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I turned on my computer this morning and it had a bunch of vertical green artefacts and some horizontal distortions on text.

You can see what it looks like http://imgur.com/9jRoVQp

I assume it's the graphics card but I'm unsure, I've removed all dust inside and replaced thermal compound on my gpu, I'll replace the thermal compound on the cpu if anyone thinks it could be the cup.

The graphics card it's an HIS AMD Radeon HD6850 which is a PCI-e 2.1 card with 1x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI, 2x DVI.

The rest of the computer is an ASUS P5Q-PRO motherboard with 8GB of Corsair DDR2 800mhz memory with an Intel Quad2Core Q9550 CPU.

I have 6 hard drives connected, 2 being SSDS and the power supply is a Corsair TX750W.

Does any one have any suggestions, ideas or thoughts.

I've had a look online and noticed "reflowing" graphics cards but don't quite understand what to do. If the card is dead I might as well try it because on a bunch of websites they say that reflowing gpus can fix core failures or/and gpu memory failures.

Thanks

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  • Reflowing refers to heating up the card so that the solder melts just a little. It's the kind of thing Electronics Engineering grads do, not for you or I to try because it's kind of nuts. I also had an EE roommate once who'd put his video card in the freezer for about 15 minutes - kind of the opposite of reflowing, make everything contract. That seemed to work for him. Again for non-EE's it's sort of an insane thing to try, could result in a fire or worse, etc. Please don't attempt to 'reflow' anything. Edit to add: The freezer thing worked for that particular card. Still don't do it.
    – Mark Allen
    Jul 16, 2014 at 20:54
  • Yeah, definitely the GPU card. Normally I would think of drivers, but given that your screenshot actually shows the pre-boot state, its definitely a faulty card.
    – LPChip
    Jul 16, 2014 at 21:03
  • @MarkAllen Reflowing isn't that scary if the card is no good anyway. This video here shows the process from start to finish of reflowing a card very similar to yours. Jul 17, 2014 at 0:29
  • @MarkAllen I reflowed and currently its working perfectly, the fan is a bit dodgy but I've got a desktop fan facing inside at the moment and going to buy a spare gpu fan online to see if that helps as I think it was a fan failure that caused it to overheat and die
    – Hyflex
    Jul 18, 2014 at 23:42

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I replaced cards for a graphic artist a while back for a similar reason... Hers had black lines and distortion instead of green. That did solve it... A bad video cable can do things like that too. I would try that first.

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  • Before buying is it possible to test with a different cable and monitor? That would reveal much. Jul 16, 2014 at 20:26
  • I have three monitors connected, all three have the same issue well actual only two because the one that's connected to the dvi port doesn't even turn on / show anything.
    – Hyflex
    Jul 16, 2014 at 20:31
  • Sounds like the card then. Jul 16, 2014 at 20:32
  • I reflowed the card and so far its working fine :D
    – Hyflex
    Jul 18, 2014 at 23:41

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