Graphics Card Repair Guide

[sheltem]

Hey, my friend tried fixing my Geforce 7900GT. Unfortunately he tore off the black plastic piece that goes before the capacitor. Now the area around the capacitor shows brown marks (see picture attached), since I tried booting with the capacitor attached. Is my video card screwed?

[empire23]

The black piece of plastic or what is called the "seater" can be easily put back onto the capacitor, just put the legs of the cap back into the holes and then bend the legs. After that you can try again i guess. Remember that to insert the legs back into the seater, they should be at 90 degrees downwards (straight down), then after they're back in the seat, push the legs to 180 degrees so they're level with the board.

You can try resoldering without the seater, but it makes like a little harder because the seater keeps things level. But it is possible.

[sheltem]

Okay so my friend was able to attach a brand new capacitor to my broken 7900GT and the card still shows visual artifacts when booting up. He tried 2 other different capacitors and they all exhibit the same problem. What else could be wrong with the card? The card was working fine before I broke off the capacitor.

[empire23]

First off, you can't just cocok in any capacitor and expect it to work, capacitors to be used in graphics cards should have low ESR, tangent loss and such. Generally what i'm saying it, try to win the Le Mans 24 hours in kancil isn't exactly the best idea ya

Here's my recommendation depending on brand

Sanyo - SEPC series
Sanyo - SVP series
Rubycon - MCZ series
Nichicon - HZ series
NipponChemicon - KZG series

all the above should be able to take the place of the broken cap but i do recommend the Sanyos above the other due to the high mArms values capacitors in graphics card are subjected to.

And one last thing, sometimes even the best of us get the polarity wrong, remember the black bar on the capacitor (or marking) always points away from positive.

[The_YongGrand]

I'm not sure about that, but could my friend's Radeon 9800 card is already not working at all be revived by replacing the caps?

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by The_YongGrand

I'm not sure about that, but could my friend's Radeon 9800 card is already not working at all be revived by replacing the caps?

I don't think so.

It depends on the problem. If he fried the VPU itself, there's not much point in changing the capacitors, right?

[sheltem]

Originally Posted by empire23

First off, you can't just cocok in any capacitor and expect it to work, capacitors to be used in graphics cards should have low ESR, tangent loss and such. Generally what i'm saying it, try to win the Le Mans 24 hours in kancil isn't exactly the best idea ya

Here's my recommendation depending on brand

Sanyo - SEPC series
Sanyo - SVP series
Rubycon - MCZ series
Nichicon - HZ series
NipponChemicon - KZG series

all the above should be able to take the place of the broken cap but i do recommend the Sanyos above the other due to the high mArms values capacitors in graphics card are subjected to.

And one last thing, sometimes even the best of us get the polarity wrong, remember the black bar on the capacitor (or marking) always points away from positive.

Hi, I was unclear in my previous post. What I meant was that I ordered 5 of the same capacitors and my friend tried 3 of them. My friend made sure that the capacitor matched up with the one he was replacing. However in light of your previous statement, I am not sure if the replaced capacitor are adequate for my video card. Could you take a look at the capacitors that I ordered? I really appreciate all the help you are giving me.

[empire23]

The capacitors you bought are throughhole, meaning they have legs that need to go through holes in the board and if the picture you posted above is correct, you might need to reorder SMD versions.

And make sure you don't get the polarity wrong, i can't stress this enough, plug in the polarity in wrongly and it might just fry your card or burn out the other capacitors in parallel or series with the wrongly placed capacitor.

[BSharp]

Hello all, i was wondering if anyone could help me with a little problem of mine, i'll tell my little story to what happend.

Ok, so it was the day that i decided to fix a problem with my harddrives head controller, i noticed that i needed a star screwdriver to be able to fix the problem, so i popped out to get a tool set, when i got back home my pc was packed away in its case again along with the harddrive, when i opened it up to my shock i saw the harddrive lent on my graphics card , i took a look to see if i could see any damage, and i couldn't believe what i saw, a tiny little piece so very small had broken off, i booted up to see if it would work but it did not, it gave a little beep , i still have the little piece that broke off, but it has a little damage one of its legs come off, look at the pic below to know what i'm talking about because i don't know what that part is called.

i hope u can help me .

Below is not my graphics card it is similer, also the mettalic strip off the board seams to have ripped off along with it and as i said before one of its legs has torn off .

[empire23]

Originally Posted by BSharp

Hello all, i was wondering if anyone could help me with a little problem of mine, i'll tell my little story to what happend.

Ok, so it was the day that i decided to fix a problem with my harddrives head controller, i noticed that i needed a star screwdriver to be able to fix the problem, so i popped out to get a tool set, when i got back home my pc was packed away in its case again along with the harddrive, when i opened it up to my shock i saw the harddrive lent on my graphics card , i took a look to see if i could see any damage, and i couldn't believe what i saw, a tiny little piece so very small had broken off, i booted up to see if it would work but it did not, it gave a little beep , i still have the little piece that broke off, but it has a little damage one of its legs come off, look at the pic below to know what i'm talking about because i don't know what that part is called.

i hope u can help me .

Below is not my graphics card it is similer, also the mettalic strip off the board seams to have ripped off along with it and as i said before one of its legs has torn off .

You mean even the metallic strip on the board (which contacts the board to the legs) has been torn off? That's what we call a board pad and yeah, they're pretty fragile and hard to repair. But i guess there's still hope.

Before you start on anything, rememeber that you want to connected the board to the component without touching anything else.

Add a blob of solder on the pad or the metallic strip (once you replace it in position), hold the broke leg with a tweezer and push it into the blob of solder. Pull back the iron and let it cool while holding the leg in place. Once the joint has cooled, bend the leg back into the body of IC, then solder the body to the leg, making sure none of the other pins have been touched by your solder work.

Hope it helps

One of my capacitors for thr MSI nx7950gx2 has came off my card and one of its legs is missing. Needless to say I need to replace it. It is the one in the front of the group of three capacitors. What type of capacitor is it? When I tried to find a replacement, I was totally lost. They had all sorts of capacitors listed aluminum, flow thru, etc..

All that can made out on the capacitor due to a black marker on the can is:

a 63D
180
16v

Can someone help me find a replacement? I have a friend that can fix it if I can get the right replacement part.

It's probably an aluminium organic electrolyte capacitor (SMD style), because IIRC the GX2's caps don't have vents.

The rating should be
180 uf @ 16 volts tolerance

Although i can't really give you the exact replacement part (63D doesn't seem to be a known series number/designation to me, but i bet it's nipponchemicon)

But try this part number

APXE160ARA181MHA0G

Try mouser.com/Alliedelec.com/digikey.com , for the parts.

It should work just fine as the capacitor above follows the 8mm diamter size as the one on the GX2 (do help me confirm the diameter of the broken cap in mm.

Hope it helps