Oh god! I just destroyed 200+ euros!

[Van_M]

Guys I just did a terrible screw-up with my winPC... I have this nice, self-built computer with a dual core athlon 4600+, 1 gig ram and an asus geforce 6800 128 mb. Problem was, the graphics card was making a hell of noise when operating. I've spotted that nice Arctic Cooling Accelero X1 fan since long ago. Today I decided to buy it and put it in. I've read on reviews, it was near completely silent. I went out to the shop and got it, went back home and opened up my pc. While I was unscrewing the old cooler off my graphics card, in a clumsy moment the screwdriver sliped off from my hands and hit the PCB of the card, right on one of the AGP connectors! Holy Crap! I tried to keep calm and completed the installation. I put the Graphics card in, pressed the power button, and .... Nothing!!! The computer boots up but the connector I damaged must have been responsible for recieving stuff to show on the screen. There go my 200 (or even 210) euros! You can't possibly imagine how much of a fool I feel right now :boohoo: .


Any posts of compassion and sympathy will be dearly appreciated! :boohoo:

ps. sorry for my bad English      

[Speelgoedmannetje]

And what are we going to do tonight?



 :-D

[GadgetMaster]

Are you sure it isn't repairable?

[Karlos]

@Van_M

Have you broken a connector off? Maybe you just cracked a solder join?

[Van_M]

Well I'm not an electronics guru but I don't think it is repeirable. The PCB seems to be wounded and there's no easy way of getting around of this. Thankfully I kept my old graphics card, a geforce 2 with a faulty fan that makes 3 times more noise than my last one (if that isn't an irony then what is?) so I can at least have a running PC. I'm out of savings so I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask my father for a 200 euro loan 'till christmas! :-(

[X-ray]

Before you ask for a loan, why not see if an Amigan can repair it. If it is just a trace I'm sure even I can fix it.
What have you got to lose?

[Karlos]

Maybe try to get a high res photo of the damage so that someone else can have a look. Perhaps it isn't as wrecked as you think.

Here's hoping.

[Karlos]

X-ray wrote:
Before you ask for a loan, why not see if an Amigan can repair it. If it is just a trace I'm sure even I can fix it.
What have you got to lose?

Well, exactly my point. There are people here who are clearly very gifted at this sort of thing.

[the_leander]

erm... Whoops.

Sorry to hear that matey... But do post pics - may well be that it can be repaired.

Are you sure you couldn't get it replaced under warrenty?

[GadgetMaster]

the_leander wrote:
erm... Whoops.

Sorry to hear that matey... But do post pics - may well be that it can be repaired.

Are you sure you couldn't get it replaced under warrenty?

Probably not unless it is the insurance kind. I know people that would claim under their home contents policy for a thing like that. People often ask us at work to write a report for their damaged laptop etc when it is beyond economical repair so that they can send it to the insurance company.

[Van_M]

It is out of warranty since i removed the original cooler which is part of the hardware.

Guys I really appreciate your help on the "tragedy" that struck me! The original cost of the card doesn't justfy the cost of sending the card abroad for repair. Instaead I would dearly appreciate if any of you, provided me directions on where to look to find instruction to repair it. To my understanding if there is a material that could be applied to solve these sorts of problems, it should be some kind of foam that fills up the trace on the PCB, right? Thank you in advance.

[X-ray]

First post the pic, then we will know what you did.

Cost: well you say the card is 200 Euros. If you send it to one of us to solder, you should get away with postage costs only. That's going to be cheap.

But lets see the damage, eh?

[countzero]

hmm, there are helpful amigans in greece as well. Maybe keropi can help you, he's in ioannina and seems crafty with these things.

[Van_M]

I'm gonna try to get a digital camera tommorow and get a few pics of the damage. I think I could probably get my self to Ioannina next saturday, and meet with Keropi. If this isn't possible I could probably post it as insured-fragile to one of you. Of course since it is already non-functional, whoever gets his hands on it will have absolutely no responsibility over the outcome. Thanks.  :-)

[mr_a500]

I know how you feel. These sort of things happen to me all the time. I'm not clumsy, but I am cursed with what I call "multiple fückups". This is where one very minor accident causes something else to screw up which causes something else to screw up which then causes a major problem.

One (real) example:

I was very carefully carrying a plate of spaghetti and a glass of wine. The wind (created by my movement as I walked past) blew a paper off my desk. I carefully put down my wine and spaghetti on the desk, but when I picked up the paper I bumped the desk slightly and caused a little wine to spill. I moved the wine glass to clean up the little spill, but the slight movement from cleaning caused the roll of paper towels (used to clean up spill) to topple over into the spaghetti. I quickly picked up the plate of spaghetti which then bumped the wine glass. My attempt to stop the wine glass from falling then caused the spaghetti to slide off the plate. Then, when cleaning up the whole mess, I cut my hand on the broken wine glass.

(painfully true story... and no I had not been drinking before the "multiple fückup")