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Came across a broken 980Ti, do you think it is fixable?

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adsgrwarg

New Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2017
Hello everyone!

I traded a bunch of old 3DFX Voodoo cards for a broken EVGA Reference GTX 980 Ti few days ago, a good trade if I can get it working.

The card was damaged by its first owner who tried to change the cooler, removing couple of components off the board, which were replaced by the guy I got the card from. The card also has 3 scratches, which are not very deep but might still have something to do with the problems of the card.

The card powers up fine when the 6-pin power cable is attached, video comes up but the card complains about the missing 8-pin power cable. When the 8-pin cable is attached, the computer does not power up at all, and I hear a small click from the power supply.

The 2 components that were replaced are 5 milliohm current sensing resistor RS3 and 68H inductor L18 close to the power connectors. When these components are removed off the board, the PC starts up with power 6 and 8 pin cables attached, but video does not come up. I will probably replace these components because they were a bit crusty, the guy used a bit too much heat to attach them.


Does anyone have any tips to get this card working? Would it be possible to replace the whole VRM section of the board? Is there any schematics for this PCB?
 
I'm not going to pretend to have any answers for you but I am interested in this project. If you are willing to post images of this project I would be interested in seeing them.
 
Looks like a chunk is missing off the inductor. You sure it's soldering damage and not a blow out. Looks like a big burnt area to me or he was using something like a blow torch
 
Looks like a chunk is missing off the inductor. You sure it's soldering damage and not a blow out. Looks like a big burnt area to me or he was using something like a blow torch

Can't be sure of that, I do not have an LCR meter to test out the inductor (Ordered one for this project but it has not arrived yet). The inductor looks fine from the outside.

When I test the continuity with my multimeter it shows up as a dead short across the positive and negative terminals of the 8-pin PCIe power connector, but when I remove the inductor and resistor it doesn't do that, so it might be that the inductor and/or the resistor is the problem.
 
After looking at the pics, there is more than 2 parts damaged or missing around the power connectors, IMO it's not worth the trouble to fix, the guy that had that before you really did a number on that card.
 
After looking at the pics, there is more than 2 parts damaged or missing around the power connectors, IMO it's not worth the trouble to fix, the guy that had that before you really did a number on that card.

Can you tell me what is missing? I haven't noticed any other missing components, and after removing the resistor and inductor and cleaning the board it doesn't look that bad, it was mostly just flux residue.
 
You'd need to compare bit by bit with some very good hi-res pics
 
Does anyone have any high-res images of the reference PCB, preferably 4K or higher, I haven't been able to find anything really high-res.
 
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