6990m not detected after repaste. Help!!!

I tried reseating the card and reinstalling drivers but it says its not detected in BIOS. Could it be a bad paste job...? This lappy is almost brand new idk why the card would just stop working....any ideas?

When I did the repaste I physically took the card out with the heatsink and then took the heatsink off...do I have to reinstall the card to the bios or something?

 

It's worth doing a power drain after you have physically removed a card to allow a bios/CMOS reset. Unplug, remove battery, press and hold power button for 25-30 seconds, replace battery, plug in and restart. Cures many ills. If that does solve the problem, repeat, but also remove the CMOS battery, the coin cell battery located just above the GPU fan, do the power drain, then replace and button up.

 

I did this and got 5 beeps. I restarted and it booted up normally. I checked bios and 6990 still not detected. My integrated isnt being detected in device manager either but it is in bios. I tried the resource CD and it detected BlackcombXT which im assuming is the 6990m....idk what else to do besides a complete format and reinstall. I feel stupid for taking out the GPU but the heatsink wasnt comming off. I felt like I was gonna break it.

 

This happened to me too Not exactly but close enough. I took it out to try on a m15x and when I put it back in my R3 it was un-detected. Not sure what I did or what happened but I had to do a long phone call with dell that took something like 5 hours I feel to do a replacement. It was finally replaced but what a pain in the .

My suggestions would be to call dell and have it replaced. Don't tell them you repasted it though, just tell them it's all of a sudden undetected.

 

I dont understand how I could have bricked the card just by taking it out...I doubt I could have done any static shock to it (esp since I constantly grounded myself). Ill do the dell replacement thing as a last resort...I dont wanna have to go through that hassle.

Does anyone else have any other ideas plz??

 

There is a guide about unbrick card trick, look it up and try it.

Recovering a notebook GPU from a bad VBIOS flash | Tech|Inferno

 

Is there anything listed under the display adapters in device manager?

 

I wouldn't check there, I know I didn't, I went straight to the Bios.

 

PROBLEM FIXED. All I had to do was put the stock thermal pads back on and reset the bios and boom. Detected. Now is it possible the fujipoly pads werent thick enough to touch the ram on the card? i stacked two on top of each other to make it 1mm....

 

same thing happened to me last night, when i trying to repaste my GPU (remove the old dell's stock thermal pad and apply a new layer of thermal compound on the vRAM)

so i open it up, boot it into windows and noticed windows trying to install the basic VGA driver.
i was like !! did the MX-4 compound killed my card ?
and reboot it again into bios's menu.. no GPU detected.

maybe i screwed it down too hard on the chip,
so i open it up again remove the fan > remove the card, twist it a bit
then put it back in

check bios again > GPU : ATI GFX
phew .. lucky i got mine working again, and the temp is awesome.
glad u fixed your too
i dont think respasting can damage the card in the normal way...

p.s : i think stacking those pad may reduce the heat transfer a bit.

 

Thats good!

Its lame though why do people recommend changing the thermal pads to 0.5mm fujipoly ones then? Maybe the 6990 has bigger pads idk. It seemed like the green ones i replaced were thicker which is why I stacked two 0.5 mm ones. When i did 0.5 mm alone it wasnt touching the vram.

My temps didnt drop though. Even after a repaste so im thinking its because I kept removing the heatsink and not reapplying paste....Or does it take time to settle in?

Edit: Sorry I guess there is a "curing" time for thermal pastes. My temps are slowly starting to drop. ^_^

 

what paste did you use?

 

Do you have to replace the stock pads if you repaste? is it a must? what are the benefits of replacing the pads also if you do repaste?

 

What is the size of the thermal pads for a 6970m ATI card?
1.5 mm, 1 mm, or 0.5 mm???

 

I used ICD 7. My temps on my CPU dropped by about 7-8 degrees under load (4% overclocked) but not on my GPU (Stock) now that I checked again this morning. Im pretty sure its because I took off the heatsink a couple times to mess with the thermal pads. Ill reapply the paste properly soon and see what happens...

I think my biggest issue is that I confused the size of thermal pads with other GPUs on directions to repaste on this forum and some youtube videos. For the 6970m they say to use 0.5 mm thermal pads on the vram so I assumed they were the same for the 6990m. However even when I stacked thermal pads to make them 1.0mm they still failed even though the stock thermal pad on the vram is 1.0mm (measured).

Now im also considering that the thermal pads have nothing to do with my GPU not working and that changing them back to the stock ones and my GPU working again is only a coincidence because I had reseated and rebooted by BIOS for the second time when I did that.

I want to try stacking the fujipoly pads again but Im scared it might crash again...

You dont have to...I think changing the vram thermal pads lowers the vram temps which can reduce your overall gpu temps. I think.

 

Hmm, I was lucky to have a good Dell pad job, so I re-used everything and things work well. Think I get max 75C on Furmark now (PK1), even when my heatsink is not fully screwed in - broken backplate (missing a screw hole bit) - still looking for one...

 

Dyu guys think 77-79 C (It was about the same before) is too high for max GPU temps with my initial repaste with ICD 7 (After a run with Vantage)? My CPU temps didnt go past 72-75 (It was 86 before repaste) so im assuming I did good on this.

Sorry about all these questions and stuff. This is my first repaste and I wanna make sure I did it right :-/

I appreciate all the help

 

I get 70C Max on the GPU after a few 3D Mark Vantage runs (OCed to 860/1060). I'd say your GPU temps are a bit higher than they should be. Try running Furmark for about 5 minutes on stock clocks.

It might take some time for the paste to come into effect, so don't attempt to re-paste again.

Your CPU temps are fine.

 

Just did a 5 min run in Furmark. GPU Temps spiked to 77 on thermal diode in the beginning then stabilized to about 65-67 for the rest of the run.

I think the paste already had enough time to cure especially since the CPU temps have already significantly dropped.

 

Yup, that looks pretty good, go back to gaming.

 

Haha ok. Thanks for all your help man.
+Rep

 

seriously?? thermal pad can cause nondetection in bios?? I thought it was just a pad after all, how can it possibly cause something like this?? (sorry I really don't know how to do all this stuff, but I am surprised )

 

Well thats the thing. I dont know forsure if it was the thermal pads being swapped out was the issue. I'm assuming it was a coincidence that when I put the old pads back and reseated the card and reset the bios that the card was detected. I had honestly tried every trick in the book and the only time the card showed back up was when I put the original pads back. Idk. Maybe it could have just been the reseating of the card. I'll never know until I attempt to re-pad agani. But not anytime soon as my temps are outstanding.

 

No, not at all. In fact, the stock Dell thermal materials are better than aftermarket. Especially, the thermal pads. The pads can be reused, but the material on the GPU die must be replaced with paste when the heat sink is separated from the GPU.

What usually happens is something gets grounded out that should not be. This can destroy video cards. The pads are there for thermal transfer as well as electrical insulation.

 

I bet the grounding was the issue I was having with my 6990m. Lets hope I can get this diagnosed and get the card to function properly when I get it back.

 

Indeed, that's very true.. it would be fatal if you have tell them that you've been repasted it..

 

I changed my thermal pads and repasted the GPU from the first time I got the replacement (ordered separately 6990M). I use the 0.5mm thermal pads and the temps are outstanding... Idle is in between 50-55 degrees celsius and while gaming never seen going above 70... even on the memory... The temps are very similar on the die also and I use aida64 for monitoring. So, it is all the time watched.

I've done this about 2 months back (repasting and changing the pads), no changes in the temps whatsoever from that time... You guys have to be very careful when you do those things and especially use a open, clean place...

 

I used the 0.5 mm pads on my mem and they were not making contact properly. There was no imprint of the memory on the pads like the stock ones when i checked. Thats why i tried stacking them.

 

With furmark my vga temps hit 80C without lifting from back. If i lift the back it goes down to 75C. Is it ok or do i need to reapply again?

 

This happened to me as well. I tried all the steps above including removing the cmos battery and doing a power drain (I used a flat head tip and pushed the battery towards the two silver object. They give and the cmos pops up).

I decided to re-paste again using a card to evenly spread the paste MX-4 on the die. What I did differently;

i took the big thermal pad on the back of the graphics card and aligned it on the motherboard first. Then I put in the card without the heatsink. I noticed that I really had to slide it in in order for it to fit and have a good contact. Then I put on the heatsink and put the screws in. Did another cmos battery-less power drain. Rebooted, checked the bios and the discrete graphics were there. I did not replace any thermal pads. My temps idle in the mid 50's which is nearly a 10 degree improvement.

Hope this helps.

 

The same exact thing happened to me yesterday. After waiting about a week for the thermal paste (coollabratory liquid pro, not ultra), the application was really difficult and the stuff kept clumping together. So after I repasted it and replaced the thermal pads with just 0.5mm fujipoly, my 6970m isn't showing up in BIOS. I've tried flashing it to A12 and that hasn't worked. I must have reseated the thing 10 times at least, and still no results. Any ideas