I recently had a video controller go out on me. I have only had
a PC for a year and a half, so fortunately, it was still covered
by warranty. I was told that I probably did not have a heat problem
because other parts would have gone bad first. They said that a
video card would usually go bad in the first couple weeks if it
was going to go bad at all and it was very unusual for one to go
out after this length of time. 

I have two inches clearance above the monitor, four inches clearance
on both sides of the CPU, and five inches between the back of the
monitor and the wall, and eight inches from the CPU to the wall.
It doesn't ever seem to overheat.

What causes a video card to burn out?        

11 responses total.

Failed chip, poor soldering, etc.  I doubt it's a heating problem.  If
the top of your PC case feels very warm to the touch, then perhaps.  
Even though PC come with 200+ watt power supplies, they really only need
about 50 watts of power and often less.

Nope, not true, the power consumption is higher than that. Most powersupplies
actually pop their fuses because they're underpowered and cannot cope with
the large currents drawn at startup of a typical PC, usually takes time
though. If I remember right: dram draws up to 2 amp of current during startup,
if you have lots of 'meggage', and a powerhungry CPU (pentium 60/66) and some
reasonably large HD's a 200 W powersupply may not be enough. MIKE...

I agree with kentn.  Unless you're PC feels really hot, chances are
the video card failed because of a random failure.  It's true that
most electronics with a latent defect will fail soon after going into
service, but not all of them do.

Sure, power consumption is high when you flip the switch on.  First thing
that has to happen is the large 400 volt electrolytic on the line side of
the switching power supply has to charge up.  Lotso amps!  I have a HP
66MHz 486 Vectra with 420M HD and 2 floppies and the power supply is rated
at 75 watts.  Sure, if your running old TTL stuff you'll need more power
supply, but most modern CPU's etc. don't use much power.

I wonder.  How long would one of those $30 220 watt power supplies last
if it were connected to an honest 220W load?  I should get one and take
bets...

Just about 2 minutes I guess.

I had no power supply probems on my XT with a 135 watt power supply
with a 35 watt ESDI drive and two .5 AMP ST225's running on it
simultaneously.  make that a 386dx40 living in that XT case with
that configuration, the XT was gone before the ESDI came.

but I don't think you have an overheating problem.

Electronic components sometimes die. Soemtimes you can trace a direct
cause and sometimes you might as well ask "why are we here?". You are
about as likely to get an answer to either question.

(Hiyo, new to this place *ducks*])
I'd have to disagree with the statement about pwersupplies not needing as much
as they're rated for. I've seen ppl on old XT's (the real one's mind you, be it
135 or 150) with a large (wattage) MFM drive, floppies, sound card, internal
modem, and memory cards, [and of course video[] that have to turn on their
monitor before they turn on the computer because otherwise, the montior won't
power up. Sounds to me like it's underpowered.

That's strange - the monitor has its own power supply for the hot stuff,
and has only signal level power from the cpu.

Perhaps the voltage surge from turning the monitor on affects the
AC enough to convince the switcher to give up.

Hello I have several cheap dead AT VGA cards., Make sure you ground 
the monitor correctly. Sometimes static electricity can happen
on the monitor and zap the card.
Regards
(AW)

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