computer junkies

so anyways, i bought a refurbished about a month ago to replace my old dell because it basically burned the video card up in it. it had a nvidia 6800 in it. it was giving all kinds of artifacts all over the screen during post and the whole time it was on. it also wouldnt load the video card driver. anyways about 2 weeks ago i had the same problem with my new one, although not nearly as bad. anyways i tried some different drivers and left the computer in the freezer overnight, and fixed the problem. then it cropped up again. so i reloaded windows, and some kind of video flashing it does during the os loading fixed the problem again, but then it crapped out during me using an 3d opengl app. the driver stopped loading and i basically maked a work around turning the default windows driver on, and running 16bit color depth.

more or less i'm caring about why do these keep burning up? btw the new card was an nvidia quadro 1500.
 
on my old one yes, i think it was, i know the fan on the video card side doesnt work, but i was able to monitor the temps and they never really went above 120 on the video card. and the temps on my new one never went above 130, and that was only during boot, it would have problems around 110 i noticed when it did start to break down.
 
For the prices of new PSUs, I would recommend a 500W minimum. Don't necessary look at lowest cost. Get a good one, it will pay for itself over the years.

I prefer to use Thermaltake, Antec, or Cooler Master.
 
Get one that's at least 500W like mentioned before, and stay away from stuff that's around $30 or less.

I prefer PC Power and Cooling
 
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Oh, different story! lol.

If it is overheating you will probably need to have someone check the fans and if you know someone good with laptops, have them clean and reapply all the thermal paste on the CPU and any other components.

One quick remedy would be to take the laptop outside, turn it off, and use compressed air to clean out the cooling fins. You should be able to see an exhaust port somewhere on the laptop.
 
110? I'm assuming you mean Celsius?

My 280m only reaches 85c with a nice overclock and max settings. Your problems are because it is overheating. That is the ONLY thing that causes artifacts. Unless you are using some random 3rd party drivers...
 
Have you ever disassembled a laptop unit before? Defn needs a clean out most likely and new thermal paste re applied
 
i've disassembled both of these, and the old dell, the inspiron 9300 was filthy as it had done 28 months in the desert with me. the new one i when i took it apart was clean as a whistle.

the temp readings are in Fahrenheit

the drivers i'm using are the dell supplied ones. i also have the same errors with the laptop2go modified drivers. the modified drivers are basically forcing the computer to take the update from nvidia and they ran fine for a bit, but the problem started with the dell drivers. i'm certain its not a driver issue as it has artifacts during the post.
 
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Mfrs are notorious for applying thermal paste in the wrong manner (see Apple macbooks as one example). My guess is that the poster above is correct. Try an older version of video drivers and/or try reapplying the thermal paste on the CPU (and GPU if appropriate).

With regard to the video drivers, you may want to forget about the Dell drivers and try the manufacturers drivers (ATI, Nvidia, Intel, etc).
 
Dell's drivers are junk..I had more then enough problems on the last desktop I purchased from them I ended up just getting manufacturer drivers and all issues were fixed. On my old gateway they had one drop the size of a dime in the center of the CPU for thermal paste :shake: no wonder they want you to buy the extended warranty on their half assed assembly jobs...
 
the problem is nvidia doesnt not make drivers for their mobile series of video cards. they leave that to the manufacturers. which i found workaround through laptopvideo2go, it actually uses the nvidia drivers and more or less unlocks them to be able to be forced as the driver. i'd would do the thermal paste but my current cpu temp is 96 and 104 degrees farenheit for the gpu and i have my fans to set manually forced to high, so i know heat is not the problem. basically neither driver works. more or less i was just wondering if people have also had these problems with nvidia cards in general, i just thought it was weird as one card worked for almost 4 years and then one died a month after i got it with the almost the exact same problem.
 
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