EVGA 970 FTW Fried

[Tokeegee]

So I got this card already not working from a friend, and I'm wondering if there's anything I can try to do to repair it. The owner described the card as working fine, but one day when he turned his PC on the card sparked and stopped working.

I want to use this as a learning experience to try to fix the card. I currently run a Strix 970 in my main PC, so maybe I could run it along with this card for a nice SLI setup.

 

Here are some picture of the card.

 

This is the back while built

 

Here is the front when taken apart

 

And here are, I assume, the culprits.

I think these are VRM's, but I have very limited knowledge on pcb's. You all would know better than me.

 

Is there any way that I could do anything to fix this, or am I basically screwed?

 

Thanks for any feedback!

[d0ge]

well it doesn't matter anyway because with NVIDIA, you can't use two cards from different developers

if you had two evga or asus cards, you could do it

but you don't

 

sorry

[Tokeegee]

36 minutes ago, d0ge said:

well it doesn't matter anyway because with NVIDIA, you can't use two cards from different developers

if you had two evga or asus cards, you could do it

but you don't

 

sorry

It would still be nice to have another 970 around, I have friends over for LAN's and such. No need to just give up so easily.

 

This is straight from NVIDIA's website, by the way.

 

And This.

[d0ge]

oof rip my life

[Ginger_]

It looks as if only one of those chips is damaged, the other ones just heat scarred. So they could be bad, could be good. Most likely the only replacements you'll be able to find are from another card, you can probably get one for $20-30 on ebay dead. Then, assuming its not more than the 8 solder points you can see, you'll need a special heat nozzle to heat all 8 solder points at the same time, to pull the chip out. Next, I like to then wick away all the old solder, some people try to reuse it. If you keep it in or not, you need a good coating of flux, Then drop the replacement in and try it again.

 

So if you have the tools already and dont mind buying another dead card, go for it. If you don't you'll need to buy a quality set. Definitely dont buy those cheap and crap $10 irons. so between a decent quality iron and solder heat gun, youre looking at $100, plus flux (SRA paste is my personal favorite) and solder, so another $20 there. Also a fine tip if the iron doesnt come with one.

 

 

Also, as long as the SLI fingers line up, brand doesnt matter. Just the GPU

[Tokeegee]

1 minute ago, Ginger137 said:

It looks as if only one of those chips is damaged, the other ones just heat scarred. So they could be bad, could be good. Most likely the only replacements you'll be able to find are from another card, you can probably get one for $20-30 on ebay dead. Then, assuming its not more than the 8 solder points you can see, you'll need a special heat nozzle to heat all 8 solder points at the same time, to pull the chip out. Next, I like to then wick away all the old solder, some people try to reuse it. If you keep it in or not, you need a good coating of flux, Then drop the replacement in and try it again.

 

So if you have the tools already and dont mind buying another dead card, go for it. If you don't you'll need to buy a quality set. Definitely dont buy those cheap and crap $10 irons. so between a decent quality iron and solder heat gun, youre looking at $100, plus flux (SRA paste is my personal favorite) and solder, so another $20 there. Also a fine tip if the iron doesnt come with one.

I have little to no soldering experience. Where would you suggest buying a kit? I'd like to get into it some time, and I was thinking this would be a good project to start with.

[Ginger_]

1 minute ago, Tokeegee said:

I have little to no soldering experience. Where would you suggest buying a kit? I'd like to get into it some time, and I was thinking this would be a good project to start with.

Local hobby shops have them, maybe not nicer ones though. Amazon is my go to though.

 

Hakko is about the best you can get, and they have a great station for about $100. If you have the money its spectacular, but for just every now and then it's hard to justify spending that much. Well for me anyway. Heres the link

 

This one has both the soldering iron and the heat gun, and its cheaper, although I've never used it or heard of the brand, but it seems to have good reviews. For occasional projects and this one, it'll probably get you through just fine. Heres the link 

[Vegetable]

26 minutes ago, d0ge said:

well it doesn't matter anyway because with NVIDIA, you can't use two cards from different developers

if you had two evga or asus cards, you could do it

but you don't

 

sorry

This is 100% wrong. Misinformed. Sorry about that. You can SLI any two cards as long as they share a GPU and VRAM config

[Tokeegee]

Another thing. Any idea if I have to get them same card, or do you think I could find the same chips on a lower end card, for cheap?

[d0ge]

Just now, Vegetable said:

This is 100% wrong. Misinformed. Sorry about that. You can SLI any two cards as long as they share a GPU and VRAM config

ik tokeegee told me already

[Ginger_]

1 minute ago, Tokeegee said:

Another thing. Any idea if I have to get them same card, or do you think I could find the same chips on a lower end card, for cheap?

Possibly, if you can find PCB pics of lower end cards and compare the text on both. More than likely they are different through. By their placement they probably have to do something with the power flow, and every card has different draws.

[Damascus]

Send this bad boy in to evga for a free upgrade.

[Tokeegee]

18 hours ago, Damascus said:

Send this bad boy in to evga for a free upgrade.

Can I really do that?

[Damascus]

13 minutes ago, Tokeegee said:

Can I really do that?

Yep, the reason anyone who's ever rma'd an EVGA gpu worships them is that if you rma a gpu and they have no stock they just give you a comparable or better gpu (I think 970s are replaced by 1060s)

[Tokeegee]

6 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Yep, the reason anyone who's ever rma'd an EVGA gpu worships them is that if you rma a gpu and they have no stock they just give you a comparable or better gpu (I think 970s are replaced by 1060s)

I don't have the serial number though. They said I need that to RMA it when I got it.

[Methos]

That's Surface Mount Technology, hard even if you have thru-hole soldering experience. You don't use a soldering iron to populate/repair small components like that.

[Methos]

12 minutes ago, Tokeegee said:

I don't have the serial number though. They said I need that to RMA it when I got it.

Should be on the card.

[Tokeegee]

1 minute ago, Methos said:

Should be on the card.

The people on the phone told me where it would be but I can't find it on there. Every other number is on it though. Do you see it on there? I have pictures posted for all of it, except the cooler.

[luigi90210]

good luck getting a board schematic, all those chips are hidden under that, if you somehow find another dead card of the exact same model in theory you could take one of the VRMs off that board and solder it on to the broken board using a hot air gun, or if by some work of god you get a board schematic and find out the chip number you could buy a replacement one online and solder that on(and then leak the board schematic online so everyone can see it)

assuming nothing else is damaged from the VRM dying the card should work right away

 

[Methos]

15 minutes ago, Tokeegee said:

The people on the phone told me where it would be but I can't find it on there. Every other number is on it though. Do you see it on there? I have pictures posted for all of it, except the cooler.

You're out of luck. The labels are better than the 500 series had but they still tend to flake.