea on how to fix it
Iām thinking I could probe it with a multimeter, but mine is only in the k Ohm to M Ohm range.
I just donāt really know where to begin with this whole thing as coming upon pcb schematics for these cards is, well near impossible.
Here, you can check out, how guy that has no clue is trying to repair gpu, under proās supervision
Note the equipment used, even if you knew what to replace
But seriously, with ordinary soldering iron you could probably do some burned resistors or fuses. Multipin stuff usually needs hot air at least. Microscope can be substituted with magnifying glass, but its painful to use. And of course various items like proper tweezers, solder, flux, all this quickly adds up.
I donāt want to discourage you, but realistically, if this is one-off repair then equipment you need, probably will be more expensive than new Vega.
Iām not really too concerned about equipment costs as I just started a uni course in engineering and when I go back in January I can just abuse the departmentās tools in order to fix this thing.
Guess iāll just have to wait it out a month or so.
The part about using server PSUs for a whole system
(links included)
HELLO. well as much as I wanted to go back to uni and diagnose/repair the GPU, Iāve been stuck at home for the past month and will probably continue to do so Well anyway, I hooked up my dead Vega GPU to a cheap eBay test rig in order to supply it power
.
All the power phases measured at 0V except for the PEX rail (the small one next to the PCIe slot) and the middle of three smaller rails on the left, which correctly measured at 1.73V (should be ~1.8V).
Now although Iāve measured these voltages, I canāt find any public datasheet on the IR35217 pwm controller, and you obviously canāt get GPU PCB schematics soooā¦ idk what to do from here. I mean I found the datasheets for the smaller driver ICs but given both the 3V and 0.8V rails are at 0.
@wendell On a good note though, this whole journey did lead me to discover a method in order to cheaply power a PC with cheap HP server PSU units. Found this out from this video (1:55): Building a 2X GTX 1060 6gb Mining Rig! - YouTube
As the server PSU is 12V only, all the 12V devices (CPU, GPU) can be powered off the server PSU itself directly with 6 pin PCIe to 6+2 pin PCIe cables male-male along with PCIe to EPS male-male cables for the CPU. Though youāll probably have to DIY those EPS cables. This lets you power only the motherboard and other lesser components with the power adapter (PicoPSU, HDplex, or whatever Power Distribution Board used).
6 pin to 6+2 pin EPS male-male cables, maybe even a couple 6pin Pcie to 4 pin EPS male-male for a power guzzly cpu, some stripping and crimping may be required. Allows you to run all the hefty 12V for CPU and GPU off the server PSU and not the picoPSU/Voltage adapter 5557 4.2mm Double Row Connectors (2-24 Pin) + Crimps (Molex Mini-fit Jr. Style) | eBay
[Both cables and board are in above link]
All in all, this is all available on Ebay should probably cost somewhere around Ā£60 for a 750W unit total if you go hunting and probably makes for a fun ITX power solution.
So all of the VDCC rails have 0 volts at the output of the inductor, and the same is true for MVDD?
Do you have a thermal camera to see what parts are getting hot? If not, utilizing rubbing alcohol could help identify abnormally hot spots (ex. Caps shouldnāt get hot unless they are shorting to ground or really heavily pushed, which I doubt would happen on a GPU).
How much power is the GPU pulling from the 8pin connectors? You can use a current clamp to check (or a very DIY multimeter setup).
yeah, thanks for the advice. That would help with the diagnosis of my GPU. However, I just decided to send off the GPU to Buildzoid and hopefully, he can manage to resurrect it as I donāt know nearly enough about GPU VRMs or PCB schematics to have any good chance at it. So fingers crossed I guess, although I donāt have much hope thoughā¦
Update. Buildzoid is a legend and turns out, all that was wrong with the card was one dead enable transistor. He fixed it and is sending it back to me.
Just to close off this thread: Buildzoid actually did repair the card. Iāve seen it on his twitter. Sadly, when it got to me, I took it to Uni w/ me, and it still wouldnāt work. Same dead as before.
So I tried to replace the labelled āQ301ā enable transistor. However, there was no details on part numbers or whatever.
So I just bought a pack of tiny BJT transistors based off the markings on the teeny transistor.
Even though I knew it was probably the wrong one, I did manage to replace it and solder it on. God knows how I did it. But I think that murked the card because I saw the mboard lights flicker between GPU and something else.
At this point I just had to call it, so I sold it off for Ā£170 on eBay. Almost as much as I paid for it.
, so the local hardware shops are shut.
