Kirby's aftermarket GPU cooler adventure

[Kirby]

So I just had the most epic adventure ever, filled with stupidity and retardation that needs to be told.



So I bought this really nice GeLID dual fan GPU cooler to offset the 4890's awesome running temps, jumping out on a limb and hoping that XFX kept to the reference PCB design for the card.

So I drag my case out of it's spot under my desk and pull the video card to begin. I get the stock cooler off and start affixing the little aluminium heatsinks that came w/ the cooler. After I get all the heatsinks installed, I get all the mounting hardware set up (The cooler is made to attach to about a dozen or so ATi and nVidia cards, so it's got a lot.) and get ready to attach the new cooler.

OHNOEZ. XFX decided to stray from the board design ATi gave them, and they moved ONE FRIGGING CAPACITOR from it's normal spot near the DVI plugs on the card, to almost right next to the GPU. That put that capacitor squarely where one the heatpipes coming off the cooper block goes. Great.

So I bust out the ever trusty modders best friend, the Dremel tool. After a little buzzsawing and filing, I get a small area of the aluminium fins cut away, just enough to take a pair of pliers and carefully re-bend part of the heatpipe, to avoid said capacitor.


Great success! It fits!


So I'm really tooting my own horn at this point, happy as shit I bent the heatpipe without breaking it's seal. So I re-thermal paste it, clean it up, take an air-compressor to the whole case. I then grab the card, intent on plugging it back into the mobo and being done with this escapade, when tragedy strikes.

With the added vertical room the card is now taking up from the twin fan setup, the fans are squarely in the way of the SATA plug area on my mobo. It blocks off 4/6 SATA ports, and that doesn't do me any good, considering I use 5/6 of them already.

Well, fuck.


So I rip the cooler off in disgust, then ribht before I reattach the stock cooler, I notice this one little tiny(Could fit probably 4 of them end to end on a pencil eraser) ATC style capacitor

that got halfway ripped off the PCB by the screw posts that go through the PCB to get bolted onto the backside of the card..

The half that's still attached is only hanging on by part of the copper trace on the PCB, and it's only still attached because the other end was attached to a 2nd capacitor of the same style.








So after taking the GeLID cooler outside and having a quick round of "How many rifle slugs can Kirby unload into a peice of computer hardware before there's not enough of it left together to shoot anymore", I come back in and re-assess the damage to the card.



Capacitor broken off and barely hanging onto board? Check.

Card in this state, a $200 paperweight? Check.



Where's my goddamned soldering iron.....




I've yet to open a game to test if this repair job actually worked, or if the capacitor was actually damaged... but right now I'm posting this while viewing it on a monitor being driven by said video card.

It's voltage stable enough for 2D at least, we'll see if it got fucked when I try to game...


Ugh.


-EDIT-

HL2 @ 4xAA 16xAF @ 120FPS? Check.


Video card running stable at higher-than-normal operating temps for the past 10 minutes? Check.



Awwww shit yeahhhhhhhh.

[at0m]

It was probably just a filter capacitor, especially if it was mounted to the backside of the board. They're usually redundant enough that one missing isn't a huge deal. They stabilize the bus voltage against rapid changes in current draw (such as a processor switching transistors rapidly), but they're also typically overengineered (waaaaay more of them than is strictly needed) to give a decent margin of safety.

[Kirby]

It was probably just a filter capacitor, especially if it was mounted to the backside of the board. They're usually redundant enough that one missing isn't a huge deal. They stabilize the bus voltage against rapid changes in current draw (such as a processor switching transistors rapidly), but they're also typically overengineered (waaaaay more of them than is strictly needed) to give a decent margin of safety.

Front side of the board, about 1/16" away from GPU.

[at0m]

Did you say you successfully soldered it back on? Because if the land/trace/pad it was soldered to went with it, there's nothing connecting it electrically to the circuit it was attached to before. The cap itself is probably undamaged; short of pulling a cap off the end they're hard to break.

Its tough to say without seeing a pic of the board what the cap was for, though.

[HeK]

Did you say you successfully soldered it back on? Because if the land/trace/pad it was soldered to went with it, there's nothing connecting it electrically to the circuit it was attached to before. The cap itself is probably undamaged; short of pulling a cap off the end they're hard to break.

Follow your traces and check with a multimeter.... if you have good eyes.

[Kirby]

Did you say you successfully soldered it back on? Because if the land/trace/pad it was soldered to went with it, there's nothing connecting it electrically to the circuit it was attached to before. The cap itself is probably undamaged; short of pulling a cap off the end they're hard to break.

Its tough to say without seeing a pic of the board what the cap was for, though.

The setup was like this

Damaged side of broken off cap 
                        |                       
                        \/
                  |CAP|
_____|CAP|_/            ______________|    GPU    |



Part of the pad that side of the cap was attached to survived, I had a clear view of copper.

The cap itself was damaged, part of the ceramic near the end-cap was chipped, I checked with a mag.glass and could see the damage, but it wasn't s bad to alter it's capacitance too drastically unless it's a seriously high value cap. The trace in between the damaged cap and it's homie next to it was the only thing that kept the broken off cap from going poof into the wind.





HeK, electronics of this size, and specifically this size ATC cap is what I solder to shit, stacked on top of other ATC caps, ATC caps balanced in an offset brick and mortar style pattern w/ air gaps for a living. I'm p.used to small scale stuff, I've got sharp eyes, that's the only reason I even noticed the cap in the first place. Checking the continuity of the repair was SOP after I was done.