A Dying Radeon 9800 pro , will they RMA ? Zalman fan added ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andrew Fry
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A

Andrew Fry

I bought a Radeon 9800pro 256mb 256bit Card on ebay a few months ago ,all
been fine until Christmas eve when I suddenly noticed screen curruption ,I
rebooted and was freeked out to see bios screen curruption. Now this card
has been fitted with a Zalman heatsink and fan ,I replaced the original fan
and added new thermal paste ,no change.
So whats my chances of getting a repair under warranty? its a built by ATI
model so there is a 3 year warrenty. Will they notice the fans been messed
about with ? Will they reapir it for a low fixed fee? Will they have
sympathy as Ive just replaced it with a 9600se ???? Any help or advice
would be great ,thanks ,Andrew.
 
Andrew Fry said:
I bought a Radeon 9800pro 256mb 256bit Card on ebay a few months ago ,all
been fine until Christmas eve when I suddenly noticed screen curruption ,I
rebooted and was freeked out to see bios screen curruption. Now this card
has been fitted with a Zalman heatsink and fan ,I replaced the original fan
and added new thermal paste ,no change.
So whats my chances of getting a repair under warranty?
Click to expand...

Do you have your reciept to prove you bought from a valid reseller? Nope...
no warranty.

Are there any mods to the card? Yup... no warranty.

Why do you buy something on eBay and then actually expect to get a
warranty???
 
Noozer said:
Do you have your reciept to prove you bought from a valid reseller?
Nope...
no warranty.

Are there any mods to the card? Yup... no warranty.

Why do you buy something on eBay and then actually expect to get a
warranty???
Click to expand...
I thank you for your reply ,but you dont need a reciept to rma an item as
long as you have a serial number
Click to expand...
thats all you need. Also second hand item do still carry a warranty . Hands
up on the modding thing ,although
im sure this is totally unrelated to the fault.
 
Try reattaching the fan. I've RMA'd 2 9800pro's after using arctic coolers
on them. I held on to the old fan and put it back on and the sent it back.
ATI replaced both of them.
 
Andrew said:
I bought a Radeon 9800pro 256mb 256bit Card on ebay a few months ago ,all
been fine until Christmas eve when I suddenly noticed screen curruption ,I
rebooted and was freeked out to see bios screen curruption. Now this card
has been fitted with a Zalman heatsink and fan ,I replaced the original fan
and added new thermal paste ,no change.
So whats my chances of getting a repair under warranty? its a built by ATI
model so there is a 3 year warrenty. Will they notice the fans been messed
about with ? Will they reapir it for a low fixed fee? Will they have
sympathy as Ive just replaced it with a 9600se ???? Any help or advice
would be great ,thanks ,Andrew.
Click to expand...

You should be able to get RMA if you have (a copy of) the original receipt
or invoice. Replacing the cooler /should/ not be a problem. I mean, you may
replace the cooler of your CPU, too ;)
 
I thank you for your reply ,but you dont need a reciept to rma an item as
long as you have a serial number
thats all you need. Also second hand item do still carry a warranty . Hands
up on the modding thing ,although
im sure this is totally unrelated to the fault.
Click to expand...
I'm absolutely 100% sure it IS related to the fault. Screen corruption
like that is caused by the GPU OVERHEATING. Either the Zallman isn't up
to the job, you used too much thermal paste or it wasn't attached
properly.

Either way, you've no chance.
 
not if you also claim about their faulty fan that came with it............
:)

"It will probably fall off the card while shipping" is what you say while
getting your RMA. A little on the dishonest side maybe, but they make the
good money anyways. If you feel guilty about it, you can always think of it
like this:

New trainee at Ati gets your card. He opens the package, and your note
confirming your RMA and the fan fall out. He yells to his supervisor and
they both take a look. Now the supervisor see's the fact he will have to
earn his money today. So he starts his first stages of investigation. He
scratches his receeding hairline. Then he gives up and tells the trainee to
"go by the troubleshooting checklist". Or, they say "F--K it" and ship the
parts to India where they strip the memory and gold out of it for .23$

End result:
Boss feels better for dictating authority
You feel a little better as your are getting a new card and all
CircuitCity/Bestbuy etc... already make serious bank on your rebate cash
Your wife/girlfriend/dog all get you back as you are not on the pc...
The retailer gets to get their money back as well (they dont do the
warranty/repair stuff)
The guy at circuit city got his 2% commission on top of his blistering
8.95/hr $ kissing his managers and your buttox

The only guy that gets hurt after all is said and done, is the new tech. He
had better make it work or his new BMW payment is in jeopardy, a.k.a. "Your
Fired!" and he feels stupid after all that school he paid for. And, he
will look bad trying to guess how the H--L your fan fell completely off the
die?

2 weeks later you find all of this was to play Doom 3 with a decent
framerate. Isnt that what this whole conversation is "really" about?!

:)

Im aloud to mess with circuit city. They witheld 2,000$ of mine over the
Xmas holidays years ago. I worked for their (at that time) Carmax. They
treat employees (C.C.) like peasants that actually help run their company.
You can only imagine the view they have on the customer. Not what you see
on the commercials. Sorry....I was venting.

good luck,

SL
 
Andrew said:
I bought a Radeon 9800pro 256mb 256bit Card on ebay a few months ago ,all
been fine until Christmas eve when I suddenly noticed screen curruption ,I
rebooted and was freeked out to see bios screen curruption. Now this card
has been fitted with a Zalman heatsink and fan ,I replaced the original fan
and added new thermal paste ,no change.
So whats my chances of getting a repair under warranty? its a built by ATI
model so there is a 3 year warrenty. Will they notice the fans been messed
about with ? Will they reapir it for a low fixed fee? Will they have
sympathy as Ive just replaced it with a 9600se ???? Any help or advice
would be great ,thanks ,Andrew.
Click to expand...

call ATI's rma #, have the card in hand to give the serial #, ask them to
send you a new fan, cause yours is dying, it will arrive in 3 days.
 
Conor said:
I'm absolutely 100% sure it IS related to the fault. Screen corruption
like that is caused by the GPU OVERHEATING. Either the Zallman isn't up
to the job, you used too much thermal paste or it wasn't attached
properly.

Either way, you've no chance.


--
Conor

An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan.
-- George Patton
Click to expand...

Either way, you can't read. He said he had the corruption with stock
heatsink/fan, so tried the Zalman, and no change...
 
Your eBay seller might have overclocked it, and or changed the BIOS on it.
(some 9800 Pro's were actually 360 cor'd XT chips). You could flash them to
XT BIOs' and overclock them.

If your stock fan spins, it is working. If your Zalman works, then it is
more likely card/chip problems.(you are replacing the thermal paste each
time you swap right?)

Do you have a clean power connection to the video card? Not shared with
other drives/devices? Try a molex power connector not shared, if you can.
 
HomeBrewer said:
I had a similiar problem with 9800 pro AIW - turned out to be my power
supply.
Click to expand...

Not owning a 9800 or any or its close relatives (Pro, XT..) but having read
about dead cards (lots of them!) I have noticed that a great deal of the
dead ones have a 3rd party HSF combo installed. Would you guys think that
this goes like this:

- buy 9800 card
- want to squeeze every extra frame out of it -> overclock
- to keep your poor card cool enough buy a 3rd party
super-cooler-gigantic-heatsink-fan-combo
- install it and run

After a while, you get artifacts or simply just a dead card or distorted
picture. HomeBrewer is the guy who saida aloud what I've been thinking -
what if it is not the card but the PSU which just cannot produce any more
enough juice for your card? When overclocking the amount of power needed
rises as well and if your PSU is not good enough, it might start failing and
manifest its ill-being this way? Or maybe the power drawn by the card rises
for some reason (burn-in of the card) after a while? So, is it that the big
pile of dead 9800's are not all actually dead but just in coma or
misunderstood?

People who buy their 9800's to run it as-is, have no need to overclock and
so they don't bother spending another 40 bucks to keep the card cold. Those
who run their cards with the default settings don't meet the dead
card -syndrome since the amount of power needed is also kept in specs. The
burn-in-process would rise it a bit, but still having it in specs would
cause no problems.

So, to find "a good" dead 9800, check the symptoms. If they clearly state
the memory is burned, forget it. But if there are no references to any
physical damages (burnt or lost components etc.) you might want to give it a
try with a good PSU...

Just some ideas, based on my blabbering don't go and spend your college
funds to buy a couple of truckloads of dead 9800's... but what do you think?
 
GinTonix said:
Not owning a 9800 or any or its close relatives (Pro, XT..) but having
read
about dead cards (lots of them!) I have noticed that a great deal of the
dead ones have a 3rd party HSF combo installed. Would you guys think that
this goes like this:

- buy 9800 card
- want to squeeze every extra frame out of it -> overclock
- to keep your poor card cool enough buy a 3rd party
super-cooler-gigantic-heatsink-fan-combo
- install it and run

After a while, you get artifacts or simply just a dead card or distorted
picture. HomeBrewer is the guy who saida aloud what I've been thinking -
what if it is not the card but the PSU which just cannot produce any more
enough juice for your card? When overclocking the amount of power needed
rises as well and if your PSU is not good enough, it might start failing
and
manifest its ill-being this way? Or maybe the power drawn by the card
rises
for some reason (burn-in of the card) after a while? So, is it that the
big
pile of dead 9800's are not all actually dead but just in coma or
misunderstood?

People who buy their 9800's to run it as-is, have no need to overclock and
so they don't bother spending another 40 bucks to keep the card cold.
Those
who run their cards with the default settings don't meet the dead
card -syndrome since the amount of power needed is also kept in specs. The
burn-in-process would rise it a bit, but still having it in specs would
cause no problems.

So, to find "a good" dead 9800, check the symptoms. If they clearly state
the memory is burned, forget it. But if there are no references to any
physical damages (burnt or lost components etc.) you might want to give it
a
try with a good PSU...

Just some ideas, based on my blabbering don't go and spend your college
funds to buy a couple of truckloads of dead 9800's... but what do you
think?
Click to expand...
Well to tell a bit more about the actual card it had a The Zalman ZM80A-HP
passive fan fitted ,also added was a Zalman ZM-OP1,
the card was never overclocked by myself ,and I told it wasnt before I
bought it. I have had about 3 months of no problems ,no artifacts etc, I
did have to reduce agp to x4 from x8 because of vpu crashes (but this is
common) but apart from that it was 100%. If the card was overheating I would
have expected it to show some kind of artifacts during gameplay ,half life2
has given it a good work out , but I only noticed the screen had currupted
reading an email ,I have a 550watt power supply BTW. I will try to RMA on
tuesday if I cant I may try and flash the bios to a 128bit 9800 and hope it
works then ,if not I will have to buy a new card.

Andrew.
 
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