Frequent visitors to this site may have noticed a complete lack of posts in the past couple days, and my nVidia Geforce 8600GTS from EVGA is the reason for that.
The other day I was computing as normal – making some coding changes on the website, etc. I heard a loud crack from the general direction of my computer, though that also happens to be the direction of my wall, and in springtime houses are thawing out, so I assumed it was a structural noise and continued as normal. It was a deafening crack, however, such that my ear didn’t feel right for a few hours afterward – and it was a few hours afterward that I found out the real cause of the noise.
I heard a fan ramp up to maximum speed inside my computer case, and my screen went blank. My graphics card had been running a bit hot, so I turned off the computer, cranked up the internal fans, and booted the computer back up. Again, a blank screen, and no system beeps.
Luckily, my motherboard has a handy little “LCD Poster” which essentially displays what the computer is doing even if there’s nothing on the monitor. This basically showed that when I’d boot up, the computer would check a few things, then get stuck on something. Now, what it would get stuck on changed each time. To me, that sounded like a power issue – and I remembered the earlier cracking noise and thought that perhaps they were connected! Indeed, from some research, I found that capacitors make loud noises when they explode, and (gasp!) power supplies have capacitors! Rather than disassemble my computer and put a new PSU in, I went out and bought a power supply tester the next day.
A handy little power supply tester, complete with instructions I can only assume were babelfish'd from Chinese to English
It worked like a charm. So well, in fact, that it showed that there was nothing wrong with the power supply. At this point, I inspected the rest of the computer parts for bulging or leaking capacitors. The last component I checked, of course, was the graphics card. So after previously coming to the wrong conclusion, spending $40 to prove that conclusion wrong, and then doing what I should’ve done in the first place, I discovered…
A small capacitor and a larger capacitor... exploded!
Two capacitors on my 8600GTS had exploded! Luckily, the stuff inside the capacitors did not melt and leak out all over my motherboard. That would’ve been bad. I’m kind of surprised at how small the damage looks, but how loud a noise it made.
A side view shows just how high it "exploded" upwards.
From some quick research, the inside part of these capacitors that is visible above is some sort of electrolyte. If you know more about this sort of thing, perhaps enlighten all of us through a comment below.
An aerial view shows the two exploded capacitors
While this of course isn’t my first component I’ve had fail, it is perhaps the most violent failing I’ve had, thus the most exciting. I hear it’s fairly common though, and there even seems to be a website about some elaborate conspiracy to make bad capacitors.
And another picture, just because I have one
Sadly my warranty for this graphics card had expired, so I won’t be able to get a free replacement. It was probably time for an upgrade anyway, and hopefully my new Radeon HD 4670 will work out nicely.
How about you? Have you had any hardware fail violently?
55 Responses
lol lucky I haven’t had any hardware failure like this…. exploding capacitor first time I hear about this… usually its hdd, PSU that die…
nice pictures
Posted on April 9th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Wow!
Nice pictures indeed. I too am surprised, the noise you describe makes it sound like a bomb went off or something, haha! But yeah, the damage does look quite small!
I’m not one to get heavily involved in conspiracies and start shouting them as fact, and blah blah blah. But if such conspiracies turned out to be true, it really wouldn’t surprise me.
I mean – How would a business thrive if they could make a technological device perform perfectly and adequately for your personal needs, as well as survive forever?
Thankfully, I’ve never had computer hardware violently fail on me. I’ve only experienced software and firmware errors which were fairly easy to overcome, though time consuming.
Posted on April 10th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Are you sure that your warranty is up? I have that exact same card and if I remember correctly, it has a lifetime warranty on it.
Posted on April 11th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
It has a lifetime warranty if you register it on their website within 30 days of purchase.
I did not register it within 30 days of purchase.
Posted on April 12th, 2009 at 11:49 am
I’m an electrician by trade (sorta)…Good thing a lot of companies today are switching to solid caps for circuitry of this type. Judging from the pics, you may have lucked out and had solid or dry caps on your card. Older style caps the size on your card tend to have an actual liquid-y substance in them, so when they go, it’s A LOT messy-er…(and smelly too…The bad caps I’ve seen tend to make whatever they blew up in smell like fish…But I work with MUCH older equipment usually…)
BTW, wouldn’t the caps be facing DOWN in your comp? (Assuming you’re using a tower of some sort?) Hopefully you didn’t have any other cards in there next to the card when the caps blew.
Posted on April 13th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Oh cool. I was expecting a mess, but it’s interesting to know why there wasn’t one.
Yeah, it would’ve been facing down. I had it in the second-lowest slot and with no card below it, though, so nothing was damaged.
Posted on April 13th, 2009 at 10:50 am
“It has a lifetime warranty if you register it on their website within 30 days of purchase.
I did not register it within 30 days of purchase.”
lol wtf…
Posted on April 13th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Damn! I still remember when capacitors blew up like ten years ago from my Pentium II machine, was horrible and all my place smelled like a forest was burning
Good luck with your next video card ^^
Posted on April 15th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Capacitors come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and substances. Looking at the images you provided, the damaged capacitors were polarized electrolytic capacitors. Polarized, as in current flows in one direction, normally designated by a symbol or color indicator to designate positive or negative. Small size or small value electrolytic capacitors usually consist of a poly-synthetic material with air as an insulator to force electrons to collect before reaching a minimum threshold voltage in order to be discharged. Other small size or small value capacitors such as ceramic, mylar, and tantalum, use their namesake instead of the poly-synthetic, along with some type of insulator. Large value or large size capacitors, usually electrolytic, retain the poly-synthetic, but replace air with another dielectric, or insulator, such as mineral oil.
Capacitors, electrolytic, and often ceramic, are found in power supply circuits to reduce ripple voltage. Since most electronic circuitry utilizes DC Voltage by design, fluctuations both above and below the median voltage decreases the circuit’s efficiency, life expectancy, and can introduce unwanted variables. When converting AC to DC, Ripple voltage always occurs since you are in essence changing the shape of waveform from a sine wave, AC, to a straight line, DC. If capacitance is used within the circuit, the DC Voltage is “restrained” until a specific minimum voltage is reached, and then released. This raises the DC Voltage’s nominal to above the median value, making it easier for the power regulation to remain consistent. Since the charge and discharge, along with things like switching rates, happen at high rates of speed, milli, micro, and even nanoseconds, a non-polarized ceramic capacitor is applied between the positive and negative rails to allow electrical noise to go to ground before it can have an effect upon the circuit which is being provided power. Motherboards also rely upon the same basic design for the multi-phase power regulation that is often seen surrounding or nearby the CPU socket.
Electrolytic capacitors are prone to “bulging” over time since the charge and discharge, as well as environment cause them to heat up above the ambient temperature of their surroundings. They can also “bulge” the heavier the demand is upon them. Eventually over time, electrolytic capacitors can split at the “seams”. If you closely examine one, you’ll see either ventilation holes that appear sealed, or an “embedded cross”. This is a safety feature which allows the electrolytic capacitor to burst open and immediately discharge, instead of causing an electrical fire. Most electrolytic capacitors don’t “pop”, even with age, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t. However, the primary cause of most “popping” electrolytic capacitors is due to polarity being reversed, if polarized, or when voltage is applied which exceeds the maximum recommended.
Considering the faulty caps were on a graphics card, and there were two that “popped”, there was some type of power fluctuation, or deregulation. Power supply testers are fine to use, but most cannot provide the correct load upon each rail voltage to emulate a PC under max load. In a computer, power is not only regulated by the power supply, but also by the motherboard, as well as many peripheral components such as a video card. And unlike many other electronic devices which rely solely upon firmware, and/or embedded operating systems, modifying settings, files, or parameters directly related to the driver files, commonly referred to as “overclocking” can also be directly detrimental to power regulation. Unfortunately, whatever the cause, it doesn’t change the fact that you had to replace your video card.
Posted on April 26th, 2009 at 4:18 am
FYI – There was indeed a known issue in the past where a capacitor manufacturer supplied faulty capacitors. Industrial espionage was rumored, unfortunately, I never bothered to keep up with the story. Not the first time a manufacturer has supplied defective parts, and won’t be the last. A hard drive manufacturer once told me about being sold a faulty IC chip, and they didn’t find out until after shipping thousands of hard drives.
Circuitry is designed to last a minimum length of time; specifically the warranty period. If it exceeds that period, you’ve got your money’s worth. The designers don’t often pick the parts, so if there’s any conspirators, then it’s not the accountants. If anyone is conspiring, then it’s the board of directors because they are the ones that everyone else answers to when profit margins are not met.
Posted on April 26th, 2009 at 5:01 am
Omg I had the same thing happen to my xfx nvidia geforce 8600 gt 2 weeks ago. I got the card replaced but the messed up thing is that i got a lower spec model instead of the identical part. My previous card’s specs was 256mb ddr3, 620Mhz core with 2 dvi ports, and what I got in return had 512 ddr2, 540Mhz core with 1 dvi port and a regular vga port. Did I get jipped, or is that normal warranty process? I don’t really care about the specs cuz I don’t really abuse the card with games and all that,l but it just bugs me that I got a lower spec card in return… I didn’t go back to the shop when I found out about it because I didn’t want to wait another 2 weeks with a disabled PC just to get another replacement. Is it worth it to get the exact part (im not sure about the difference between the 2 in terms of performance) or is it better to just leave it as it is?
Posted on April 30th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
It just also happened to me, my EVGA geforce 8600 GTS 512mb has 1 “popped” capacitator, exactly the same one you show on your last picture. My card is over 2 years old, just wondering if the manufacturer received a bunch of faulty capacitators… Anyway, I didn’t register it so my warranty is over and I will have to buy a new one, time for an upgrade!!! And luckily this happened in the PC I have connected to my TV, so no big deal.
Posted on June 3rd, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Wow, glad I found this. I actually have the exact same card (evga 8600gts) and mine just did the exact same thing and I have the exact same issue of no warranty because I didn’t register in the first 30 days, at least I know it wasn’t just me. I was using my card in a Shuttle XPC case and in those the side of the card with all the components mounted on it faces the left-side of the casing which is very close. The area of the cover just above the caps that exploded had this white almost foamy or moldy stuff on it though it all wiped off the cover very easily.
I never heard any pop noise from mine but I run my computer 24/7 so maybe it pop’d while I was away or asleep. I didn’t even notice anything was wrong till my screen started going solid gray random times, at first I thought windows was toast and wiped my hard drive which seemed to help…until I installed the graphics driver back and then the gray screens of death resumed! So I checked my hardware expecting a dead fan or something in the realm of over heating and there they were, open top caps. This actually surprised me because I’ve never seen a capacitor outright explode before.
My friend surgested he could replace the capacitors with similar ones from mouser.com and since I already know the warranty is toast I’m gonna let him have a go at that; I wasn’t really interested in getting a new card right now so hopefully his idea will work.
Anyways, thanks for the post and detailing pictures.
Posted on June 4th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
On another note, thank you Hayashida Kyu for that post explaining why capacitors will do this. Your post just told me why my really old Asus P4 motherboard stopped working (from a different computer than the one with my 8600 of course), nearly every cap on that thing was bulging outward when it finally died even though none had actually opened up.
Posted on June 4th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
For months now I have been hearing this loud CRACK every week or so. We thought it was the gas stove. When my PC started artifacting and eventually went black I noticed 4 of the caps in my GeForce 8600 were blown. The fan was full of dust, so I blame myself, kind of. Anyone else have dust issues, or is this a defect? They all blew on the scored letter, maybe scored too deep?
Posted on June 24th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Hey, Tallest_Red – Please let us all know if your Buddy had any luck with cap replacement project. I have an GeForce 7500 EVGA card which popped 5 caps last night, quiet but messy and I am screwed with the warranty like everyone else here. Can’t blame the heat, though – the PC is in the basement, about 55 degrees F all year round. It’s poor craftsmanship. Let’s buy those EVGA cards AND REGISTER the same day – best way to hold them accountable for the ineptitude! Board of directors, the Party or the engineers, i really don’t care who is to blame – the Company as a whole dominates the aftermarket and resorts to sneaky practices of tinkering with support policies. Let’s have them replace EVERY BOARD THEY EVER SOLD!
Go Corsair! They replace their memory products during THEIR COMPANY LIFETIME, no questions asked, no matter how much they have been abused by overclockers!
Posted on July 6th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Excessive heat will prematurely age your capacitors. I had an LCD that wouldn’t stay powered on for more than one second, opened it up, saw two of the four really large electrolytic caps with protruding tops. They were sitting right next to the voltage regulators – the ones that generate massive heat and have metal heatsinks attached to them.
My question was at that time, how can these guys design electronics letting these caps reside so close to their heat sources… No matter what electronic component you have, heat increases the resistance of a conductor, and the higher resistance means you’ll need to pump out a higher voltage on the CPU to get the 1’s and 0’s to register properly, all the while the higher resistance means more electrical energy is being dissipated by the higher resistance conductors. GPUs and CPUs are ok, they have the cooling units attached to their cores, but when you talk about caps that handle large transients with switching frequencies in the MHz+ this resistance will lower its ability to function as a voltage dampener.
In short – heat is not good for capacitors. Somewhere I read everytime you add 10 deg C to the temp a capacitor it’s exposed to it shortens its life cycle by a significant magnitude.
Posted on July 8th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
My GeForce 7600 GT just did the same thing. There have been very loud popping noises for the last couple of weeks and two days ago it popped again. This time my screen would go blank a few minutes after startup. There are four capacitors on the card that have popped. I don’t do overclocking or anything unusual and I have a really high end surge protector. The card was only a year and 1/5 old.
Posted on July 12th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Just had an XFX GeForce 8600GT die in this way, probably June 19, 2009. There was a loud pop and eventually the computer crashed. It wouldn’t boot again, the display was corrupt during BIOS. Looking at the card you can see the caps burst, two of them look the same as the pictures above. The card was only 1.5 years old and never overclocked. It seems to have a lifetime warranty so I’ll give that a shot. Interesting so many reports are for 8600s.
Posted on July 21st, 2009 at 9:27 pm
EVGA 8600 GTS Capacitor just blew out on me 3 hours ago, pulled out the card and discovered 2 were blown. Sound is similar to a small rock hitting a window at high speed which I thought at first thats what it was. So all in all 2 capacitors blown out within 1 month of each other. Card is dead now but was working with one blown out. THe ones that were blown out are the small 16v one same as the picture and the 6.3v one right above it.
Posted on July 23rd, 2009 at 6:31 am
Is anybody knows where and what kind of capacitors have to buy?
Posted on July 24th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Exact same issue as James @ 19. My XFX GeForce 8600GT has 3 blown capacitors and on July 24, 2009 I heard what I thought was a firecracker outside my window. Now, a day later and with the same symptoms of the video not working when I start my computer, I realize it was the capacitors. The card is a little over 2 years old and I’ve filed a ticket with the manufacturer to take advantage of the lifetime warrarty. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll post back with the results.
Posted on July 25th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Here ya go.
1.replace all.
2.http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=P12376-ND
^thats the 16v*
3.http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=P12343-ND
^thats the 6.3*
4.?????????
5. PROFIT
Posted on August 3rd, 2009 at 12:59 am
I got the replacement card yesterday – a XFX GeForce 9600 GSO. I don’t have the detailed information about the card, but it is a resonable replacement. It took almost 3 weeks to get the replacement card, but the cost was only 7 dollars in shipping fees.
Posted on August 13th, 2009 at 11:22 am
LoL, I have 2x XFX 8600 GT XXX edition running SLI and one of the cards popped (secondary card) but the primary card has not. I don’t understand what caused this especially since the PC was idle at the time i heard the ‘pop’ (more like a bang like a firecracker would make). Problem in my case is that i did not register my product in the ‘30 days’ they allow and now will not replace my card. I have an electronics friend and we are going to try and replace the 5 blown caps on the card. THe problem will be cleanly removing the blown caps without wrecking the card… after that, i’m just gonna slip the new caps into the proper slots and bake it @ 425F in my oven for about 10 minutes… should melt any left over soulder. I wonder if all the caps blew at once or if over the past year and a half they slowly started popping without me knowing about it. It wasn’t until the most recent pop that my system became unstable and would not boot. Removing the faulty card allows my system to boot but running only one 8600 GT BLOWS!
Posted on August 25th, 2009 at 10:53 am
not just the 8600’s, my old 5500 blew out yesterday
Posted on August 26th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Wow, its a conspiricy. Had one of my dual 7600 Gt cards blow 2 days ago now my second one BANG. Killed the power to my unit before the other caps went… Guess what, 2 months past warranty and i registered them both!!!!
Posted on August 27th, 2009 at 12:04 am
OK- anybody got a ASUS P5N-E sli motherboard?
Posted on August 27th, 2009 at 12:07 am
so thats what that loud ass popping sound was. i knew it was something electrical but couldnt tell what.. I have a evga gt 8600 geforce as well and mine has two blown capacitors as well. I just got this card a while back from my friend to replace my bfg card which also broke. the BFG didnt have noticable blown capacitors but the hardware somehow failed and took my system down with it. At this point i am scared to plug another graphics card in there frearing it might be blown as well. What is causing this?? My motherboard?? I got a new power supply after the first card too btw…
Posted on September 3rd, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Yesterday I got to work to find my dual monitors both displaying grey garbled boxes. I pulled the 8600GT card and found 2 popped capicitors, both 6.3V. Like someone above I have a shuttle computer. I bought the card back in May of 2008 so it is only about 1.5 years old also. I unfortunatley did not register for the lifetime warranty (they must not advertise that very well). Seems to me like bad capacitors were used that blow shortly after the warranty is up.
Posted on September 9th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I have the e-GeForce 7600 GS, and heard a pop a few weeks ago. I couldn’t figure out what it was, and assumed a few days later that it was my golf clubs falling over in the closet.
A couple of days ago I woke my monitor up and all the fonts were blury on web pages. I uninstalled and reinstalled the video drivers and that seemed to fix it. Today as one of my scheduled scripts was running the screen when blank, and my monitor reported no signal.
I removed the video card and booted up using the onboard video adapter. There are three blown capacitors on the card. Warranty my ass! This is a defective product that needs to be recalled.
This is the first time I’ve ever personally used an NVidia product, and may be the last. Not only does it look like this is a persistent problem with this product, they’ve known about it for quite a while.
Posted on September 15th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Same issue here, I had one XFX and one EVGA GeForce 8600GT’s in SLI. The XFX blew the 2 470/16V capacitors, the EVGA did not. It died after one week of the explosion. Now my rig is not SLI anymore. Tried changing the capacitors but the card still dead…
Posted on September 15th, 2009 at 9:36 am
I contacted evga. even though the cards were out of warranty they replaced them.
I wrote in my email to there tech support that this was a fire hazard and they were very nice after that. You guys should try emailing them and say you seen many reports on the internet about these cards being bad and say something about not recomending EVGA if they are selling bad products…….. If you say it politely they will probably replace even out of warranty cards. Both my new cards shipped today Both my old cards were 5 months out of the 2 year warranty but i never registered for the 2 year warranty.
Posted on September 26th, 2009 at 1:17 am
Yep, I just had this problem, over the past few months I heard popping noises. I was running an SLI set up with two xfx 8600 GT’s and a couple of nights ago my computer started freezing up after trying to load a game. I pulled both cards out and saw that 4 capacitors were blown on my secondary card and one on my primary card. Now just about an hour ago I heard another capacitor on my primary card blow out while playing a game. Why are these things so cheaply made? I understand there’s a supply and demand theory but if you have a life time warranty then that doesn’t make sense where as you’ll be replacing the card every time it goes out for free.
Posted on November 8th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I was thinking this might be a MB issue so I’m glad to find out it was just crappy capacitors. Also, after a little research, I found out that this can happen due a short or bridge on the video card itself. Usually, after long periods of exposure to what is considered “abnormal” heat conditions the cards begin to age rapidly. In other words, the card manufacturers make the cards just good enough to function, but not good enough to do so under practical conditions. I was running dual 7600 GT cards in SLI and I have 5 popped capacitors on one and 3 on the other. One of them still functions just fine, but I’m afraid to use it anymore.
I also tested my power supply with a tester and plugged in each component in turn until it registered a fault. Sure enough it was one of the cards. Thanks for this post it helped alot.
Posted on November 14th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Fantastic post! Extremely helpful! I have a 7300 GT. This past Saturday night I was minding my own business when I heard a sound that could be described as a CD case hitting the floor (funny how each person describes the sound as what they initially thought it was. Minutes later the screen started going crazy while watching a movie and me thinking it was a codec problem, rebooted the machine. Again same problem. Opened it up to find three blown up capacitors that look exactly like the pictures posted above. Had no idea about the warranty, but then again I’m from Latin America, so I never really thought I’d be covered by it and if I was, that it would be convenient for me, given the distance and shipping prices. Still, I now own a PO Box in Miami, so that’s no longer a problem and am writing to the Nvidia Manufacturers to ask about the Warranty thing, because if I can’t get covered by it, there’s no way I’ll be going with this brand again. So my questions here are: Has anybody had any luck with replacing the capacitors? I could easily have that done and try it all the same. And also: Has anybody ever heard of this problem with other brands of video cards? Because after reading it does seem like it is a known problem for the Nvidia folks, hence the lifetime warranty.
Posted on December 2nd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Also, my PC runs 24/7 and the card was about 2 years old, so I’m guessing it just had too much to handle.. Temperature might also have been the problem, since it is really hot down here and summer’s just around the corner and while dust seems to be a constant problem for me, I had the CPU cleaned not over a month ago, so cooler going slower I’m pretty sure was not the problem. Still, that’s the last time I’m staying home on a Saturday Night.
Posted on December 2nd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
@ daniel my 7300 gt 2 capacitor today. it is possible that if we replace the damage capacitor will the the videocard is still working?.. i dont have enough money to buy new card
Posted on December 16th, 2009 at 7:27 am
I Just replaced the cap in a 5200 and the computer won’t start. I have a feeling a chain failure happened damaging other componets.
Posted on December 16th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Likewise – had 2 caps pop! on my geforce 6600 a couple of days apart. Ddin’t realize where it had come from. Thought my dog has knocked something over. Unfortunately, I believe my Asus P5K Pro MB is dead (at least the PCI-E slot). The power supply (a nice new Corsair) seems to be showing a red light on the ps tester, although it is a cheapie and only for 20-pin. I am mad that I didn’t catch it right away before the MB fried. Hopefully nothing else is done in. In retrospect, I had heard that noise before too when a power adapter had a cap blow right through the side. Also, either blew the heatsink off, or the heatsink had already come off (one post) and the heat caused the caps to go.
Posted on December 18th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I have/had the same problem with my last two NVIDIA cards, 7600GT and 8600GT. Every once in a while I’ll randomly hear this LOUD SNAP and think it came from my surge protector. It sounded like a BB gun or firecracker I guess. I couldn’t tell it was from my computer because it never affected anything I was doing on it some how. After reading this article, I figured out that’s my video card snapping! The other day I looked at my video card and saw 1 opened capacitor, then later that day it happened to SNAP again, and I opened it up and sure enough, there’s 2 opened caps now. Both cards weren’t exactly happy with temperatures if I remember, with the 8600GT (with the loud & always on fan) going up to 109c and throttling/slowing itself at that point. When this 8600GT dies undoubtly soon, I’ll be getting a 1gb ATI Radeon HD 4670 recommended by a computer tech friend. That one isn’t supposed to explode.
By the way I had the 7600GT for a year, it died with 4 or 5 caps popped, then the 8600GT is about a year old too, and it’s showing signs of death. And wow, look at all the people with the same problem! I thought it was just my bad luck or something.
Posted on December 19th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Same thing just happened to my XFX 8600GT tonight. 2 caps blew at the same time.
Card still appears to work but I’m going to avoid using it and get a replacement one day soon.
Posted on December 23rd, 2009 at 4:27 am
Same thing just happened to my GeForce 8500GT, and that’s the second time now, but I only just figured out what was going on. So I now have two electrolytics exploded, tops bulging up like in your pictures, and the card is still working – and it’s been quite a while since the first one went. I guess it’s a consequence of buying cheap no-name generic cards manufactured for peanuts using cheap components.
There’s certainly a real problem in the supply chain somewhere.
Posted on January 13th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Great Post… Heard a very loud crack/pop sound yesterday (which came from the same vicinity as my computer) and after looking into why my display is all garbled today, confirmed three caps were blown on my Geforce 8600GT video card. Fortunately I had a second idle video card (ATI Radeon X600) sitting in another slot in the PC and after swapping it with the defective Geforce 8600GT, I’m back in business and writing this email). I’ve had the card for just over 2 years and never registered it… so I’m out of luck . I was happy to come across this post, since I wasnt sure if this was a common problem. I’m glad my latest computer build (just waiting for the case to come in) is not another NVIDIA card (Asus EAH4670 1GB)… Think I’ll register all my PC build components this time around… just in case
Cheers… Dez
Posted on January 14th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
I manage a fleet of computers used for drilling services. We use primarily eVGA nividia 6200 (AGP), but have recently changed to 6200 PCI cards. In the past 6 weeks I have replaced 5 video cards, all with popped capacitors. considering changing to ATI cards in the future.
Posted on January 27th, 2010 at 9:27 am
XFX GF 8600GT here bought probably 1.5 years ago like others. Heard loud popping as well but PC kept on working for a week or more. Then the other night the monitor went on standby so I thought the machine was sleeping but I couldn’t wake it up. Rebooted and just had a garbled picture. Glad I kept my OEM card lying around.
I found this page and saw there was a lifetime warranty but didn’t remember if I registered or not so I tried to log in with no luck. I then chose to reset password and I was in luck, they had me on file. So after getting in I saw I did register it so I just submitted a ticket
Posted on February 3rd, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Geforce 8600 GT – Same thing as everyone else here.
I think I am going to switch to ATI.
Posted on February 7th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
While cleaning my computer for dust and such on my video card (same as the pics from the guy above) three were blown out, however just reassembled it and i can still see my screen just fine, why is that? and what exactly makes a capacitor blow and what is the effect if my screen isn’t just black, and yes the sound was rather loud. at first i’d thought the plastic legs on my chair cracked rather loudly but moved on at the time.
Posted on February 9th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
sorry no need to tell me why the capacitors blew i didn’t read all the comments at the time, but about how long do i have before it completely goes out?
Posted on February 9th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
I don’t think there is a “how long” – it could happen at any moment, probably. Chances are that even though the capacitors have blown, they are still doing their job to some extent, but just barely. If the card gets hot, the contents of the capacitors might shift slightly and then stop functioning. I don’t actually know anything about capacitors, but that’s what I would assume.
Posted on February 10th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Just pulled a eVGA 7600 GT out of my wife’s desktop after we heard a loud pop from it ast night and it wouldn’t boot up. Found five exploded capacitors. 4 of the big ones and 1 of the small ones. I’ve read about exploding capacitors before, but this is the first time I’ve had it happen to me. Pretty crazy.
Posted on February 13th, 2010 at 10:01 am
My evga 7600gs capacitors all blew up today. I bought the card 8/25/07 and today is 2/25/2010. BIOS settings and OS settings are all default. This card was not under any unusual usage. I heard a loud “POP”. So loud it actually scared me! I wonder if I can continue to use the card? No video settings changed that I could see. This is the first time this has happened. Due to all the complaints on this site, it appears that there’s a major problem with this card. I wont be buying nvidia any longer, thats for sure.
Posted on February 25th, 2010 at 1:39 am
I have a inno 3D GeForce 9600 GSO and as of yesterday when I opened my PC to clean it because it was dusty, when I removed the graphics card I noticed that one of the Capacitors wobbled so upon doing a further inspection just by slightly touching it (never put any pressure on it either), it came off, also I noticed another capacitor on the card looked like it had wobbled as well.
So basically I’m now stuck with an unusual PC for three weeks, untill I get a new card, also the warranty on the card had ended because I had the card for about a year and three months, so talk about being totally gutted.
Posted on February 28th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
I just had the same experience. A few weeks ago I heard a loud snap. The computer seemed fine so I blamed it on the modem. Last week another snap and the screen went black, a blue screen came up that said the problem was at nv4 disp, a device driver and that the computer had shut windows down to protect itself.
I called my daughter who is a tech and she said check the video card, a capacitor may have blown. She was right two were leaking. Evidently the first didn’t leak enough to bother anything. Luckily the second didn’t leak onto the motherboard either.
Posted on March 3rd, 2010 at 8:56 am
I have a xfx 8600gt xxx with six blown caps. Block artifacts only showed up just last night, curiously, the notorious popping sound was heard a few weeks back; and thought its just the microwave dinner. Im sending it back to xfx, ill keep you guys posted.
Posted on March 7th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
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