Fixing a Viewer's BROKEN Gaming PC? - Fix or Flop S1:E2

how's it going everyone in this video we'll be fixing another viewer's broken system this system actually was working at one point it is not any longer based on what he told me about the the symptoms it's showing uh this one's going to be a real treat to try to figure out i'm on a time crunch here uh he drove all the way from palm beach which if you don't know that's that's several hours from orlando about three hours or so maybe four hours depending on traffic up the turnpike and he's going to return back home at around 3 p.m today so it's 11 a.m right now i have four hours to fix this system i apologize that the video is going to be a bit all over the place a bit quick uh but i don't want him to have to drive back here another day just to pick his system up even though he said he wouldn't and doesn't have a problem with it one quick note about this playlist this will turn into a full-fledged series we have enough entries um from viewers who have issues with their systems in the orlando florida area that i think we can turn this into at least a full season's worth of fixing systems broken consoles broken components and we're going to call this series fix or flop so if you ever see a video uploaded on the channel and the title has fixer flop in it this is what you're going to get so without further ado i'm going to get this thing plugged in we're going to turn it on and see what on earth is wrong with it stay with me be sure to check out team group t-force delta rgb modules for your next pc with capacities up to 32 gigs per dimm and frequencies up to 3 600 megahertz they'll be sure to complement any build budget but not only that their integrated leds can be controlled by various rgb software suites so there's no need for extra clutter click the sponsor link below for more details now this system is a bit dirty yeah there's some dust accumulating here i wouldn't say this is worthy of a proper deep cleaning though and given my time constraints i'm not really going to be too worried about trying to clean this up as best i can i will take my electric duster to it though get rid of some of the surface dust make it a bit cleaner for him when he gets a system back if all else fails and i can't fix this it ends up being a flop at least we'll have a cleaner system at the end of it now as usual first thing we're going to do plug in the system we're going to connect the monitor even though he told me that this you know we don't get picture we don't get a post i'm still going to connect it anyway just in case no but we've got the system plugged in and we're just going to see what kind of symptoms we know just right off the bat so power is on we've got fans spinning it's really weird we're getting i think we're getting issues with power delivery pci power or actually supplemental power to the card pci power is probably fine we're getting a white dram light i have never seen this before so this is the part here that concerns me the most the dram light i mean that could be anything it could just be reseeding the modules we'll try a few different things try different slots as well but this here this is what i'm very concerned about either this card isn't getting proper power because we've only got one of these connector lights blinking i believe both should be on if they're both receiving power a lot of other cards i've worked with are like that but the blinking as well something something's up here i'm going to check connections at the rear first we'll tackle the dram issue later but i think this is our biggest concern so let's get this right side panel off i'm going to look for connections into the power supply because the connections into the card looked fine usually this stuff is good but you just never know you always want to check these are the connections here for the cards specifically supplemental pcie connectors they look fine what i might do is remove the cable extensions and just plug these directly in for the card just to rule out um a cable extension issue most of the time these will be fine if they're using correct gauge maybe or if they're not split correctly and these can cause issues so let's run these cables from the power supply straight in the cable extensions are not the issue at least we've rolled out that possibility so the next thing i'm going to do just to clear up any potential software issues issues in the bios i'm going to clear the cmos which will require me to jump these two pins right here i'll lift it back off okay power on let's just see what happens nothing happened but that's okay at least we rolled out another possibility same symptoms as before okay i was mistaken after double checking this led up here it's actually the led indicator for a vga issue not dram there's a bunch of stacked leds there and then like a stack of descriptions above that i kind of got them confused uh so it's just pointing to vga no other issue here except for the card and again we've got that blinking white pcie uh cable connector which it shouldn't be blinking only one of them is blinking so that's that's very concerning something the system really really really wants to post everything else checks out it everything else appears to be fine we have that blinking led on top of this card i'm glad you might include these it makes it easier to troubleshoot in the long run either the car is not receiving power from the power supply or the car is receiving power but it's not delivering it properly which would indicate just a graphics card main board issue so i'm going to swap cards first and if this card um if the new card still exhibits similar issues uh then we're going to roll it down to a power supply so i'll get my my clamp meter and we'll see if we're uh we're getting power draw through these uh through these cables here i double check the connections on the on the power supply side looks good these obviously are okay um but uh the graphics card swap is the easier of the two so we're going to try that one first so out with the old this is out of here and in with the new this card actually looks quite similar to the one he already is in there it's a bit thinner this is the same gtx 10 uh not 1060 1660 that we used to diagnose the previous system in this playlist i know this card again works it's been tested in multiple rigs and if we get the same kind of issue then we'll know that it's not the graphics card at least it probably isn't i'm not even going to bother screwing it in just sit there it's not hanging too hard and we'll power it up see if we get a post this time well all right so a few things i just noticed the led up top now is green instead of white which i think indicates that the system is posted and there's no issues with this new card that is bad news of course though for this 5700 xt here i think this card is to blame makes it easier to troubleshoot but at the end of the day and these cards are going for way more than they should in this current graphics card market it's not going to be uh good news for this viewer yep i should have connected the hdmi cable to begin with but uh we get a post now so it's it's this card that sucks and now just to rule out the possibility of a very very slight possibility that it was the supplemental six pin that was the issue from the power supply in his rig and not the card itself i'm going to throw his 5700 xt into my personal rig which works just fine so we know everything else in here is good if we get the same kind of symptoms we don't get a picture on screen and i'm sure my doctor debug led would tell me something crazy um we know that it's still the card now if we don't have any issues here it's going to be the power supply i'd actually prefer that to be the case but i don't think it will be uh my i'm not to kind of cross these cables over different layout here going to look a bit weird i'm not even gonna like i said i'm not gonna screw this card into the case there's really no point it's gonna be removed in a few seconds now i'm not even gonna let this thing boot all the way into windows i don't want it trying to install conflicting drivers just wanna see if it posts if it posts we're in good hands a few moments later we're getting the same blinking led on that eight pin no led on the six pin i wonder if dr debug is going to tell me anything that's what i'm really curious about though because it might and it might tell us more specifically what's wrong now see it just turns off so i think that the system thinks that the card is working fine at least my motherboard does or it would throw a code it's neither of the displayport connectors i doubt both of those are bad it's something else on the board so we know it's the graphics card right i mean at this point we've seen the exact same symptoms exhibited in two totally separate otherwise fully functioning builds and at this point i i'm inclined to take it apart i at least want to look at the board and see if there are any physical imperfections maybe we've got a blown mosfet maybe the gpu has been de-balled i'm not sure if we'll be able to see if it's if it's very slight um maybe some other smd has just completely blown apart we won't know until we take it apart at this point i feel like we have nothing left to lose because we know it's the card but instead of just being the bearer of bad news here i'm gonna take it apart and see if i can narrow down specifically what's wrong because we might be able to find a donor board uh and re-solder those uh those smds if they are in fact destroyed overheated blown apart whatever so let's go and do that let's take it apart why not so the rest of this build works that is uh that i can say for certain go ahead and unplug all this stuff i guess it's no different really than you know a pcdc video where i'm fully dissecting a graphics card uh in this case we're not really cleaning it we're just trying to find any physical damage so i've got my knock off ifixit toolkit here pretty much every screw head you could think of we're gonna go for the small phillips this one's really really on there there we go okay two different sets of cables to disconnect one set there careful not to snag anything and the other one here i'm also gonna remove the back plate just because it might be something on the other side of this board that we don't see it could be damaged so just a few extra screws here we do have thermal pads back here as well so things are a bit sticky be careful you do not want to bend this board okay so let's look at this side first i'm going to zoom in a bit so you guys can see what i'm seeing i know it's not all going to be in focus i don't see any immediate issue i really hate to give this back to the owner and be like yeah well i know it's your card but um what specifically about your card is wrong that i do not know that's just not the news you want to hear i mean replacing a 5700 xt with a totally new card is gonna cost way over retail for one of these at this point it's pretty much impossible unless you're you know rolling in cash and um i i'd love to just i'd love to whip out my soldering equipment and fix something you know if i see something wrong i think i could fix it even these very very small resistors and things but uh i don't see anything wrong and that sucks and i'm just gonna see if anyone else online has had a similar issue let's see 5700 xt one blinking pcie cable led just see i mean if someone else has kind of narrowed it down that might indicate where i need to be looking a few people here are saying that it just means abnormal power supply or so there's some sort of issue with the power delivery from the from the power supply itself i don't think that's the case though because my my build has a power supply that's it's way over wattage for what this you know what this card requires and i was running two separate cables from the unit a six pin and an eight pin so it's not even like they're they're split although his was his were split but that still shouldn't be an issue i mean if the power supply is designed correctly the the splitting there shouldn't be a problem especially for a card this um it's not weak but you know it's not overkill either see this is the other really weird thing if i intentionally don't connect the extra six pin here just leave the a pin connected we're supposed to get a light here so i actually got it backwards earlier i put a note there in the in the video but it it's supposed to light up if it's not receiving power if it is receiving power then these lights should stay off this light should be on according to gigabyte um but it's not and we're still getting that same kind of incessant blinking left led for it uh over the eight pin it's just really strange so now i'm curious if i just connect the six pin are we going to get the same led flashing here i'm just kind of playing around at this point also we'll try switching the six pin or what was a six pin we'll switch that into the eight pin header and vice versa just to see again we've already kind of ruled this out but uh i'm just kind of i'm kind of confused by the status indicator here and see it just blinks i don't get it there's got to be some i mean i checked there's there's no manual there's a quick start guide for this this graphics card but there's no manual that i could find on the website for this product and i think that if only one led is blinking like this that indicates something else i don't think it's a power issue or it might be a power issue but it's not the same one as what people are saying um they're getting when both lights are flashing that would indicate that there's abnormal power being supplied probably a power supply issue here though i'm not thinking that it might be maybe a bad bios flash if this person flashed a v bios i don't know heck even with both supplemental cables disconnected we're still getting that single blinking led starting to annoy me at this point the only other thing i can think of and i'm just going to do this at this point because i have nothing else to try and i'm probably going to have to give this system back to the owner with the bad news i don't have a replacement card for this i don't have many graphics cards at all actually a lot of them i've given away and i haven't gotten any uh extras from vendors because vendors don't have many of them either but uh i'm just going to move this graphics card down to the second full length slot and i'm not even going to connect power cables just going to see if we get the same issue it's the only other thing i can try here um i don't have the uh the tools necessary to diagnose anything on a main board level yeah i'm totally stumped on this one all i can think of is that there's there's some sort of defect on the board probably the gpu itself that that obviously i'm not going to be able to fix this would be a classic case of rma and the owner of the system might still have a warranty on this card i don't know i don't know how old the card is or when he bought it if he even bought it or if he bought it second hand off of someone else but um at least i can tell him you know that the card itself is to blame well i really hate to be the bearer of bad news here especially in this current graphics card market if i had additional cards if i had this exact card or one even even close to it you know that was extra that i didn't need for recursive testing or potential builds in the future i only have a few available in the closet most of those in there are boxes at this point i've given so many of them away i would totally swap cards with him but unfortunately the current state of things it also affects us as reviewers as builders and i'm gonna have to just tell him you know to try his luck with the rma process if he still has a warranty to claim that and try to return it to gigabyte get them to send a replacement or get them to fix the card if they can figure out what is wrong with it he did tell me on twitter when he first inquired about getting this thing fixed having me look at it he said i was using my computer normally and it just completely shut off and wouldn't reboot i installed a new psu and when i powered it on the fans and lights were on but i didn't get video that sounds an awful lot like that old power supply killed his card potentially a surge down just the pcie pin outs on the brick side killed the car it's all i can think of why else would your system die with the old unit but then you replace it with a new working unit everything else is good everything else turns on you get your lights your fan spinning but you don't get a post because the card doesn't work any longer i think his card was was bricked by that old power supply and when the power supply died it took the graphics card with it that's why power supplies are so important guys when you're when you're shopping for a unit do not buy the cheapest even if it has enough wattage for your system or more than enough wattage if it's not at least 80 plus certified if it's not from a reputable brand with a really good warranty because that'll tell you how much faith they have in their products i wouldn't put it in my system right so go for your name brands go for the ones with good warranties that are 80 plus i would say at least 80 plus or 80 plus bronze you can go you know as low as a 500 watt 80 plus unit from ebg i've used plenty of those those are fine and they have decent warranties attached as well but don't go for some like off the shelf just super sketchy brand you've never heard of silver power supply enclosure brand because a lot of times especially when they get older and they start acting up when they do finally die they can kill other components but they don't have the proper surge protection in place to prevent these other components from from being killed in the process um so it's unfortunate that it had to happen this way but uh i do have faith that the uh that the viewer will be able to get a return uh authorization there shouldn't be just a single blinking led both leds should either be blinking or not blinking or completely permanently on um so i think that single blinking led is telling us that there's something very very wrong with the card and like i said if the old power supply killed the card that would make perfect sense now the last thing i'm going to do is take this outside and give it a proper dusting i'm not going to deep clean like i said but there is quite a bit of surface dust here we're going to get all that out uh before he picks up his system that way he at least has a clean system and he knows what's wrong with it uh and i actually finished at 1 pm so it took me two hours to troubleshoot and to film all of this which that worked out so if you guys enjoyed this video be sure to let me know give this one thumbs up i'd appreciate that you can also check the comment section at some point in the near future it won't be right away but at some point i will have a pin comment down there that will kind of reveal to you guys what ended up happening with this system won't know right away again so if you're watching this video when it first publishes there'll be some other random comment down there but once we find out if this viewer can claim warranty on this card if a warranty does in fact exist and if gigabyte follows through with said warranty i will let you know in a pin comment i'll also be sure to send their engineering team an email with this video link asking them specifically what this single blinking led means and we disconnected both cables and we still got the single blinking led like both leds should be totally on if the cables are disconnected according to their website but um same issue same single blinking led and i think that means the card is dead so uh curious to hear what they have to say and that will also be in in a pin comment up top after i'm sure a few days the engineering team is going to take a while i'm sure to respond anything else uh you can subscribe that would be cool leave another comment down below and we think about this playlist so far and uh what other kinds of problems you'd like to see addressed in the future we'll do some specific board work in the future as well there is a 1060 with a chipped off i think it's a diode we're going to try to solder that with a donor board back together fix that and then we'll put it in a pcdc viewer system so i'll actually be able to upgrade a graphics card in this current graphics card market i know i can't do it for this viewer but i have another one that i'm going to try to fix and if i can fix it then that person will get a graphics card upgrade over his i think he has a 9800 gt in it so that's a really freaking old card so a 1060 will go a long way there but um yeah stay tuned for that that'll be really cool a few other fixer flop videos in the works definitely nervous i'm not sure what i'm going to run into but i think that's that that's what's fun about this kind of playlist here is yet you don't know what you're going to get i sure as heck don't and i'm sure i'll embarrass myself once or twice at least and you guys get to see it on video so subscribe leave a comment i'd appreciate all that input and stay tuned for the next one my name is greg thanks for trying to fix the system with me

Channel: Greg Salazar

Views: 504,330

Keywords: finance, credit, college, apple, tech, pc gaming, computer, how to build a pc, gaming pc, fix or flop, broken pc, how to fix a broken pc, dead pc, dead computer, pc won't post, no pc post, pc won't, pc wont turn on, pc wont boot, pc wont turn on after build, pc wont turn on but has power, pc wont show up on monitor, computer cleaning, dirty pc, troubleshoot, troubleshooting, pc troubleshooting, how to fix a pc, fix pc, pc no post, viewer's pc doesn't post, pc doesn't post

Id: Ra02fhbw5vY

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021