Anyone please? 😊

Since the card is essentially working ...you have nothing to lose by replacing all the surface mount aluminium capacitors ..
They are known to be troublesome over time in any application.
A photo of the actual card might yield some clues..
These are more difficult to replace than standard through hole capacitors ..but can often be replaced with conventional soldering irons...
that said ..you may need to use hot air..
key to either method is good quality flux and lots of it ..
you might also find chipquik is your friend here..
good luck
rgds
VS

Thank your for your reply! I made some pictures of the graphics card. I'm sorry for the bad image quality; my camera isn't very good. Please note that the black underneath the silver capacitors is not their shade; it's actually the black bottom of the capacitors. 😢

I will at least replace those three capacitors then later this week. 😀

Oh yes indeed ..
assuming you have not lifted these caps ..and it has occurred naturally due to internal expansion of the electrolyte..
Then yes ..these tilted caps are prime suspects..

I've ran into this same problem with old ATI cards, mainly 9-series. I replaced the caps, but it didn't work. I even tried to reheat the GPU chip as I was sure the problem was with it starting to lose contact with the board, but that didn't help either so I ended up scrapping those cards. I hope you fair better.

Vipersan wrote:

Oh yes indeed ..
assuming you have not lifted these caps ..and it has occurred naturally due to internal expansion of the electrolyte..
Then yes ..these tilted caps are prime suspects..

I bought the card like this; I didn't lift or bend anything, so it's safe to say that the capacitors are a problem. I will go ahead and replace the capacitors on the card on Wednesday or Thursday. Thank you for your help; I really appreciate it! 😀

sf78 wrote:

I've ran into this same problem with old ATI cards, mainly 9-series. I replaced the caps, but it didn't work. I even tried to reheat the GPU chip as I was sure the problem was with it starting to lose contact with the board, but that didn't help either so I ended up scrapping those cards. I hope you fair better.

I really hope that's not the problem; let's see what changing the capacitors will do! 😊

Replacing the capacitors didn't help; I'm still getting the same distorted screen with rainbow bars. I'm kinda thinking that my problem is similar to the problem sf78 has been experiencing. In fact the ATI Radeon X300 is parallel to the Radeon 9000 series, so it would make sense there occur similar problems with these cards. 😢

Just curious, but why do you want to use that particular card? I believe the X300 SE is the slowest PCI-Express card ever made and ATi cards aren't known for having the best compatibility overall. A Geforce 6200 is much faster and would offer better compatibility in many things. You could even get a Geforce FX (or an FX based Quadro) on PCI-E for very cheap and it would have great performance (up to ~2003) and excellent compatibility all the way back to DOS games.

The card itself looks like a dumper find. If you really want it, you can try to bake the naked card with the cooler removed in a stove for 10mins at about 110 degrees celcius. According to the pics I guess that the RAM-Modules got desolderd partly or have very poor conctact to the PCB due to heat problems. But be aware: even if you succeed, the card wont last very long after that.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Just curious, but why do you want to use that particular card? I believe the X300 SE is the slowest PCI-Express card ever made and ATi cards aren't known for having the best compatibility overall. A Geforce 6200 is much faster and would offer better compatibility in many things. You could even get a Geforce FX (or an FX based Quadro) on PCI-E for very cheap and it would have great performance (up to ~2003) and excellent compatibility all the way back to DOS games.

I usually stick with ATI cards, because in my personal experience, I've always had driver issues with NVIDIA cards, while I've yet to experience my first ATI driver issue. There are two reasons I want to restore this particular card. Firstly, why wouldn't I restore it and keep it as a spare part, if I can? Secondly, I might use this card in a business machine, where in it should do just fine. 😀

The Sandman wrote:

The card itself looks like a dumper find. If you really want it, you can try to bake the naked card with the cooler removed in a stove for 10mins at about 110 degrees celcius. According to the pics I guess that the RAM-Modules got desolderd partly or have very poor conctact to the PCB due to heat problems. But be aware: even if you succeed, the card wont last very long after that.

I will try that later on, thank you. I guess I do not have much to lose, but won't the capacitors pop when exposed to such temperatures? 😕

The caps shouldn't pop as long as you stay as low as 110°C. Remember to clean the oven afterwards 😉

In this guide they even recommend 220°C, which is kinda risky imho. Try the lower temperature first.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Temporarily+Repa … in+an+oven/2240

The Sandman wrote:

The caps shouldn't pop as long as you stay as low as 110°C. Remember to clean the oven afterwards 😉

In this guide they even recommend 220°C, which is kinda risky imho. Try the lower temperature first.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Temporarily+Repa … in+an+oven/2240

Thank you, I will give it a try later on! 😀