did i break my video card?

[Woody]

guys, my screen just went black and after rebooting i noticed that my puter can only do 4bit colors and 640x480 pixels. in dos there are strange red vertical lines all over the screen. ...so i opened my case, and OH MY GOD...my water cooling system had just started leaking and i had little drops of water here and there. after fixing the leak and drying the system, still the same picture ..is my video card gone for good..or do these symptoms sound like something else?

THANKS for ANY input!

woody

[Nebulous]

Oh oh :eek: Sounds like the VC is a goner for sure :( Leave it out the box for a day or so so it'll dry off really good, then see if it'll werk. If not, start playing *taps* and RMA it. Providing it doesn't have visible signs of water marks on it.

[Woody]

pheew, am i lucky... i have just let it dry and when i took a closer look at it i noticed that the water must have dripping onto my VC for quite a while. there was quite a bit lime scale build up already :-))))

i just scratched it all off with my fingers and it worked like a charme. two lessions for me: 1. take greater care when building a water cooling system 2. use distilled water.. if only to prevent lime scale build up on your components in case you are crap at building stuff like i am, with the consequence of unusal amounts of free flowing h2o inside your case :-)

woody

[DexterHolland911]

Wow I would have said that card was dead for sure, but then I've had my fair share of miraculous recoveries as well. :D It's always a nerve-racking experience that's for sure.

[Nebulous]

I'll say you were lucky! As a habit I'm always checking my rig for leaks. I've become pretty anal about it too! LOL

[d@rker]

i had a similar problem early this year .my games started to lock but in the desktop was ok ,when i did a close inspection inside the case i found a small puddle on the back of the gfx .after cleaning it everything was ok again :) .the problem was a *fixed* cracked top of OcPc Atlantis block ...

like Nebulous said ,check your sys regularly

[DexterHolland911]

My case is always open. In fact I have sort of a frankenstein watercooling setup. :D I haven't had a side on my case for a few years now.