I Bought 7 BROKEN Graphics Cards to Try and Fix - I Was Disappointed

i paid 3150 for all of these graphics cards put together they were marked as salvage when i bought them that means that they might work fine or they could be all broken if i can fix all of them then i'll be able to make some money on them if i can't fix all of them then i definitely won't be able to this video is sponsored by jlc pcb more on them in a minute the first graphics card i want to test is this little guy this is a gigabyte gt 1030 it costs about 100 retail use they go on ebay for about 50 bucks this is the first time i've done any graphics card testing ever i've also only repaired one graphics card in my entire life so this should get interesting i think we can put this guy in this computer but i don't know for sure i'm just gonna try it but first we have to remove the original card i've already got the little uh thumb screws out here i've got the pcie slot lock depressed back here and then we just pull it straight up and there we go i don't see any uh issues on the board that i can tell right away let's see what happens hdmi cable plugged into this graphics card now let's turn this pc on and see what happens okay got a windows screen that's good so i'm gonna get logged in and then we'll do some testing on this graphics card and see how it does okay i'm gonna be using heaven benchmark for this test this is actually my first time using it so let's go run and see what happens i'm not gonna get into all the little details of test testing each of these graphics cards because i'm not a graphics card expert what i'm looking for is whether they work whether they show a good quality on the screen and those are the main two things that i'm looking for okay the frame rate is extremely low but i think i would expect that with a cheaper graphics card so after testing this for about 10 to 15 minutes it actually looks pretty good i don't see any artifacts or any any distortions on the screen and it has performed the in the entire time there's no been no uh serious blackouts or anything like that so with that being said let's move on to the next card and this one definitely has some problems because the back of it is not even screwed on so let's check this one out and see what's going on with it so here we have a geforce gtx 1080 acx 3.0 no idea what that means and this one has been taken apart oh i already see a problem right here so this part right here is just totally been blown out it looks like so we got a faulty capacitor here i am going to take this card apart the rest of the way just to check the other side of the board and make sure there's nothing else going on there we're definitely going to need to install the perfect amount of thermal paste but let's inspect the board and see if there's anything else going on so now i'm just looking for any other obviously damaged components so far i don't see any over here and everything over here looks pretty good too so as far as i can tell this is the only bad component on this graphics card so let's get that replaced and then i think it'll be time to install it into our test pc and see what happens look at this this part of this capacitor has just been totally blown away let's take a look at one of these other ones this part right here is what's blown away we've got a nice big pad right here so that's good news because we don't have to do anything too crazy when it comes to repairing any traces so what we need to do is replace this capacitor and then we'll have to figure out a way to mount it to this uh circuit trace right here first thing i want to do though is clean this up a little bit get a better look at it and then after that we can remove it and install a new one okay it looks a lot better after cleaning this area up you can see that part of this circuit trace has been [Music] exploded eaten away and so what i'm going to do is clean this all up right here some of the copper has already been exposed and there is a little bit of solder right here a little puddle of it so this should be actually a pretty easy fix so i'm gonna remove this this capacitor now this old one and then we'll install a new one onto it and then i think it'll be time to test i'll be using my hot air soldering station i'm gonna apply some flux first that helps the solder flow then my hot air station will heat the component and the solder up until the solder melts then i can remove it now we got this capacitor soldered on nice and solidly it has a lot of solder on this side that's because i had to add a lot extra to get a nice connection to this pad over here but now we've got this replaced now it's time to apply the perfect amount of thermal paste [Music] and now with the perfect amount of thermal paste this graphics card is definitely going to work definitely going to work definitely going to work jlc pcb is one of the best places to get your custom pcbs manufactured and assembled and one of the best parts about jlc pcb is their full service website you can order your custom pcbs and track the manufacturing process in real time once you're on the order page all you have to do is add your gerber file then you can select the layers dimension the quantity design and all of these other options all right from their website so as you can see ordering your custom manufactured pcb from jlc pcb is super easy once you have all your customizations made all you have to do is save it to your cart then jlc pcb will get it manufactured and sent to you quickly with 16 years of pcb manufacturing experience jlcpcb has a well-trained engineering and customer support team this ensures that not only will you get the best product you'll also get excellent customer service you can go right to jlcpcb.com to check out their services i'll put a link in the description that'll take you right there comment down below with your jlc pcb experience and you can get a 50 jlc pcb discount card we're just getting ready to put this cover back on and you can even see on here where that uh little mini explosion happened and out with the little baby graphics card and in with this monster okay we have it all hooked up i'm gonna power it on we need to watch for any sparks to listen for any pops let's see what happens oh we got some light on it that's good news i think uh it's still not giving out any sort of display so it looks like the fans aren't fully spinning on this graphics card either so we've definitely still got more issues so i'm going to turn this back off get the graphics card out and let's inspect it a little more i tore down that entire pc so i could get just the motherboard so then i could have better access to the test points on this graphics card so next i'm going to start testing voltages and see if we can figure out why this is showing no display but it seems to be starting up fine so let's get it powered on now let's start checking voltages i'm first going to check and see if there's voltage into the card which i suspect there will be 12 volts 12 volts on that connector and 12 volts so we've got 12 volts coming in through both of these connectors next let's see what we have on these inductors right here 12 volts 12 volts and let's check for a 5 volt and a 1.8 volt line there's our 5 volt and there's our 1.8 so so far we've got all the voltages we should have i'm going to check voltage over on the hdmi port over here and we have 5 volts on the hdmi system and then we also have a 3.3 volt line i'm not exactly sure which of the pins on the port should have those voltages but it is good to know that they're there so i don't see any problems with any of the voltages for some reason though it's still not sending signal through the hdmi port out to a display i have tried it with a monitor and dvi cable and unfortunately that also didn't work so none of the display options are working i'm going to try one other thing on this card and then if we can't find any problems here i just don't know where else to go but i do want to check all of the zero ohm resistors just to see if there's anything shorted out so let's do that next and then if we can't figure it out we'll move on so we've got a group of zero ohm resistors right here let's check those first good good good when you hear it beep that just means that there is a path through this for the electrical current so that tells us that those are not shorted out let's check these guys essentially these 0 ohm resistors at least from my understanding is they work basically as fuses let's flip the board over and check the other side okay so no problems there so far let's just double check all of these capacitors and make sure that none of these have a short to ground one side should be shorted to ground the other side should not be [Music] okay and no problems there at all so this graphics card has all the voltages it should have it has nothing shorted that i've tested that i can find i'm thinking maybe a problem with the processor itself but unfortunately there's just no way for me to know if you have some ideas of what might be wrong leave that down in the comment section i am using a 600 watt power supply which should be plenty for this card so i'm just not sure where else to go so for now let's move on to the next graphics card and next we got the evga geforce gtx 1080 ftw2 i don't see any issues the warranty sticker has been removed i guess this is an issue from the outside this guy's all bent up other than that i don't see any issues so i'm gonna fix this real quick and then we'll plug it in and see what it does yeah that's a little better now we'll plug this into our test setup here will it power on and show a picture let's find out okay we did have a little bit of fan movement that's good so we had power initially the fans did just spin just a little bit but we have no signal at all on another one so next i'm going to do some voltage testing see if it's got voltage to the board how it should and then we'll go from there now in order to do that testing i'm going to need to take this apart just so it's a bare board i mean to be fair i wanted to take it apart anyway and no obvious problems so far so next we're going to take off these four screws that should enable us to remove the entire board off the heatsink here we go to me it looks like maybe somebody's had this apart i think they these have been replaced i don't think that's factory it actually has new thermal paste it looks like i mean definitely not the perfect amount but at least it is new thermal paste so i think somebody's been into this before and i also already see an area that's discolored this area right in here to me looks like it's pretty discolored let's get under the microscope and check that out so this is the color of electronics overheating like this has gotten so hot that it has totally discolored this area i think i see another place too it's a similar story over here on this guy right here this has also gotten super hot and another area down here that has also gotten super hot you'll notice a lot of these around these little ics so that's making me a little worried that this board has been totally overheated i would guess probably by overclocking this gpu that is just a guess but it would make sense another thing i've noticed is there's like kind of like this liquid all around here and i'm i'm guessing what's happened is that's kind of like leeched out of these uh thermal pads that's just a guess but that's what it looks like to me i don't see anywhere that this thing has been repaired or attempted to be repaired so here's my issue with this graphics card this graphics card to me looks like it's been overclocked significantly and overworked and obviously heat damage so no matter what i do to it even if i find some problems and fix them there's going to be always in my opinion there's probably going to be other components that are going to be constantly going bad because it's just been so overheated so many times now these components are just the components we can see we can't see the condition of the chip itself or the condition of the solder balls under the chip but in my opinion this graphics card is one that is just not worth repairing and probably one that i'll just try and sell for parts so someone can use the parts off of this to repair another better gpu now while this is a bummer i think it's the best option for this one if you have a different opinion leave it down in the comments i want to see what you have to say if you have more experience with me in fixing broken gpus let's move on to the next one the last gpu is worth about 500. and this one is also worth about 500 this one is an evga geforce rtx 2070 super let's get this one plugged in and see if it works okay and it is all plugged in now let's see what happens when we turn it on so we got one fan the other fan let's see if we get a picture getting something well this is sort of good news we got some glitching going on up here it is possible i just need to update the drivers on this thing but at least we have a picture on this one and here we go let's see what happens so we're at 66 frames per second 110 frames per second and there's absolutely no graphical glitches in this that looks really good okay and that wasn't a super long test but the test i did show that this graphics card is working really well i don't see any problems with it i'm gonna do another physical inspection off-camera but let's move on to the next one and next we have this evga geforce rtx 3060 worth about 550 dollars used on ebay i'm gonna plug it in let's see what happens okay will it power on yes fan spin good news so far let's see if we get a display and we do so far so far we're only getting graphics cards that either aren't fixable or nothing wrong so hopefully we get a good repair in on one of these okay and looks good so far okay let's run this tester oh we got some green dots in here that's no good that could be uh just a connection issue out to check my hdmi cable oh fatal error let's see what we have can't initialize gpu monitor out of memory out of memory out of memory okay well let's try that one more time and see what happens and it looks like it crashed our tester so we definitely have something going on with this let's get it unplugged and open it up and see if we can figure out what's going on so this one has not been opened before i'm wondering if we're gonna see the same things we saw on the other one that had a lot of heating issues or looked like it had a lot of heating issues okay and the thermal paste looks good it's nice and wet still so let's have a look so if we take a look here right there we can see it you can see the discoloration we've got going on right here on this corner that's not too bad other than that but this obviously makes me wonder about this gpu i feel like it's probably toast let's try this though let's start it back up and let's watch it with a thermal camera and see what the temperatures look like on the board okay and we definitely have some heat on the gpu right now 111 degrees right there we do have a picture on the screen so let's start up that test again and then we'll see what part of the gpu gets hot or if anything else gets hot [Music] oh yeah it's all getting hot now i don't see any of the actual memory chips getting warm just the gpu itself so i'm actually going to stop this test now just because i don't want to overheat this gpu even more than it already has been i mean it's already sort of toast but might as well not do any more damage than we need to all right and we already lost the picture as well so let's get this thing turned off before we do too much damage to it so right down here showed the most heat on the gpu just when the with the computer at idle obviously over here is discolored more but there's a lot of heat going on down here before we really even did anything uh with the gpu so unfortunately i think this is another one where this gpu chip itself is probably faulty and there's just no good way to repair that so yet another unfixable graphics card but let's forget about this one and move on to the next one so we have two graphics cards left this geforce rtx 2080 ti is one of them but it's also missing pretty much all the screws so hopefully we can get this one working we're not doing so well as far as making our money back that doesn't look good we got thermal paste on top of thermal paste that's an interesting strategy we got all sorts of stuff going on in here so we got some thermal pads down there and then more thermal pads on top so this wasn't even contacting the heatsink the heatsink is totally clean oh boy wow look at this there's just thermal pads on top of thermal pads so i i'm thinking what happened here is somebody wait a second we're missing an entire memory chip oh man when i first opened this i was hoping i could just fix this thermal pad problem but unfortunately with this missing ram chip this is definitely not going to work and looking at this more this thing's missing all sorts of parts it's missing all of these diodes along here it's missing more over here it's missing this chip right over here so somebody used this took a bunch of parts off of it and then returned it back to the store unfortunately that is a risk i take when i buy salvage items from retail return centers so this is just part of the game especially with the demand of graphics cards recently especially when i bought these i bought these several months ago the this kind of stuff is going to be more common there's going to be more people out there doing stuff like this so they can repair other graphics cards and then still get their money back on these graphics cards so unfortunately since i bought this as salvage there's nothing i can do and i just have to take the hit on it let's move on to the last graphics card and our last one is this gigabyte radon 6800 xt this one looks like it's in much better condition than the last one so let's plug it in and see what it does wow and this one is chunky this thing's like almost bigger than the entire motherboard i got here okay let's power on the board see what happens okay we got some light on the graphics card that's good the fans moved a little bit let's see if we get a picture oh feels like that fan is rubbing i don't think that should cause a no signal but that's definitely something we need to figure out i think before we do any further testing let's see if we can get that fan figured out and then we'll start it up again and while we're doing that we can check out the motherboard and see if there's anything going on there so let's get a torn down and take a look at that fan so one of the first things i noticed here is these are custom cut thermal pads so that means that somebody has been into this and they've replaced the thermal pads i'm hoping this graphics card is salvageable but right now i don't have a lot of hope just because i'm guessing this could be a similar one to like the others where it's just been used and abused and after they were done with it and the gpu is faulty they return it to the store so they can get their money back but let's do a little bit of testing on it and just see if we can happen to fix it so here is the bottom of the gpu after removing the plate that goes over it and it is unfortunately just as i suspected you can see all of this discoloration this goes all the way around the gpu so this tells me that this gpu has likely been extremely hot for long periods of time and that probably means that the gpu itself is bad let's go through and just do some ohms and voltage testing just to make sure there's nothing else obvious going on but i think this one is probably going to be a lost cause okay and i don't see any shorts to ground on this board so i'm gonna plug it back in and just make sure everything's got voltage that needs it 12 volts 12 volts 12 volts and we have all of the voltage we need down there five volts there we also have 5 volts over on our hdmi system 12 volts over to our main power rail over here and i will double check and make sure there's voltage down on the pcie slot 3.3 3.3 and it looks like there is so unless i'm missing something which is entirely possible by the way unless i'm missing something this is yet another graphics card where the gpu is likely the only fault because it has voltage everywhere that it technically needs it at least that i know of but unfortunately it's still just not putting out anything to the tv so what have we learned about buying salvage graphics cards well i've learned that it seems like a lot of people are just buying these using them until the gpu burns out then taking them back to the store getting their money back and buying another one so i've learned not to buy any more salvaged gpus but i'm still mostly glad i did it this time so i can learn more about them and how they work i hope you enjoyed this video even though it wasn't very satisfying from a repair perspective i hope it was still interesting and satisfying to watch if you want to see a video where i took a broken graphics card and actually was able to fix it i'll put that up on your screen now so you can go check that out thank you again to jlc pcb for sponsoring this video thank you for watching it and i hope you have a good one [Music]

Channel: TronicsFix

Views: 767,028

Keywords: tronicsfix, tronicsfix steve, graphics cards, broken graphics cards

Id: SmvqqGwN8bQ

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022