onl noticed this problem since it started to get cooler here, when i
switch mty comp on in the morning everything gets power apart from the
light on the 3d card flciks on and then off straight away and the
monitor doesnt come on.
if i leave it in this state for about 5-10 mins then turn off/on again
it will usually start up, the card in question is a 6800, my mains
cable goes through my watercooling system then that plugs into my pc.
i have a 550w PSU and all the status lights on the back of it indicate
normal voltages, any idea what could cause it to not like cool weather?
Well, the question is, what are the LEDs on the video card
connected to ? That is pretty hard to answer, and without
an exact model number and manufacturer name for the video
card, pretty hard to research.
The only thing I can suggest, is if the card uses a molex
disk drive cable for power, try powering the card from a
disk cable that is not shared with any other electrical
loads. Perhaps the problem is related to too much voltage
drop in the cable, and some monitoring circuit is tripping,
thinking there is an overload on the video card. Using a
disk drive cable with no other loads on it, does the best
you can, from that perspective.
Other than that, I would try to trace down what that LED feeds
from. In terms of raw voltages, there are supply pins on the
video card edge card, and also the +5V and +12V on the disk
drive cable. Once those voltages go into the video card,
there are one or more switching converters, that make
voltages as low as 1.8V or 1.5V, to power the core of the
GPU. It is possible the video RAM chips need a slightly
different voltage than the GPU, and that is why there could
be more than one switching supply. If one of the switching
converters on the video card is internally overload protected,
that could be shutting the thing down.
I would think most video cards would not have an excess of
shutdown features, as adding extra crap to a video card costs
the manufacturer money. Most manufacturers just copy the reference
design from Nvidia/ATI, and if the manufacturer got adventurous
and redesigned part of it, there is no way to guess what
extra failure modes got added in the process.
In any case, if there is a limited warranty on the card, you
may want to exercise that warranty, before the card quits
altogether.
Paul
