New Video Card

I had a horrible series of events happen with my computer on Sunday night. I was watching my normal series (True Blood, Falling Skies, Ice Road Truckers, etc) and after that was over I decided that I was going to finish this documentary I had started on Bill Hicks (American: The Bill Hicks Story). I looked over to my machine before I had switched inputs on my TV to the PC connection and noticed my machine wasn't even on at this point! I quickly started trying to turn it on, switching the hard power switch in the back, checking the power connection. I ended up opening up the side of the case and started checking things out. I ended up being able to get the machine to power on without the 2 pin (extra power) connectors to my video card but still would not get a video display. I had an onboard HDMI connection (onboard video) so I tested that quickly and found that I did get video. I decided to retire on that for the night and did end up getting to enjoy the rest of the Bill Hicks documentary Sunday night.

The next day I woke up and hoped that Microcenter would be open since it was the 4th of July. It was and my mission had started. I first went in and actually asked one of the clerks what he would bet on, guessing it either had to be power supply or the video card itself. I was betting on video card personally, but the power supply was the cheaper buy to test first. I arrived back home and immediately started hooking up the new power supply. When everything was set, I flipped the hard switch, hit the power button on the case, and immediately saw a nice orange spark and a *zzzt* noise. I felt like my heart had crushed at that moment since it immediately seemed like a simple fix at this point was not possible. I instantly removed the videocard, and decided to go through all the steps I could to test if the motherboard was ok. Sure enough it turned out, both power supplies were fine, and the motherboard still powered on with video working from on board video. I headed back to Microcenter and decided I should buy a cheap PCI-E Videocard and make *SURE* the PCI-E slot on my motherboard was still good, after all sparks were just flying all around there. So back home, I hooked the videocard into the machine and tested with both power supplies yet again. This time the PCI-E slot proved to be ok and I was so grateful nothing worse had happened and I was dead set on replacing my video card with a new one. Back to Microcenter I went and decided on a quite expensive purchase that should last me a couple more years if something doesn't fry at this point. Funny to say the old video card was purchased June 28th of 2009 and had a 2 Year warranty. $400 I still am happy to have a working machine with a very capable video card ready for the coming games like Battlefield 3, Rage, Skyrim, Dead Island and more!