Well that was odd...

[madcow235]

After a year of running my 9800pro with a vga silencer something catastrophic happened. DUN DUN DUN! Today I was playing guild wars with my happy stock speed 9800pro when all of the sudden i get a hard lock. Reboot comp and the dreaded no beep. reboot again NO BEEP!!!
Oh man I'm stressing now, I open the case to feel a hot breeze. The breeze is emitting from the video card. Thats never good. Out comes the card and i have NEVER felt something so hot come out of a computer in my life. The VGA silencer fins took 20minutes to cool before I could even think about putting this hot thing back in my comp. After some cooling I put it back in and still no boot. So I bring it to my other comp that works fine and again no boot. Well I decided to take off the vga silencer to see if the core was charred, never saw a first hand charred core, I look and there is this brownish dry residue on the bottom of the silencer, the burned ceramique or whatever I used I don't remember. Well thats a pretty good sign its burned up but to humor the god's I put some new ceramique on and tried again.
Thats about the point I started to cry but then I realized I was going to buy a new comp soon anyway so this wasnt that bad, really more incentive to work. RIP 9800Pro you were a good friend and the cause of your death will soon be found out.

My epic story has a point though and that is to ask the question: What exactly happened?
My theorys are :

• After having my comp on for a month straight the heat build up on the vid card just overwhelmed the silencer
• The fan seized up and then unseized or something.
• Thermal paste breakdown.
• The force

Oh and I guess my sigs wrong since there was no magic smoke. Maybe I can recitate it since the lifeforce is still in it.

 

[Silversinksam]

Prior to this catastrophe was there any other hard lockups? Just wondering if the heatsink was making full contact with the core. Sounds like the Silencer fan might have failed.

 

[consumer9000]

My 9700PRO met a similar end with a Arctic Silencer Rev 2 on it some time ago. The fan quit and it cooked itself to death.

 

[Foxie3a]

My 9800 would get pretty hot, even though it was at stock 99.9% of the time. To be honest, I dont think the fan on there does as much as we think. Putting my hand at the back where it is supposed to exhaust, I feel just about nothing. Touching it is hot though.

Did guild wars show any kind of lag while playing it that day? If it's a demanding game, and you didn't experience any kind of lag, I would probably lean towards it being a fluke thing, rather than intense heat for a long period of time. Who knows, maybe the heatsink came off a little. I think you're supposed to take off the shim on the 9800 when using the silencer, I never did though.

 

[nstabl]

i feel your pain --- but drop the past, time for a NEW SYSTEM!! im waiting to see your posts regarding your new sys and updated sig

 

[madcow235]

Amazingly there was no Hard locks or anything but there was some minor artifacting in guild wars, something i thought was from the patch and not an actual artifact.... I really liked that vga silencer because it was quiet but thats definitely my last one.

 

[Foxie3a]

The minor artifacts should have been an eye opener for you. Patches should eliminate artifacts, not create them.

My first VGA Silencer was great, and I'd have one on my X700 now too if it wasn't so hard to find. Cheapest I can find is like $30 shipped.

The VGA Silencer is roughly bigger than my SP94...I'd give it another chance, it clearly beats the other video card coolers.