Need some peoples thoughts on this 
I went to turn on my PC today to find that my screen would stay blank like my PC was off with the LED blinking on the monitor. However, my PC was working since I have a LCD screen in my drive bay and it shows when it is loaded into windows. Plus my hard drive showed activity so i knew it was not my PC.
Came down to two things, my monitor was dead or my video card was dead. If I detached the monitor cord from the video card, the screen would come on saying "no connection". Plug it back in, it would go blank again. Tried another monitor... would not show anything either. So by then, I knew it was my video card.
My video card is a Saphire Radeon X800XL 256mb DDR3 but with the default cooler replaced with a Zalman VF700-CU cooler which greatly brought down my temps. Since with the default cooler, my video card was reaching 75C on load... now it's down to 54C on load.
Anyway, I started overclocking it a while ago since now I had room to do it with low temps. I was using only the ATItool to do it and it does not save the settings... video card will go back to normal if i reboot and I have to apply them again via the ATItool when I load into windows. However, I normally apply them when going into a game.
This is how much I increased it by:
Default Clock speeds:
Core: 398.25mhz
Memory 492.75mhz
After overclock:
Core: 444.27mhz
Memory: 522.82mhz
It ran stable at this speed and it had no artifacts... ran it like this for a few days now.
However today, it would not show anything on the screen.. and it ran perfectly this morning. So I took the video card out.. checked it all, blew on the PCI express slot and the connectors on the video card to remove any dust in case that was the problem.. did not appear to be any dust though and everything looked fine on the video card and the cooler was tight. Only problem I did find was that the screw came loose that holds the video card bracket on to the case.. so the video card was fully in the PCI express slot but it was sort of loose where you could easily move the card up and down. After I tightened the bracket to the case, plugged everything in, the screen finally turned on and it booted into windows.
So I'm just wondering if the overclock did something or was it because the card was a bit flimsy due to the screw being loose. I think it was because it was a bit flimsy since the card is still stable and showing no artifacts and that it was not overclocked when I turned the PC on. However, it was fully in the PCI slot.. so, I just want to be sure so that I can continue to overclock it
Would not of been a big issue if it did die since I could of just got something better like a geforce lol. Only would suck because I'd have no pc for a while
Was hoping the monitor was dead though! lol.. get an LCD... lol anyway, sorry for the long message.. but I had to explain everything
Thanks in advance.
I went to turn on my PC today to find that my screen would stay blank like my PC was off with the LED blinking on the monitor. However, my PC was working since I have a LCD screen in my drive bay and it shows when it is loaded into windows. Plus my hard drive showed activity so i knew it was not my PC.
Came down to two things, my monitor was dead or my video card was dead. If I detached the monitor cord from the video card, the screen would come on saying "no connection". Plug it back in, it would go blank again. Tried another monitor... would not show anything either. So by then, I knew it was my video card.
My video card is a Saphire Radeon X800XL 256mb DDR3 but with the default cooler replaced with a Zalman VF700-CU cooler which greatly brought down my temps. Since with the default cooler, my video card was reaching 75C on load... now it's down to 54C on load.
Anyway, I started overclocking it a while ago since now I had room to do it with low temps. I was using only the ATItool to do it and it does not save the settings... video card will go back to normal if i reboot and I have to apply them again via the ATItool when I load into windows. However, I normally apply them when going into a game.
This is how much I increased it by:
Default Clock speeds:
Core: 398.25mhz
Memory 492.75mhz
After overclock:
Core: 444.27mhz
Memory: 522.82mhz
It ran stable at this speed and it had no artifacts... ran it like this for a few days now.
However today, it would not show anything on the screen.. and it ran perfectly this morning. So I took the video card out.. checked it all, blew on the PCI express slot and the connectors on the video card to remove any dust in case that was the problem.. did not appear to be any dust though and everything looked fine on the video card and the cooler was tight. Only problem I did find was that the screw came loose that holds the video card bracket on to the case.. so the video card was fully in the PCI express slot but it was sort of loose where you could easily move the card up and down. After I tightened the bracket to the case, plugged everything in, the screen finally turned on and it booted into windows.
So I'm just wondering if the overclock did something or was it because the card was a bit flimsy due to the screw being loose. I think it was because it was a bit flimsy since the card is still stable and showing no artifacts and that it was not overclocked when I turned the PC on. However, it was fully in the PCI slot.. so, I just want to be sure so that I can continue to overclock it
Would not of been a big issue if it did die since I could of just got something better like a geforce lol. Only would suck because I'd have no pc for a while
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