Are you sure that is grease and not the contents of the various capacitors on the board? Those type generally leak from the bottom and don't bulge like traditional radial caps.

If it doesn't react to a soldering iron at >300 degrees C, then it's probably not grease....

Seems flux. But too much to not be cleaned after the work.

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-03-06, 20:22:

Are you sure that is grease and not the contents of the various capacitors on the board? Those type generally leak from the bottom and don't bulge like traditional radial caps.

If it doesn't react to a soldering iron at >300 degrees C, then it's probably not grease....

I didn't try soldering iron, I tried my hot air station at 280c.... I'm positive it's not capacitor gunk since it's mostly caked arount the 3 IC's on the VRM as well as the and the core itself, with little to none next to the electrolythic caps... Just to make sure I desoldered the 2 larger caps and tested them, they're both within spec. There was also quite a bit of it on the back of the card, under the bracked that holds the heatsink to the core, and behind the MOLEX power connector.

So far I have 2 theories:

1. the "grease" is in fact just that - grease, probably some sort of thermal gel, as I've previously seen compound in this color, however not for use in computers, but for some high power electrical equipment, power suppliers, UPS or transformers and regulators:

This would explain why it did not react to heat, but it doesn't explain why it's immune to anything except for dishwasher soap. This stuff is not OK for use on computer parts however, and it might explain why the card behaved the way it did, especially if whomever put it on smeared it all over the core. Thermal gel has a very different thickness and consitency compared to thermal paste used for CPUs and GPUs.

2. some sort of compound that leaked out of the thermal pads or old thermal pasete as they degraded. Frankly I'm leaning more towards no.1

Silicone oil leakage out of old thermal pads is very much a thing.

everything picked from a recycling center

Looks like an improper handling. Old pads of that era don't leak that much.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-03-06, 22:47:

everything picked from a recycling center

Looks like an improper handling. Old pads of that era don't leak that much.

They dont but I have seen some of the cheap nasty ones used in that era turn to a messy goop, especially if the card was abused and ran hot.

They were simply not used on stock GeForce 6800GT. Stock pads were rough white thermal paste in gauze-like fabric.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-03-06, 23:24:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-03-06, 22:47:

everything picked from a recycling center

Looks like an improper handling. Old pads of that era don't leak that much.

They dont but I have seen some of the cheap nasty ones used in that era turn to a messy goop, especially if the card was abused and ran hot.

Heat and age causes results in the ooze/oil.

The industry term is "oil bleeding"

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11705-016-1586-y

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-03-07, 00:32:

They were simply not used on stock GeForce 6800GT. Stock pads were rough white thermal paste in gauze-like fabric.

Interesting. I've never encountered this type.

You can see remnants of that on memory chips.

Could have been a production error with paste also, sometimes get the synthetic oil separating a little from paste in storage and in a hobbyist tube it's only like a drop at first use or at the end, but industrial size cartridges it could be an amount big enough to go on several cards before they realise it needs changing.

By the looks of it from the pictures, I also have guessed this to be flux. However, the fact that it doesn't react to heat at all suggests this likely isn't the case.

However, just because the screws and thermal pads look untouched doesn't mean that someone couldn't have tampered with the card / cooler before. If you have the right driver bits, you would be able to remove screws without leaving any marks on them (at least I've done this before multiple times.) If the thermal compound on the shim of the GPU chip is not from you removing the heatsink, then someone was definitely in there before... or at least I've never seen such a botched factory job with the thermal compound.

Perhaps the card was artifacting or crashing under high load (like you saw) and the previous owner tried to replace the thermal compound with... whatever that stuff is in the pictures.

In any case, good thing you gave the card a wash. Just re-paste with good quality thermal compound and see how the GPU runs.

Before attempting any benchmarks, check the GPU temperatures. Run software like GPU-Z and go to the monitoring tab. Then try a non-fullscreen benchmark to see what the temperatures are like.
I personally suggest not push such old GPU over 70C... or even 60C for that matter. Of course, this might prove to be very difficult with the stock cooler... and for that matter, I almost always replace the stock coolers, because they are often not adequate to keep the temperatures low enough for that. Don't let nVidia and AMD/ATI tell you that such high temperatures are fine. Well, they are... if you don't mind your GPUs lasting 5-7 years on average (nowadays even less with more modern ones.) Just remember this: silicon IS A CONSUMABLE material with a finite life! And the higher the temperature it runs at, the faster it degrades. So lower temperatures are a must if you want a longer-lasting silicone (of course, there are other factors involved too, but I'll leave those for another thread/discussion to keep this post to a more reasonable length.)

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-03-06, 20:22:

Are you sure that is grease and not the contents of the various capacitors on the board? Those type generally leak from the bottom and don't bulge like traditional radial caps.

The only electrolytic capacitor on this board is that small 16V, 100 uF one. The other two cans are polymers and cannot leak.

Also, leaked electrolyte does not look like this at all. Either it will be like brown, crusty, clay-like deposits (typically from low-ESR caps with aqueous-based electrolyte) or oily and slightly yellow... and quite corrosive/conductive too (typically from non-aqueous -based electrolyte.)

Well, I gave her a good wash and inspected her under the microscope... new paste, fresh pads... but still no dice...

Card will POST, driver installs, no artefacting, everything runs fine in 2d.... Managed to run the first half of the 3dmark 01 "car chase" test, and then it locked up. No black screen this time, it just locked up. It's perfectly happy to sit in desktop, left it idle for 30 mins, brosed the web for 30-40 mins after that, but again, as soon as I run any 3d app it freezes.

Either it has some sort of power issue, or the core needs to be reballed.... Shame. Great looking card, barely a scratch on it.

Try to reflow it before a full blown reball.

The yellowish goo was solder flux. I see this all the time in my work repairing electronics and phones, boards.

Heat up the board with 200C hot air station or hair dryer on high, when board is heated enough, wash with 99% alochol and small brush, to scrub off these flux. Flux thins out with heat and alcohol.

See if you can isolate the issue with vram as issue by spot cooling with bagged one ice cube?

Cheers,

It could be a power issue. Try probing for memory and GPU voltages on the card, see if they look right and whether you catch it sagging when you put more load on it.
I don't know what the correct voltage is for that GPU but maybe the info is out there somewhere.
Try swapping to a different molex connector from another harness, unless you know the one you're using is good with other high powered cards.
Reflow the pins on the power connector or anything else that looks suspect.
Can this system run a non-graphical stress test (like Prime95 torture test) without issue?

shamino wrote on 2024-03-08, 00:58:

It could be a power issue. Try probing for memory and GPU voltages on the card, see if they look right and whether you catch it […]
Show full quote

It could be a power issue. Try probing for memory and GPU voltages on the card, see if they look right and whether you catch it sagging when you put more load on it.
I don't know what the correct voltage is for that GPU but maybe the info is out there somewhere.
Try swapping to a different molex connector from another harness, unless you know the one you're using is good with other high powered cards.
Reflow the pins on the power connector or anything else that looks suspect.

I used my video card test bench for well testing the card, it works fine with a 2600XT AGP and a 6600GT AGP. I'll whip out another 6800 and see what happens, just to make sure there isn't some sort of compatibility issue... I'll also try the 6800GT in my pentium D machine witch is currently running a leadtek 6800GS AGP.

shamino wrote on 2024-03-08, 00:58:

Can this system run a non-graphical stress test (like Prime95 torture test) without issue?

Yup it's rock solid. It's a 3.2GHz LGA775 pentium 641 sitting on an Abit AS8. Good board, good ram, good storage, brand new reliable sirtec PSU.

I'll give voltage probing a shot, thing is, I have no idea what normal running voltage is for this card, or where to probe for voltages.. hopefully I can find this data someware on the web

pentiumspeed wrote on 2024-03-08, 00:44:

The yellowish goo was solder flux. I see this all the time in my work repairing electronics and phones, boards. […]
Show full quote

The yellowish goo was solder flux. I see this all the time in my work repairing electronics and phones, boards.

Heat up the board with 200C hot air station or hair dryer on high, when board is heated enough, wash with 99% alochol and small brush, to scrub off these flux. Flux thins out with heat and alcohol.

See if you can isolate the issue with vram as issue by spot cooling with bagged one ice cube?

Cheers,

It's not flux, it was thermal compound. It did not react to heat or isopropyl alcohol. Blasting it with 280C hot air did nothing. I was able to wash it off with dishwasher soap and warm water. Came right off. Heat and isopropyl only got it smeared all over the PCB.

Socket3 wrote on 2024-03-07, 21:49:

Well, I gave her a good wash and inspected her under the microscope... new paste, fresh pads... but still no dice...

Card will POST, driver installs, no artefacting, everything runs fine in 2d.... Managed to run the first half of the 3dmark 01 "car chase" test, and then it locked up. No black screen this time, it just locked up. It's perfectly happy to sit in desktop, left it idle for 30 mins, brosed the web for 30-40 mins after that, but again, as soon as I run any 3d app it freezes.

Sounds exactly like the countless number of faulty GPU's I've ran across over the years. But that's what happens with the stock coolers on these older nVidia cards. They typically run in the upper 70's under 3D load, and that's really too much for them. The latter-made GF6 series are even more sensitive to this, though nowhere near as bad as the GF7 and 8 series, which are right-smack in the middle of the bumpgate issue.

Re-ball is not going to help it any more than a reflow - it's the solder between the GPU die and the substrate (PCB of the chip) that's starting to fail.
If you do reflow it and you do get it to work, the only way to keep it working fine for any reasonable amount of time would be to ditch the stock cooler and go for something that can handle at least 100 Watts of TDP comfortably and keep the 3D / max load running temperatures under 60C. It's still no 100% guarantee, but IME it vastly increases the chance that the reflown GPU will last afterwards.

And if you don't want to mess with reflowing/reballing, just chuck it back on eBay or some other place like that as TESTED & NOT WORKING with a $0.99 starting bid. Believe it or not, people will still buy these. Just that you won't get as much for it as you would for a working card. Probably going to sell for $10-15, depending on who's looking for such cards at the moment (I used to be one of those people, but have moved across the pond, so stuff from eBay USA is no longer a good deal to me due to shipping charges.)

Before attempting a reflow/reball, try running the benchmark again as you are monitoring the GPU temperature with GPU-Z (better yet, have GPU-Z -LOG- the temperatures.) Then you might be able to see at which point it crashes.
Better yet, here's another test, run a 3D game of your choice that loads the GPU, but not to 100%. For this, I prefer Valve's Source engine -based games and I impose an FPS limit through autoexec script. This allows me to keep GPU at a relatively steady load that I like... and relatively steady / lower temperature. If your card doesn't crash at this lower load, you most certainly have a dying GPU. RAM is less likely to get affected by this test, so if the test changes nothing, then one or more RAM chips might be conking out under load.

You can also use MSI Afterburner / Riva Tuner Statistics Server to limit FPS. I use this on non-Source -based games. In fact, I've started using this a lot more lately, due to being a bit lazy and not feeling like modding / putting an aftermarket cooler on all of my older cards. So in order to keep them cool(er) with their stock heatsink, I limit the FPS to keep GPU TDP lower... which in turn keeps the GPU temperatures lower.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2024-03-08, 00:44:

See if you can isolate the issue with vram as issue by spot cooling with bagged one ice cube?

No offense, but that's a great way to RUIN any piece of electronic hardware that's not protected from moisture.
A bagged cube of ice will start to form condensation on the bag and then if any of this moisture makes it to the wrong places, you'll do a ton more damage.

The more "proper" way to spot-cooling is canned air turned upside down... though there are instances where I would advise against this too.

shamino wrote on 2024-03-08, 00:58:

Try swapping to a different molex connector from another harness, unless you know the one you're using is good with other high powered cards.

Honestly, that's another myth that I keep seeing on various gaming forums, at least when it comes to these older GPUs. With new gen stuff pulling 200+ Watts and being a lot more sensitive voltage droop (due to current monitoring on the 12V rail - something that the GF6 series don't have... or even GPU power monitoring for that matter), I can understand.

That said, if the connector is dropping so much voltage because of a bad connection, you would see the connector melt / darken pretty quickly.

momaka wrote on 2024-03-08, 08:40:

Sounds exactly like the countless number of faulty GPU's I've ran across over the years. But that's what happens with the stock […]
Show full quote

Socket3 wrote on 2024-03-07, 21:49:

Well, I gave her a good wash and inspected her under the microscope... new paste, fresh pads... but still no dice...

Card will POST, driver installs, no artefacting, everything runs fine in 2d.... Managed to run the first half of the 3dmark 01 "car chase" test, and then it locked up. No black screen this time, it just locked up. It's perfectly happy to sit in desktop, left it idle for 30 mins, brosed the web for 30-40 mins after that, but again, as soon as I run any 3d app it freezes.

Sounds exactly like the countless number of faulty GPU's I've ran across over the years. But that's what happens with the stock coolers on these older nVidia cards. They typically run in the upper 70's under 3D load, and that's really too much for them. The latter-made GF6 series are even more sensitive to this, though nowhere near as bad as the GF7 and 8 series, which are right-smack in the middle of the bumpgate issue.

Re-ball is not going to help it any more than a reflow - it's the solder between the GPU die and the substrate (PCB of the chip) that's starting to fail.
If you do reflow it and you do get it to work, the only way to keep it working fine for any reasonable amount of time would be to ditch the stock cooler and go for something that can handle at least 100 Watts of TDP comfortably and keep the 3D / max load running temperatures under 60C. It's still no 100% guarantee, but IME it vastly increases the chance that the reflown GPU will last afterwards.

And if you don't want to mess with reflowing/reballing, just chuck it back on eBay or some other place like that as TESTED & NOT WORKING with a $0.99 starting bid. Believe it or not, people will still buy these. Just that you won't get as much for it as you would for a working card. Probably going to sell for $10-15, depending on who's looking for such cards at the moment (I used to be one of those people, but have moved across the pond, so stuff from eBay USA is no longer a good deal to me due to shipping charges.)

Before attempting a reflow/reball, try running the benchmark again as you are monitoring the GPU temperature with GPU-Z (better yet, have GPU-Z -LOG- the temperatures.) Then you might be able to see at which point it crashes.
Better yet, here's another test, run a 3D game of your choice that loads the GPU, but not to 100%. For this, I prefer Valve's Source engine -based games and I impose an FPS limit through autoexec script. This allows me to keep GPU at a relatively steady load that I like... and relatively steady / lower temperature. If your card doesn't crash at this lower load, you most certainly have a dying GPU. RAM is less likely to get affected by this test, so if the test changes nothing, then one or more RAM chips might be conking out under load.

You can also use MSI Afterburner / Riva Tuner Statistics Server to limit FPS. I use this on non-Source -based games. In fact, I've started using this a lot more lately, due to being a bit lazy and not feeling like modding / putting an aftermarket cooler on all of my older cards. So in order to keep them cool(er) with their stock heatsink, I limit the FPS to keep GPU TDP lower... which in turn keeps the GPU temperatures lower.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2024-03-08, 00:44:

See if you can isolate the issue with vram as issue by spot cooling with bagged one ice cube?

No offense, but that's a great way to RUIN any piece of electronic hardware that's not protected from moisture.
A bagged cube of ice will start to form condensation on the bag and then if any of this moisture makes it to the wrong places, you'll do a ton more damage.

The more "proper" way to spot-cooling is canned air turned upside down... though there are instances where I would advise against this too.

shamino wrote on 2024-03-08, 00:58:

Try swapping to a different molex connector from another harness, unless you know the one you're using is good with other high powered cards.

Honestly, that's another myth that I keep seeing on various gaming forums, at least when it comes to these older GPUs. With new gen stuff pulling 200+ Watts and being a lot more sensitive voltage droop (due to current monitoring on the 12V rail - something that the GF6 series don't have... or even GPU power monitoring for that matter), I can understand.

That said, if the connector is dropping so much voltage because of a bad connection, you would see the connector melt / darken pretty quickly.

The card barely gets to 52C when the system hangs. I'll try limiting FPS as you suggested. If it has a bad ram chip, I do have replacements, however I don't have a hot plate to safely swap larger BGA components, or BGA grids for DDR3 ram. It will be my next purchase tough.