Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?

[thepcphysician]

Hello fellow FIRSTies,

Our team has an Nvidia GTX 480 graphics card which was given to us and every other team at the Sacramento Regional--I assume teams at other regional received them as well. The card is an OEM reference part, manufactured by Nvidia itself, not Palit, EVGA, ASUS, or any of the other major PCB manufacturers. Ours is defective, and since Nvidia does not actually sell GTX 480s directly, Nvidia tech support's advice has been to talk to corporate. However, I cannot actually get to someone in corporate without a contact, and so I'm at a dead end. Does anyone have a contact in Nvidia, or any other ideas? Thanks.

[Chickenonastick]

If you're desperate, you could always try the oven baking trick which basically (and hopefully) recontacts all soldering points, which ends up fixing a good quarter to half of all defective cards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_taI-CkPD3M

But to play it safe, I would re-call corporate and ask for customer relations.

[nitneylion452]

Ask for the name of the manager of the tech support center and tell the suits at corporate that so and so, the manager at whatsitcalled support center, told you to call about a defective product. That should get you someone to talk to.

[LLogan]

A bit off topic...

But there's a regional where every team gets GTX 480's...!?!

Very jealous. What was the cause?

[Trent B]

Teams got them at 10,000 Lakes too, I believe nVidia was trying to promote more animation/graphics/etc. in the future.

[blayde5]

Every team at a regional that wins the Autodesk Excellence in Design Award gets one (we got one at Seattle Cascade) but we also got one at Silicon Valley (i don't remember for what), so we have two.

SLI anyone?

To answer the OP's question, try getting in contact with anyone at corporate cause they're the only ones that can replace it. If they're not being responsive tell someone at nVidia to get you a contact from corporate (or risk giving them bad press or something... lol jk). Hopefully it goes well for you!

[Cory]

Originally Posted by blayde5

Every team at a regional that wins the Autodesk Excellence in Design Award gets one (we got one at Seattle Cascade) but we also got one at Silicon Valley (i don't remember for what), so we have two.

I believe Nvidia sponsored the Davis and Silicon Valley Regionals, giving everyone in attendance a free graphics card.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

I have to ask...Did it ever work or have you not been able to successfully get it installed?

[its da PAT!!!]

Every team Boilermaker Regional were given one but we haven't trade to use ours yet.

[Bongle]

They were given out at the Waterloo regional too, but we haven't tried ours yet. The computers in our robotics labs don't have beefy enough power supplies to run that beast.

[its da PAT!!!]

Originally Posted by Bongle

They were given out at the Waterloo regional too, but we haven't tried ours yet. The computers in our robotics labs don't have beefy enough power supplies to run that beast.

Thats another reason we haven't used ours yet either... They give out something for teams to use but yet you have to pretty much build a new computer to use it.

[thepcphysician]

Thanks for the advice, everyone... as far as getting a hold of someone goes, I'm no closer than I was before... apparently they can't get me to anyone in customer relations without a prior contact, so I'm still trying to work my way up the convoluted corporate ladder. Ah, businesses.

To answer Al's question, it works but it is incredibly unstable and BSODs every 20 minutes or so. This is on a pretty much brand new system with a 1000w Corsair PSU, and it's rock solid without the 480...

[Brandon Holley]

We lucked out and received 1 at the Bayou regional and 1 at the Boston regional.

We haven't used them yet, but are considering building a rig around them.

-Brando

[scottydoh]

Every team at SBPLI got one too.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by thepcphysician

To answer Al's question, it works but it is incredibly unstable and BSODs every 20 minutes or so. This is on a pretty much brand new system with a 1000w Corsair PSU, and it's rock solid without the 480...

I am going to guess that there is a driver that you need to work with your system board. It should be OK with that power supply. I was surprised to find that it can draw 600 watts at peak consumption.