New 680m gtx 4gb lasted half an hour!!!!!!

Hi all well I installed the above GPU to replace my dead 6990m (been resurrected in oven now)

I bought it off a member here billyxq and fitted it yesterday. All went well until I did a benchmark in Rome 2

Right, heres a break down on what I did.

1. Installed the latest bios for my laptop. Got this off the NotebookReview.com site. Pretty easy and all went well.
2. Deleted my ati drivers and used ccleaner as suggested.
3. Shut down laptop. Pulled power and removed battery.
4. Fitted antistatic band and. Took off the back cover. Removed old gpu and cleaned up heatsinks with alcohol wipes.
5. Cleaned up gpu, fitted new thermal pads to heatsink, and checked for a good fit.
5. Repasted gpu, fitted heatsink, refitted back cover.
6..Booted up laptop, went into bios. No vga showing. Exited bios. Windows boots fine.
7. Load he monitor. Gpu found, no drivers installed yet though.
8. Download latest whql drivers from. Nvidia website, download modded inf from laptop2go website.
9. Install fine. Reboot laptop windows boots fine and hw monitor shows card. 4gb 680m gtx.
10. Surf the Web for half an hour or so, idle temps showing 40c. (house ambient temp is about 23c)
11. Load up Rome 2 benchmark. All is going well for a few mins. Temp staying stable around the 63c mark at 98% load.
12. Screen flashes green once and laptop screen dies.
13. Power down laptop. Press power button for 15secs to reset try again. Laptop powers up, screen is on but no display, don't even get a bios screen.
14. Decide to check gpu by going through the whole process again by installing 6990m again, laptop boots first time.
15. Confirmed something is wrong with 680m gtx.

Haven't tried it in another laptop as I don't have access.
Haven't reset cmos, but no need now I think as laptop is OK with the 6990m fitted.
Tried external monitor. Hdmi cable. Works fine with 6990m. 680m same
as laptop.

If anyone can help that would be great, is it proper fried?



Jim

 

Hi,

It looks like the card is fried... That's strange because everything you've done has been fine... I don't think anything can be done..

 

How did you arrange the thermal pads?

 

I used this guide on techinferno as reference. Spent ages checking for good contact before final fitment.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&s...x-_52vOcFDbc3AdFg&sig2=BPfvXuJNRqJj4xDA2Kgk9Q

 

Yeah it looks like you did everything properly.. I think it was just bad luck or something which caused it to get fried... Can you take some pictures of the card? Maybe we can try identifying where the failure occured...

 

Seems you got unlucky

 

I'm with Meaker - thermal pads + a little bad luck maybe. I did the install on my old m18xR1 (680m gtx) then moved the m18x's 580mgtx to my m17xr2 and needless to say alot of crossing the old fingers each time I booted them up. The GPUs each seem to have slightly different deck heights on the memory chips, so the thermal pads had to be eyeballed a little bit. Did you use the AMD heatsink with the 680m? Not sure if that makes a difference but ...

 

Oh no...... It's not looking too good then!!!
Yeah used an amd heatsink. Had a check first and fitment was good and a most people coming from a 6990m seem to use there old one.
I paid attention to the heights, as it said in the guide to get good fitment. Also gutted as now I've wasted 20quid on thermal pads as well!!! I'll take some pictures of the front and back. Is photobucket good here as that's where I usually upload them to.

 

AMD heatsink shouldn't be a problem.. Have you tried cleaning the card and MXM slot contacts and installing it again? If that doesn't work, bake it..

 

I'll try cleaning it but it was fine as it was working, and the slot is fine as my 6990m is fine. Reluctant to bake as I'm hoping Billyxq my be kind enough to take it back off me. If it had been a few weeks down the line I would think it rude to ask him but as I've only had half an hour out from it... Well!!!!! I'm. Hoping I can fix it, the annoying thing is he checked it prior to posting. One concern was it was loose in the box and was shipped to the UK from Australia so God knows what the postal service did with it.

 

Can some one explain how card can be fired if there is and temperature control system relied with EC. Or now? Shouldn't pc do down if temp rise some critical point? Just asking for know to future work with this type of issues.

 

OP,

Did you use thermal pads on vram?
What vbios are you running on the 680m?

 

Yeah, used new pads on the ram and got the seller to flash it with vbios Clevo 80.04.29.00.01 before shipping. That was confirmed by a screen shot and i also checked when I installed it.

 

Pretty sure something fried : a short because some thermal paste reached a connector, a pin, thermal pad not fitted correctly (incorrect height is the biggest card buster in my opinion)

Did you use sticky properly measured thermal pads ? Did you pile up several 0.5mm pads (not good) ?

In my opinion, maybe some of that previous/current thermal paste (sometimes conductive !) reached a spot that shouldn't have been reached by the thermal paste; happened with my bro's 295X2 when he installed the watercooling faceplate..

sorry for your card, it must be nerve breaking to lose a card so soon, once again my bro's 295X2 lasted two days before RMA return ^^, i saw how one feels about that...

 

I reused some of the fat pads and purchased some 1.0/1.5mm pads. Worst thing is I spent ages sorting the pads out so it fitted well.

I'm gutted, specially as Billy, the bloke I bought it from is having his own dramas with his new GPU!!!

Update : got permission from. Billy to try and bake the card. Did that this morning and unfortunately no joy (was optimistic as I resurrected my 6990m that way!!)

So it looks like it's go no get sent back to eurocom to fix it..... Opinions welcome. Or cut losses and sell it for spares and repair on fleebay.

 

A capacitor may have been knocked off in transit or solder joints were weakened from the large temperature changes of cargo transport, then when the card is fired up a connection or component then gives out. It can and does happen from time to time.

 

Seems plausable mate. I definitely think something happened in transit as Billy checked it prior to dispatch and I took extreme care fitting it. Luck of the draw I suppose.
I must say Billy has been great and has offered me a refund for the card. Even though it's was pretty much been DOA he tried to help and has been very understanding.

 

Yeah it looks like it got damaged in transit.. I've installed my 970M and thank go I didn't have those issues...

 

Wow that's really good of him