Was it a Radeon 9700 Pro? :p

Yeah I've had cards die quickly. Such is life, some cards and chips just love to die.

pancakepuppy wrote on 2022-03-30, 00:43:

Was it a Radeon 9700 Pro? :p

Yeah I've had cards die quickly. Such is life, some cards and chips just love to die.

Ah yes .. the one GPU from ATI that loves to die if you so much as look in its general direction. (The 9800 isnt much better either)

It's an additional risk when expensive postal returns are involved.

Some video cards go bad by exhibiting intermittent failures. I’d send it back if you can.

It's a FireGL 8700 (Radeon 8500). I removed the tantalum and it tests fine. There is still a low resistance between the pads but it's not a dead short and this may be normal for the circuit. I don't have another card to compare.

Unless I can find a bad capacitor, there is nothing visibly wrong with it. No missing surface mount components or broken traces.

Very odd.

could be a thermal issue, old hardened/cracked thermal paste

If this was the case, it would still turn on.

Radeon 8500 was not known to suddenly die ... bad luck? It was a cool running card. Cooler was usually epoxied to the GPU like on Voodoos.

pancakepuppy wrote on 2022-03-30, 00:43:

Was it a Radeon 9700 Pro? :p

Yeah I've had cards die quickly. Such is life, some cards and chips just love to die.

Don't remind me 🙁

Last 9700 Pro I had died back in early 2020 all because I wanted to repaste it because I was worried it would die. Repasted it and it died..........

mastergamma12 wrote on 2022-03-30, 05:28:

pancakepuppy wrote on 2022-03-30, 00:43:

Was it a Radeon 9700 Pro? :p

Yeah I've had cards die quickly. Such is life, some cards and chips just love to die.

Don't remind me 🙁

Last 9700 Pro I had died back in early 2020 all because I wanted to repaste it because I was worried it would die. Repasted it and it died..........

I feel for you .

I successfully de-shimmed and repasted my Dell OEM 9700 but it was a serious PITA, and I'm not referring to the flat bread...

Someone on Vogons suggested using WD40 to soften the thermal compound/cement and that was indeed very good advice.

mastergamma12 wrote on 2022-03-30, 05:28:

Don't remind me 🙁

Last 9700 Pro I had died back in early 2020 all because I wanted to repaste it because I was worried it would die. Repasted it and it died..........

With stock cooler .... it died exactly because you repasted it 😀. Original TIM fills some space between die and heatsink. Paste is not dense/thick enough to do that. Once you remove original heatsink you have to de-shim it or use 3rd party cooler.

darry wrote on 2022-03-30, 06:58:

Someone on Vogons suggested using WD40 to soften the thermal compound/cement and that was indeed very good advice.

Depends on the state of original TIM. I have tried everything (including WD). If card was not used a lot, everything goes off clean with just some preheating with hair dryer (TIM still had elasticity). For worst cases (hardened TIM) I used preheating + toothpicks or razor blade to scrape it off. Nitro thinner may help more then WD, but generally I didn't see any difference between the two. It took hour or 2 to get most of it off ... like 98% or so.

stef80 wrote on 2022-03-30, 07:59:

With stock cooler .... it died exactly because you repasted it :). Original TIM fills some space between die and heatsink. Past […]
Show full quote

mastergamma12 wrote on 2022-03-30, 05:28:

Don't remind me 🙁

Last 9700 Pro I had died back in early 2020 all because I wanted to repaste it because I was worried it would die. Repasted it and it died..........

With stock cooler .... it died exactly because you repasted it 😀. Original TIM fills some space between die and heatsink. Paste is not dense/thick enough to do that. Once you remove original heatsink you have to de-shim it or use 3rd party cooler.

darry wrote on 2022-03-30, 06:58:

Someone on Vogons suggested using WD40 to soften the thermal compound/cement and that was indeed very good advice.

Depends on the state of original TIM. I have tried everything (including WD). If card was not used a lot, everything goes off clean with just some preheating with hair dryer (TIM still had elasticity). For worst cases (hardened TIM) I used preheating + toothpicks or razor blade to scrape it off. Nitro thinner may help more then WD, but generally I didn't see any difference between the two. It took hour or 2 to get most of it off ... like 98% or so.

It wasn't the TIM (there was a lot that I applied and it filled the area very well), I think I cracked the die trying to remove the old paste because when I went to reinstall the card, I was greeted with something that looked like this immediately

If I ever get another 9700 Pro (which I doubt I ever will), I'm going to be very careful and not bother repasting it.

What really sucked is I wanted to put the card in my Dimension 8200 and when that didn't go well, I just put the computer in storage and it's been in there since then.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-03-30, 00:55:

It's an additional risk when expensive postal returns are involved.

If you received an item that is not as described (i.e.: sold as new/used instead of "for parts or not working"), then you DON'T need to pay for postal returns, so they might as well cost a million dollars.

Now, in the OP's case, this is a tricky one, but I would say that he should still reach out to the seller for a refund (if the item was not sold as defective).

bloodem wrote on 2022-03-30, 08:34:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-03-30, 00:55:

It's can be an additional risk when expensive postal returns are involved.

If you received an item that is not as described (i.e.: sold as new/used instead of "for parts or not working"), then you DON'T need to pay for postal returns, so they might as well cost a million dollars.

I was discussing the OP's general question "Has anyone else had an experience of a used part dying suddenly after receipt?". Some of the world's marketplaces work differently, in which case it can certainly be an issue, or be abused. Obviously not in his particular case, since it was ebay.

A million dollars only gets you cheap shipping these days! A back berth on the Evergiven.

Now after having read the comments in this thread about the R9700/R9800 cards I don't dare touch my Radeon 9800XL 🤣
Maybe I'll just keep it there and sometimes look at it, wondering what if...😢

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-30, 03:31:

If this was the case, it would still turn on.

well not if it died due to a thermal issue 😁

darry wrote on 2022-03-30, 06:58:

I successfully de-shimmed and repasted my Dell OEM 9700 but it was a serious PITA, and I'm not referring to the flat bread...

Someone on Vogons suggested using WD40 to soften the thermal compound/cement and that was indeed very good advice.

I had no idea this was a thing. Does this also work for the dried up paste that's sometimes left on top of some 486 CPUs?

In the before times (fall of 2019) when used graphics cards from Chinese vendors on Ebay were plentiful and affordable, I bought a AMD HD 7xxx something for a S775 WinXP build. When I received it, it had some issues giving me a display , then finally wouldn't give me a display at all. Before asking for a refund, I went as far as pulling the heat sink assembly off to apply new thermal paste, and that's how I discovered what had happened. My understanding was that these cards were from Chinese cyber cafes, and it seems they have people reapply thermal paste. They are likely working in a hurry to do as many cards as possible in a short time, and when they put the heat sink back on the thermal pad for one of the memory chips got doubled up on one chip, while another ended up with no pad. This prevented the heat sink from making proper contact with the die, which promptly overheated and fried. There was a back and forth until I was finally able to prove to their satisfaction that the card was dead, and they finally gave me a refund.

The heatsink is cemented on and is making good contact. That's not the problem.