First post, by Kahenraz
- Rank
- l33t
I bought this GeForce FX 5900 on eBay for a good price a few months ago and I'm just now getting around to looking at it. The listing stated:
Powers up and fan spins when plugged in to motherboard but no display. Strictly for parts. Sold AS IS.
This is not strictly accurate. When I tested it, the entire system powers on briefly with the GPU fan spinning momentarily before everything shuts off on its own. This isn't very helpful and the cause for the problem could be almost anywhere.
Here are some photos of the board:
The board uses Hynix HY5DU283222AF-22 GDDR memory.
I wasn't able to find anything obvious from a visual inspection so I proceeded to remove the heatsink and fan. What I found underneath was a surprise.
The previous owner had sanded down the die to the copper surface. The underside of the painted heatsink had also been sanded to the bare aluminum. I don't know how much of an improvement this would have made over simply replacing the stock cooler with an aftermarket one.
There was also some damage to the surface of the clock crystal as a result of the sanding but I don't know if this caused any damage to it.
A closer inspection under a microscope revealed a significant oxidation and a small amount of corrosion but nothing alarming at first. I had initially intended to wash the board and then try reflowing some of the joints but then I spotted this.
I can only attach 5 images per post. Read on below...