Hello , my name is Aleksander and I'm from Macedonia.... The fact : The average monthly sallory in Macedonia is about 200$ so when you read ahead this letter please keep in mind that this card costed me 170$ six months ago (a don't intend to bring any sympathetic feelings and all ) I'm student and unemploited (all students in MK are unemploited), so please read the stuff bellow and if you have any information please do reply .... for "Luke you're my only hope" OK , all started when I wanted to put a "custom" made (scavenged passive Compaq - P1 heatsink ,WxLxH=70x60x25 Aluminium Pins arround 150 of them) on my good ol' and may I add treasured Inno3D GF4 Ti4200.... Everything went well ( I even lapped the GPU up to 1500grit - dry lappin' ) because I planned putting this BigBoy for quite some time .... I've mounted it on the card with machine 3mm x 30mm screws through 7.8cm holes ( the ones used by the default coolers) and with some springs I've took out some pencils (not the poor tension weenies one, proper ones) ...The card before that OC'ed pretty well -> 285/300 but was getting pretty hot on the back side (i think time will pass before I get my fingerprint back on my right hand middle finger ) ), and it was quite OK if you take into account that the Mem modules are Hynix 4.0ns modules. I took the new setup for some test riding and after 2-3 hours it was stable no mather what I threw at it (no artifacts what so ever) at a speed of 325/300 that is GPU / RAM and the back side was just mildly hot (I've used the left hand middle finger this time ) and all that with a med loud sunnon 60mm fan arround 4500 rpms. Success , nooOT more like SUCK THIS .... Even with the all planing done I've done the worst I cold imagine, I broke one of the SMD components, capacitator C111 to be more precise, the one nearest the mounting hole - the hole near the AGP interface.... What the F*** ?!?!.....and the cause was a plastic spacer i used between the screw head and the PCB .... And now something completely different : The funniest thing is that the card is working properly without the capacitor C111 ??!?!, it works/overcloks fine with no stability problems then I thought what about the TV-out function - but it works perfect , so what is the purpose of C111, beats me ?!?! (well it may be - some filter that carries AC signal components - AC noise to ground on a integrated circuit power line , or capacitor blocking DC noise -> the first is more probable ), but for the time being 2-3 days there are not some apparent changes in my video subsistem ... So the big mystery is wheather I wrecked my card or not , AND WHY IS IT WORKING WHEN IT SHOULD NOT ? (Am i calling for the worst to happen ?!? ) This is not some kind of funny writing I'm practicing here and I would be very gratefull if you send some informations bout this capacitor and/or a cure, cause i don't have the scheme of the PCB and I'm aware of the potential problems that could derrive from this accident (Death after unknowntime), for there must be a reason for putting a capacitor ..... and not just adding to the overall High Tech look P.S. i have some electronical knowledge (four years Electronical Secondary school - yeah I know it sounds dumb), and I've worked like PC servicer ( don't laugh I don't know the appropriate word is, but it's a man that repairs others peoples PC's for money ) for quite some time , so I'm not a stranger to trashing PC components neither modding/OCing them but the most expensive piece I've trashed so far was one CPU P6 pro + one Dual CPU P6 pro MB while trying to OC it by switching the crystal oscylator .... blah,blah.... but I should stress that playing with this kind of "expensive" gear and killing it will hurt my pocket plenty .... I have relations to a technician who works with SMD , but in Macedonia it will most definatly cost me a lot to repair this problem !!! Excuse me for my poor English and especially the small I's but I'm a Macedonian and I have not written in English in quite some time ... Thankfull in advance Aleksandar Andreevski
well the best thing you could do is get the same component from an electronics store (just show them the one that broke off) and solder that back.
I don't think that i could be soldered caouse i need hot blower ... and besides what should i say : " gimme one of those capacitors 1mm long and 0.3mm in cross section with the not quite so bright brown coluoring" ?!?!
DAMN!!!,after the sixst beer my english becomes ununderstandable..... I ment.... it could be soldered... and colouring
Capacitators use colour and symbol coding. As Glidefan says, if you still have the original part, it should be no problem finding a replacement. And, if the one particular store doesn't have it, they generally know where you could get it. Best of luck!
Enough about the capacitor !!!! the real question is what was it doing on the board in the first place .... i don't want to be rude, but capacitor or no capacitor the board performs right about the same !!!! the C111 mystery continues !??!?!
You forget about video acceleration, data processing, buffering methods (yup - different methods use different current processing), etc, etc... What the C111 does will remain a mystery, unless you can get NVIDIA to hand out the schematic (which I seriously doubt). Still - just get the thing soldered back on and you won't have to worry about the card...
Tell you the truth dude...you can always send it back to the place you bought it, and tell them it got screwed up. Or you can call Inno3D and tell them what happened, or of course u can tell them like the capacitor just feel off, and you want RMA. I mean...I've returned like 2 cards b4...just make it sound like u're really fustrated, and it's not really ur fault, it'll work.
BTW, the capacitor is pretty important on the board. It can perform a low/high/band pass filter...filtering out specific frequencies, or it can cause a phase shift. Btw, If u're losing anything on the board, I don't think u'll be able to boot up at all.
Don't think he can just RMA it and tell them that he wanted to change the heatsink. That is messing up with the hardware and will only get his warranty to expire.
