Killed 2 VGA cards
 

I have been trying to water cool my PCI E VGA card. In the process I destroyed two card. I don't know the reason. It can't be mechanical as I was too careful and it isn't static.

That leaves one thing, it overheated and died...? Can that happen?

Re: Killed 2 VGA cards
 

If you're looking for sympathy, you got that!

If you're looking for help, that's pretty hard to do with the info you've provided.

What cards? What blocks? How are you cooling the memory on the cards?

Re: Killed 2 VGA cards
 

Thanks...for ..sympathy.

I am using my own homebrewed Cu WB. It's Cross Drilled block. It has six 1/2inch holes drilled (3 on each side). Two 1/2inch barbs.

First card to die was ASUS EN6600TD/256MB PCI E. Second one is MSI 8600GT/512MB.

Memory chips are passively cooled i.e. it's stock. I noticed that memory chips on these cards do not get hot enough during extreme gaming so I let them as they are.

The only thing that comes to my mind is that perhaps I didn't tighten the WB enough to make proper contact with the GPU. My question: Can GPU die due to overheating? Or will it power down itself like CPU?

With both the cards, after mounting WB following happened:

System booted, displayed POST. Windows logo came up and PC rebooted. After that montior went blank. I turned off the PC by plugging out the power cord. Then again powered up the PC. Monitor displayed 'No signal'. I waited for some time as I noticed HDD light in function. I heard windows startup sound. Then for few seconds I could see desktop. After that, again it went blank displaying 'no signal.

Now there is no display, moitor reports 'no signal'.

Re: Killed 2 VGA cards
 

Possible that you used too much pressure when mounting and damaged the core? Are you sure that they are dead, if not try putting the stock cooler back on and trying them again. I bet that on the CDs that came with those cards (the 8800 for sure) there is a program for monitoring the card's temperature so you can see if you have a good mount, etc.

Re: Killed 2 VGA cards
 

Ben:

I did put the stock cooler following what happened. Still no display. I didn't get a chance to monitor the temp in windows as it happened too fast.

Re: Killed 2 VGA cards
 

Memory chips not needing cooling???? I hope that by passive cooling you are referring to ram sinks.

And no, GPUs neither throttle nor shut down on overheat, they just die.

Re: Killed 2 VGA cards
 

what do you mean by passively cooled stock? If it was passive to begin with then thats fine but if it had cooling before built into the stock cooler then it probobly needs it now too.

Re: Killed 2 VGA cards
 

Both of these card did not have any sink/cooler on RAM.

I had took temp readings of RAM during load and it did not go beyond 40C (used a probe).

8600GT is passively cooled from factory. It has Cu heat pipes and Al heat spreaders with no fans. No sink/cooler on any of the RAM chips.

And due to all that I did not sink the RAM chips.

I got another 8600GT now. I lapped the Cu block, re-designed the mounting and it is working good.

Idle Temp:
GPU = 45C
CPU = 40C
System = 32C
Room = 31C