Ok, I may be exaggerating a bit. My video card didn’t literally explode. Here’s what happened:
Yesterday I was working when my computer froze. “Well, sometimes it happens”, I thought, so I tried rebooting it. It appeared to start normally, then nothing. Mac OS just froze at the login screen, and trying to boot Windows gave me a BSOD. I managed to boot OSX in safe mode and everything appeared to be working: my hard drives were OK, apps were running, no errors. So I turned off the computer and tried to turn it on again 10 minutes later. This is what I saw:
Well, maybe my monitor is out of tune.
“So it must be something with the video card”, I thought. I opened my computer case, popped the video card out, and started inspecting it. Soon enough I found the culprit:
Yep. Three beautifully blown up capacitors.
At first I panicked. This is my work computer, it had to be working again ASAP. I started searching online for a new video card, but since I live in a (kinda) small city, video cards are not only really expensive here, they’re also hard to find. But I had no option: I needed it working, so I was convinced to get a new video card first thing in the morning on the next day.
A couple of minutes later I tried to google “blown up capacitor” just to see what kind of results I’d get, and I noticed this is quite common. These capacitors are pretty bad quality and are prone to explode, specially in the video card I have (it’s a XFX Geforce 8600GT): the ones that blew up sit right in front of the cooler’s air escape, so the cooler is pretty much blowing hot air on them all the time (what a great design, huh?)
I found some people saying that they’re pretty easy (and cheap) to replace, so I decided to give it a try. What the heck, the card was already dead anyway. So I woke up this morning, went to a local electronics store and bought three capacitors to replace them. I tried to do it myself, but my soldering iron was not good enough for the job (I could fry the card), so I ended up going to one of these places where they fix TVs and stuff and asked them to replace the capacitors for me. After a few minutes they gave me my card back with the new capacitors:
Now we’re talking.
Guess what? I put the card back into the computer and everything is working again! I could not believe it: I did decide to try replacing the capacitors, but I was pretty much expecting nothing, already prepared to spend more than $250 in a new video card. So I ran a few tests and it all seemed to be ok. I worked all day on the computer and it’s perfect, as if nothing happened.
Total cost to repair the video card: about $3 for the capacitors, and about $2 for the guy who soldered them for me. And, of course, the satisfaction of knowing that what seemed like a stupid idea did actually work.
Now just try to imagine how many video cards that could be fixed with five bucks and a few minutes of work end up in the garbage…
Tags: Capacitors, Card, Hardware, Video
hi bro can u find me find me capacitors for zebronics 7300gs because my video card has three blown capacitors pls help
Hi pradeep!
Check the top of your capacitors, there should be something written on it (check my pics, you’ll se my originals had three lines of text).
If you take one of them to an electronic components store they’ll probably know which model you need. There’s no way for me to tell you without looking at them.
thank you for ur kind reply.three capacitors have blown n i hav reolaced two of them but i cant find the correct capacitor for the third one bcoz the top portion was not there
My best bet would be to look for the same model you have online and try to figure out which capacitor is missing from yours. Maybe searching Google Images for high resolution pictures of your video card model would give you the answer…
hey.. i got the same problem with my 8600 gt video card.. maybe i could use your trick to fix mine.. luckily i have an on board video so i get to use my pc eventhough my card is broke.. nice post..
If your capacitors look like mine, then I’m 99% sure it’s the same problem. Just have them replaced and it should work again :)
It’s sad how many perfectly good electronic devices are junked when only a small replaceable part in them (fuses/capacitors) have shorted or blown… Like right now I’m throwing away a perfectly usable original iPhone charger cos I think something inside went, but cos it’s sealed I cant open it to try and see what it is!