Trash = treasure?

ultipig

ultipig

New Member
I have a class next to our school's Computer Hardware section and found a what seems to be broken 8600gt in the trash. All I see that's "broken" about it is the fact that the heatsink is missing and a few capacitors have been torn off. Since these things go for $50, I kept it thinking that it could be useful.

My real question is, can video card capacitors be replaced? This might be a "noob" question because I'm not very familiar with capacitors. There doesn't seem to be any other damage, and acquiring some sort of a heatsink wouldn't be that much trouble.
 
you could do it, but you'd need to know the exact type of capacitors used, which may vary. one company might use a custom PCB with different caps or something...
 
hmm well it makes you wonder why they trashed it in the first place,It could be a problem with the GPU chip itself...or something damaged on the PCB.

OR could be just like you think.....had dead caps,you could try replacing them but for $50 is it realy wort it?

I mean you have got to buy a new cooler,then some new caps then it might still not work. :cool:

If it was a more expensive/powerfull card you found then yeah it might be worth it but for a 8600Gt i wouldnt personnaly bother.
 
Nevakonaza said:
hmm well it makes you wonder why they trashed it in the first place,It could be a problem with the GPU chip itself...or something damaged on the PCB.

OR could be just like you think.....had dead caps,you could try replacing them but for $50 is it realy wort it?

I mean you have got to buy a new cooler,then some new caps then it might still not work. :cool:
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To be honest all the people that work on the Hardware stuff are complete nutjobs. An ignorant bunch they are. I'm not surprised that they would throw something like this away.

I actually asked the supervisor and he said that the capacitors and heatsink were taken, that's it. He didn't want to deal with it so he just threw it away.
 
Did he mention why they were taken?

In all honesty,its up to you obviusly if your going to try and get it working again,you will probably spend more getting it to work again than just spending the $50 and getting the card new.

i mean the cheapest decent cooler ive come across with a quick look is this...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186016

theres $26.99 + 5.99 shipping,then you might need a fan to strap to it,then you have to buy the caps and im not sure how much they will be.
 
Yup, they can be replaced. My brother did a course on it and has done it to laptops, monitors, motherboards and graphics cards. Not too easy but not too hard, I wouldn't know though, his words.

ANd to Nevakonaza, as to why, because teenagers will steal anything, I bet the people who took them off don't even know what they are really.
 
It would be probably a relatively easy fix ONLY if you had like the schematic to the board so you know exactly what needs to be replaced. Like I bought a pair of Bose Companion 3 Series I for $5 and tried to fix it since music was going through, but it seemed like it was stuck on mute. But I can't figure it out because I don't know what's, what -_-
 
My guess is that the exact caps needed would be extremely hard to find. I think I'm just gonna toss it, or throw it in my computer junk pile.
 
Or if you could find another broken one on ebay or something and swap parts... That's the only thing I could think of without going into great lengths to fix this thing.
 
Rit said:
Or if you could find another broken one on ebay or something and swap parts... That's the only thing I could think of without going into great lengths to fix this thing.
Click to expand...

I guess you're right, some broken parts sell cheaper than dirt.
 
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