8800GTX video corruption

[Mach1.9pants]

Hi,
I have just recieved my 2 8800GTX's and immediately ripped of the (really rubbish frog stickered) stock heat-sink/fan. I replaced both with DD full cover blocks, set up with thermal pads and AS5 as instructed by DD. After faffing with the bloody small gap between both cards in SLI, I loaded the water cooling loop and started up. So far so good...
However straight away on boot, the screen is corrupted, showing lines and stuff across the BIOS loading screen. The Asus 'AI' image is repeated and corrupt. When loading into windows XP it is also corrupted and at some points has a few random bars with funny little images on them (smiley faces, hearts, letters, numbers, symbols- no I am not on drugs!). Then into windows, corrupt desktop image and even when I can access the screen dislays and set it too 1920x1200 it is still stays in VGA mode.
So I try a little toubleshooting..
I managed to remove the lower card from the pci-e slot (hard with the very short piece of tubing between the 2!) and rebotted with just the top card in. Worked OK. So I then did the same with the bottom card in and the top card out and all I get was beeps from the BIOS; I have had problems with other cards when only 1 in the lower slot but not this bad.
Now this says to me that I somehow knackered the bottom card when I put the waterblock on, and what I think I will have to do is remove the watercooling, put it back together and hope that the supplier will give me another- not noticing that I have voided the warranty! However I would really like to get the whole thing going without that hassle
SO, can anybody help? Sorry it is a long story but I tried to cover what went wrong to give any tech genius's (?) geni (?) the best shot at helping.
Thanks in advance for any help
M1.9P
ps I have a 850W silverstone PSU so hopefully it is not that

[Taffer]

I feel bad for you man...how obvious is it that it's been tinkered with? Were you able to get it back pretty close to stock? Was it working OK before you started your mods? I was not sure by the story. I had a similar error a few years back and was able to get it replaced easily when I explained the symptoms, but it was still a stock card a the time. I don't know if there is any wizardry you could pull off, but I'd say it's probably toast. If it was that way out of the box it could be a bad/cold solder joint on the board or a bad chip...any of a 1,000 things. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you though Mach. The silver lining is that the other card still screams by itself!

[Mach1.9pants]

I feel bad for you man...how obvious is it that it's been tinkered with? Were you able to get it back pretty close to stock? Was it working OK before you started your mods? I was not sure by the story. I had a similar error a few years back and was able to get it replaced easily when I explained the symptoms, but it was still a stock card a the time. I don't know if there is any wizardry you could pull off, but I'd say it's probably toast. If it was that way out of the box it could be a bad/cold solder joint on the board or a bad chip...any of a 1,000 things. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you though Mach. The silver lining is that the other card still screams by itself!

Thanks man, the single card does rock (and I have OC'd it to 680/2040! without effort). Yeah I should have tested b4 removal:slapass: but oh well to impatient. Insurance will cover some of it if the manufacturer doesn't! I just need to get some thermal tape to replace the stck stuff and who knows I might get a new one.
I have narrowed it down to one card which boots but gives rubbish across the screen even in the BIOS (including showing bits of the boot up splash screen over the set up pages?!).
Any way the pc is off and running so I'm off to play Oblivion at max settings with one card- I hope!
But if anyone does have an idea to help I would be really grateful....

[Taffer]

I think they can tell anyway if the card voltages were messed with and exceeded their set parameters...if the voltages did not, you may still be lucky! The time I sent my card back it was fairly painless and if I remember correctly they may have even sent me out a new one in good faith. I e-mailed them my problem and they replied quickly asking me to update my drivers first, but when I told them it would not make a difference because it was doing it before the hard drive was even accessed and was started during the very first image on the screen, they sent me a replacement with the understandable clause that if I don't return the bad one I'd be charged for the 2nd card.

Please post the outcome on the boards, I'd like to know the rest of the story.

[Mach1.9pants]

Great news. I sent the card back and told the store I purchased it from what had happend. They looked at it, said it wasn't my fault and have sent off for a replacement. However since the same brand of card is not in stock, and might not for a while, they are sending me a different brand so I don't have to wait around
Thank you http://www.supercheappc.biz/site/ The support (on line chat) has been awesome, helpful and a good laugh:toast:
Definately recommend them for the kiwis out there:D

[GloryField]

uh, so you told them you took off the stock hsf, put water cooling on it, broke it, and they replaced it for u?

wow

[Mach1.9pants]

uh, so you told them you took off the stock hsf, put water cooling on it, broke it, and they replaced it for u?

wow

Almost, it was already broke but I didn't do it guv'nor

yep WOW

[LazyBum]

However straight away on boot, the screen is corrupted, showing lines and stuff across the BIOS loading screen. The Asus 'AI' image is repeated and corrupt. When loading into windows XP it is also corrupted and at some points has a few random bars with funny little images on them (smiley faces, hearts, letters, numbers, symbols- no I am not on drugs!)


I recently had a strange experience like that with my 8800gtx. I know the cooling was good, I had my Swiftech MCW60 waterblock on the GPU, swiftech MCW14 ramsink kit on the ram and such, and a 80mm fan blowing on the ram. Everything was working great, until I woke up one morning and found my machine had a mysterious BSOD overnight.

I had several more random crashes, and then soon my machine was acting like yours, with the the crazy graphical corruption. I tried reseating the card, thinking it didn't get inserted quite right after I removed it to tinker with the ramsinks. Reseating didn't help, still had the crazy characters and lines across the screen, so I pulled the card and reattached the factory cooler so I could RMA the card. After I had replaced the factory cooler I realized that there were a couple of files I would need to transfer over to my laptop, so I put the card back in and was able to see enough of the screen to copy some files to a flash drive.

Later on that day I decided I wanted to transfer a few more files over to my laptop before I packaged the card up to RMA. I stuck the card into the slot and connected the power and DVI cables, but didn't bother screwing it to the case because it was just a temporary install. Lo and behold, my system booted up completely normally, no corruption or issues at all. It has been working perfectly for 4 days now, not a single issue :confused:

At first I thought the card had puked out on me. When I first got the card I noticed that one of the surface mount components had been soldered on by hand, and not very neatly. That didn't make me feel very comfortable, knowing the card had defects that needed repair before it ever shipped to a customer. However, now it is working fine so that makes me wonder if my hunch about slot misalignment was correct. I have some doubts about that theory, as the motherboard's card retaining mechanism really doesn't allow opportunity for misalignment. So...for now I keep using the card and hope it doesn't act up? :confused:

[Taffer]

Sounds like you may have a cold solder joint...sometimes it hits and makes a good connection and others it may not. I'd send it back via RMA if you can...I'd not risk it.