Rawit wrote on 2021-02-26, 10:46:

Were these cards hooked up to the same screen? I've seen some sparks come of VGA cables connected to projectors and such. Make sure your screen is grounded and doesn't leak any voltage through the cable.

Sometimes the grounding is the problem, either on the device or on the home power net.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

or ESD isn't that big of a deal..

It isn't really. Sure, you can kill or permanently damage something with static, but there are many factors which must be included for that to happen.

Can static KILL your PC? (ft. Electroboom) (Part 1)
What It Takes to Break a RAM with ESD (ft. Linus Tech Tips) (Part 2)

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-02-27, 13:17:

It isn't really. Sure, you can kill or permanently damage something with static, but there are many factors which must be includ […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote:

or ESD isn't that big of a deal..

It isn't really. Sure, you can kill or permanently damage something with static, but there are many factors which must be included for that to happen.

Can static KILL your PC? (ft. Electroboom) (Part 1)
What It Takes to Break a RAM with ESD (ft. Linus Tech Tips) (Part 2)

Right, I've seen those. Funny stuff. 🤣

I agree to an extent if we're just talking about using the parts today.

Still, we're dealing with old hardware. Subjecting them to years, possibly decades, of improper storage without ESD protection, with the intent of keeping them for "retro" use for many more years is certainly a gamble that absolutely no one here can honestly say they fully understand.

Linus has probably already long forgotten about the old RAM stick zapped in that video. However, if I had a choice between an Adlib Gold that had been stored in an antistatic bag and one that had definitely not, I would certainly choose one that had been stored with at least some care. In the end I know it at the very least it will have had some protection from scrapes and scratches.

I don't see any reason to stop using static shielding bags, even if I don't have a lab to analyze whether static is doing long term damage.

Like I said, I'm not going to go crazy with precautions, but to say that I know that ESD doesn't matter now and won't *ever* is a bit presumptuous. It takes hardly any money (if you know where to look) and basically no time to put things in bags. Compared to the risks, expense, time, skill and energy involved in recapping devices (another common preventative thing people do before they have problems), storing them in ESD bags is a much easier precaution to keep this stuff functional for another 20-30 years.

I hope OP is OK.

Tetrium wrote on 2021-02-24, 10:50:

It still could have been ESD if he handled the cards during winter conditions, which could have very well been the case. […]
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Blaster wrote on 2021-02-23, 22:13:

"Static from an outlet? Is that even a thing?" Brain fart on my part. 🤣 Let me try agin. I dout it was cased by ESD, or his powergrid. Any better? 🤣

It still could have been ESD if he handled the cards during winter conditions, which could have very well been the case.

Geforce 4 Cards do run hot and used very cheap crappy heatsink solutions. With bad caps the ripple current will make them run hotter and fail faster. The higher the ripple current, the more the heat.

That could also be a possible cause, especially if he also didn't use fresh TIM and continued using the (now) old stock crusty TIM. But then again different card makers tended to use different caps and different cooling solutions (not all used tiny heatsinks and not all GF4 cards run equally hot) and different cards may or may not have already seen much use (or abuse) or have been barely used at all which would reflect in the caps having a different age and thus make failure in such a very short amount of time more unlikely.
Could even have been a mix of factors for all we know.
He could even have bought all his cards at the same seller who only sells (failed) baked cards that will fail in a matter of weeks anyway. Perhaps he just made everything up even though this seems implausible to me. Or perhaps it was still his cat 😜 .

But I wonder why Candle hasn't even responded yet to any of the replies he got. There's plenty of good suggestions floating around here and without his feedback we don't have a lot to go on. The only real constants are the timeframe in which this apparently has been taking place, him, his PC case (as he did mention having swapped out parts, but without mentioning any further details which might help) and his house. Perhaps he did use the same PSU on all cards and he only started switching the PSU for troubleshooting after the really defective PSU killed his cards.

Personally I'd like to see more feedback from the OP about this.

EDIT:

candle_86 wrote on 2021-01-29, 20:48:

So in the last 6 months I've had 5 Ti's fail. […]
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So in the last 6 months I've had 5 Ti's fail.

2x Ti-4200 64mb
1xTi-4200 128 mb
1x Ti-4200 8x
1x Ti-4600

I've swapped boards and psus, but the deaths are all the same, after a few weeks I start getting artifacts and continue to do so until the card is unusable.

Athlon XP 2800 based hp a430n and I've swapped boards to one with new caps, and swapped psus to a dell 350W that checks out on a psu tester. What could do this, I've got another ti-4600 that I'm terrified to try. Ironically for the last 4 weeks it's been running a Radeon 8500le with zero issues

I misremembered, the cards failed in a matter of 6 months and not just a few weeks. This makes ESD due to winter conditions much less likely.

Btw, how are things for you atm? Have you managed to solve this mystery yet?

I have not, sorry been away

Blaster wrote on 2021-02-27, 21:08:

I hope OP is OK.

I'm fine, ive got a net stalker tracking down my username everywhere so i went dark everywhere, they didnt find this site it seems, but they are harassing me and my family, so i just went offline

As for the hardware issue, fingers cross but my new Ti-4600 is working, as for whats killed they where all ebay cards but one, one i found in a carboard box at a garage sale

Problem solved, sadly i lost another card but i've tracked down the issue, for curiosity's sake even though visually the PSU and board look fine i took them to a friend's house who has the equipment to probe it, the PSU is fine, but the board wasn't sending stable current to the AGP slot, he said it was surging before going below spec, so I've fond the issue, I've since had the board recapped, i wish I'd thought of that prior. Apparently a bad or failing cap can affect power regulation to the AGP slot.

Strange... At the beginning of the thread, you mentioned that you had already tried swapping motherboards and PSUs without success.

bloodem wrote on 2021-04-19, 06:34:

Strange... At the beginning of the thread, you mentioned that you had already tried swapping motherboards and PSUs without success.

I had swapped boards, I didn't go further than that however. I also havn't tested the other board, so that may not have been the only cause, but it certainly caused an issue.

is your 8500LE still in working condition btw? You mention it had been running fine.

EDIT: I hadn't noticed the thread was already a year old xD
Anyway, still curious whether or not the issue has been resolved 🙂

In the past, I had 2 PNY Ti 4200's that both died to artifacting. I wonder if they had the same issue as the 9700 Pro that resulted in most of those dying.

Cards looked like this

mastergamma12 wrote:

.I wonder if they had the same issue as the 9700 Pro that resulted in most of those dying.

Nope, R300-R350 chips often die from BGA memory failure, with graphical chip being intact. Regular 4200 had TSOP memory, which is not prone to suddenly lose contact with PCB. But apparently GPU packaging was not very well designed for GeForce 4 Ti thermals. Also could be a banal capacitor problem.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-04-14, 00:11:

mastergamma12 wrote:

.I wonder if they had the same issue as the 9700 Pro that resulted in most of those dying.

Nope, R300-R350 chips often die from BGA memory failure, with graphical chip being intact. Regular 4200 had TSOP memory, which is not prone to suddenly lose contact with PCB. But apparently GPU packaging was not very well designed for GeForce 4 Ti thermals. Also could be a banal capacitor problem.

You're probably right. Though my last 9700 Pro died due to core failure.