Damaeus wrote:
In news:alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Paul
posted on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:55:03 -0500 the following:

If the screen just goes black, but there are no other symptoms,
yes, that can be the monitor. Some monitors have a 120V power
supply inside, and the capacitors in the power section go bad
and leak. There are a fair number of defective models out
there. That could be why they're recommending a repair.

Just to be clear, a computer shutting off and the fans stopping...
is a different set of symptoms from the monitor going black
in mid session (and the computer fans are still running).

Well, the monitor only goes black because the computer shuts off, which
also shuts down the video signal. The monitor still works, however,
because it displays "no video signal", then goes into standby mode (the
blue power illumination turns to amber).

Maybe technical support thinks I'm one of those people who thinks the
monitor is the computer. I know someone who "turns off the computer" by
pushing the power switch on the monitor, which, of course, still leaves
the actual computer running.

I'm saying the tower shuts down and the monitor remains on long enough to
tell me there's no video signal, then the monitor goes into standby mode.

Damaeus


That would normally be happening on a CPU overheat (computer switches
off, fans stop). I don't think the GPU driver has any say about
protecting the video card. At least, I run into enough reports
of "melted fans", to think that video cards lack effective
protection.

Some modern video cards, do have the ability to gate the clocks
or reduce power dissipation to such an extent, that they could
ease an overtemperature situation. But a lot of the older
silicon, has a high enough power dissipation, that just
leaving the main core power running on the video card,
is enough to cook it if the fan fails or the heatsink is loose.
I would not personally, be relying on clock gating, to
save my video card. While it might prevent a disaster,
I might just as likely find a melted fan some day, as
evidence my card is dead.

When the power connector burned on my ATI video card,
the first warning I got was when the ATI "you didn't
plug in my power cable" warning appeared on the screen.
On opening the case, I could see the burned connector,
as proof it wasn't getting power any more.

Paul