could my new GFX card be the wrong size?

JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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daft question I know ..

I'm upgrading my radeon HD 4350 to a HD 6770. I have the necessary PCI Express slot on my motherboard and worked out the dimensions and it seemed that it would fit in the case just fine.

got it today and it does indeed fit in the slot, but does look a bit big to me - I'll post a few pics when I upload them

anyway I had to put a small amount of pressure on it so I could screw in the back plate to the back of the PC case (there's probably a 'real' name for it..)

Doing that meant it didn't work - I was getting "no signal" from the card. I unscrewed it from the back and just left it as is and it booted up and ran just fine.

the 4350 doesn't have these problems as it slots in and I can screw it to the back of the case ok. does this mean the card is the wrong size or could it mean my motherboard is out of position?

I've checked the screw holes and everything lines up ok.

would there be any issue leaving the card plugged in to the PCI slot alone? there are no internal leads touching it so no danger of the fan catching

a lot of questions I know, but any help most appreciated - Thankyou ;)
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Comments

  • max99max99 Posts: 9,002
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    It's not uncommon for cases to become warped or slightly out of alignment. Cheap, thin ones especially can suffer.

    You can try gently pushing/flexing the back of the case (around the backplate area) inwards or loosening the motherboard screws and nudging/rotating the motherboard closer to the backplate before re-tightening the screws. Then pop the graphics card back in and see if it fits better. As long as you use common sense and aren't ham-fisted, you should be ok.
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    thanks for the reply. I did actually loosen the screws on the motherboard a bit which didn't help a huge amount but I think i've come up with a decent solution (at least i hope i have !)

    I didn't pay a huge amount for this case to be fair - I think it was about £15-£20 quid.

    these are the initial pics of how big the card is inside the case

    http://i49.tinypic.com/23jjrk1.jpg

    http://i49.tinypic.com/2wexe8h.jpg

    and this is the solution - I've put a screw underneath the card. it does actually secure a tiny bit of the corner of it as well so i've got no real worries about it moving - it's running fine at the moment and doesn't seem to be running hot or anything.

    http://i45.tinypic.com/2lbggaw.jpg
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 2,583
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    Blimey, looks a long way out. I've known cards to be tight but is the case deformed or something?
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    I do actually think there is a teeny bit of warping in the case as one of the side panels doesn't slide in totally flush - i have to press one of the corners down to screw it on - it's only a small amount though.

    I know the card seems big, but it does fit in the case fine and i've sealed everything up as well - nothing is pressing against the sides or any other bits (at least as far as i can see...).
  • Sick BulletSick Bullet Posts: 20,770
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    Your gpu is close to the panel that's odd :)
  • max99max99 Posts: 9,002
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    It's also possible for the bracket on the card to be buckled or positioned badly. You might be able to adjust it by undoing the screws (or by using force to bend it the right way). Again, not advisable if you're ham-fisted.

    But as long as the card is secured, seated properly and the retaining clip is in place, you should get away with it. Just be careful when connecting the monitor cable or when moving the case.
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    thanks for the replies. I think i'll be leaving it as it stands since i can be rather ham-fisted in certain situations and I also tend to have crappy luck when it comes to stuff like this as well. I made a point of plugging in the monitor cable to the card first, before i added the screw underneath it so that's quite secure..

    I've given it a bit of a wiggle as it stands (*snigger*) and the screw that i've put underneath it does appear to be keeping it secured so I think that'll have to do.
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    hoping it's not related to anything here - I should have mentioned i've also installed a 2TB hard drive today as well.

    Anyway, I've just had what I have to think is my first ever BSOD with the "a clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor" error.

    I was trying to copy my music off my iPhone when the program I was using hung - I clicked "wait" and a few seconds later the BSOD appeared.

    I've just also rebooted into the BIOS and looked at the "PC Health" option and it told me the CPU was running at 93 degrees celsius which is ridiculously hot so I shut it down immediately.

    it's never run this hot before so I'm wondering if the graphics card is the issue? I wouldn't have thought it would have been the hard drive?

    My PSU says 680 watts on the side of the unit itself so i would have thought that would have been sufficient?

    I'm running the program "open hardware monitor" and it's saying that the temperature of Core 1 is 94 degrees C and Core 2 is 91 degrees C and the CPU load on BOTH cores is 100%

    So i'm stumped - i've re-installed W7 fresh onto this new hard drive as well. I'm going to try putting the 4350 back in to see what it does - can't do more than that tonight though as i need to be up early .. argh..
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    actually I'm not going to swap out the cards tonight - been down this road before and ended up staying up all bloody night ;)

    I'm assuming the heat issue caused the BSOD I guess, so I'll have to look in to it tomorrow

    #edit

    ok, well i couldn't help it and swapped out the cards :)

    the open hardware monitor program still shows the CPU load still at maximum, and the task manager performance tab also confirms this. the temps started at 77 and are slowly creeping back up as it warms up - 85 now.

    Really going to bed now .. apart from one last bit of info in case anyone has any ideas.

    Just checked the CPU tab in the 'resource monitor' in the windows task manager and it's telling me that the process that is taking up 95% of the CPU's load is "defrag.exe" - which i've never actually run.

    I will investigate later today ..
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    Apart from when i just killed the defrag.exe process and the CPU usage dropped to 2% almost immediately and the temps dropped to 60-65 degrees C.

    #edit

    ok i've cracked it. i found the "defrag" program that it was running and it's in /users/*me*/appdata/roaming/adobe/flash player/file cache.

    in the startup tab in msconfig, the windows scripting host procedure is set to run this on each boot
    @echo off
    %windir%\system32\reg.exe add HKCU\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run /v Defrag /d "wscript \"%appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player\File Cache\file.vbs\" \"%appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player\File Cache\def.bat\"" /f
    start /b /normal "a" "%appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player\File Cache\Defrag.exe"
    

    I disabled that, restarted and problem solved ...
  • max99max99 Posts: 9,002
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    Apart from when i just killed the defrag.exe process and the CPU usage dropped to 2% almost immediately and the temps dropped to 60-65 degrees C.

    #edit

    ok i've cracked it. i found the "defrag" program that it was running and it's in /users/*me*/appdata/roaming/adobe/flash player/file cache.

    in the startup tab in msconfig, the windows scripting host procedure is set to run this on each boot
    @echo off
    %windir%\system32\reg.exe add HKCU\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run /v Defrag /d "wscript \"%appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player\File Cache\file.vbs\" \"%appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player\File Cache\def.bat\"" /f
    start /b /normal "a" "%appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player\File Cache\Defrag.exe"
    

    I disabled that, restarted and problem solved ...

    That sounds suspiciously like malware. Run the usual scans.
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    max99 wrote: »
    That sounds suspiciously like malware. Run the usual scans.

    it can't be malware, unless it's been embedded into the flash player - my install is completely clean on a brand new hard drive.

    I know i say it can't be - i accept anything is possible online in that respect - but the chances of me picking up malware on a fresh install by downloading official versions of whatever i needed from the official places for them have to be tiny. literally the first thing i installed was security essentials and did a full update and scan with it.

    Although it would be just my luck to hit that one copy of adobe flash from adobe's website that's been hacked ;)
  • max99max99 Posts: 9,002
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    Have a read:

    http://home.mcafee.com/VirusInfo/VirusProfile.aspx?key=2689989#none

    Discovery date was yesterday, so you may have been exceptionally unlucky.
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    max99 wrote: »
    Have a read:

    http://home.mcafee.com/VirusInfo/VirusProfile.aspx?key=2689989#none

    Discovery date was yesterday, so you may have been exceptionally unlucky.

    wow.. looks that way ..

    I'll read it properly when I get back in but I did actually leave a malware bytes scan running when I came out so hopefully that'll get it.

    cheers for that
  • max99max99 Posts: 9,002
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    As you've only just done a clean install of Windows, I would wipe the drive and do it again. You don't want a fresh install of Windows with a question mark hanging over it.

    Also, take a look at the timestamp for the defrag.exe and file.vbs files. See if you can track down what program or website was being installed or accessed at the time.
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    max99 wrote: »
    As you've only just done a clean install of Windows, I would wipe the drive and do it again. You don't want a fresh install of Windows with a question mark hanging over it.

    Also, take a look at the timestamp for the defrag.exe and file.vbs files. See if you can track down what program or website was being installed or accessed at the time.

    you know I was actually thinking it would be worth a clean re-do as well. I might also look at something other than Microsoft security essentials as I would have hoped it would have flagged it up - I might go back to avira
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    just got back and read that virus report properly and i've confirmed that i did get it which is indeed exceptionally unlucky - i think that'll go into my top ten of computer 'adventures' i think :)

    anyway, i'm going to copy some stuff back on to a USB stick that i took off last night and when that's done i'll just reformat and start again.
  • max99max99 Posts: 9,002
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    Before formatting, see if you can track down the source. Your browser history and the timestamps may be enough. Apart from being interesting to see how you got infected, it may also help ensure you don't get immediately infected again.

    A wonky case doesn't sound like such a big deal in comparison...
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    well to cut a long, and incredibly tedious, story short, i can only come to the conclusion that the GFX card is either faulty or is incompatible with my PC.

    Tried re-formatting last night and re-installing windows and each time it took ages to actually start the procedure - I assumed that since the new drive is 2TB, that was why, since my old one was only 500gb.

    Kept getting various errors saying it couldn't complete or wouldn't complete, as well as the PC not actually being able to find the hard drive, so kept going back to the partition manager, deleting and reformatting the partitions and starting again.

    Even left it on doing a full surface scan when I went to bed :)

    The minute I put my old HD 4350 back in and rebooted, Windows re-installed without a hitch.
  • max99max99 Posts: 9,002
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    The problem getting the graphics card to fit might be a factor. But just as likely is the PSU - a cheap one (regardless of wattage) may struggle to run the new card.
  • GetFrodoGetFrodo Posts: 1,805
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    Just thought I'd throw in a recommendation for ninite for fresh installs.

    You get a list of supported software (e.g. browsers, flash, libreoffice, media players, security software etc. etc.). Just choose the ones you want and you can then download a small executable.

    Running that executable will automatically install all your chosen software. Works beautifully.
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    I've heard of that ninite actually, although I've spent so many years farting around with my PC, I've actually got my own 'install' disc that I started a few years back. it's got all the software I use, along with any drivers needed.

    I periodically update it with all the new versions of things as well, regardless of whether or not I need to. I'm currently up to version 51 :)

    The PSU could be an issue I suppose. Anyway, the card is now winging it's way back to ebuyer so we'll see - if they find there's nothing wrong with it and send it back to me, I can always sell it at CEX - I'll take a hit of about a tenner, but I can probably live with that.

    Do appreciate all the replies as well - cheers :)
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    well the saga continues. was wandering by PC World today and went in for a chat with one of the people in there about what was going and the upshot of all of that was that I decided to take a punt on an NVIDIA GeForce GT 630.

    It fit nicely inside the machine and everything came on fine .. until after a while the PC just hung. I rebooted and got a "Reboot and select proper boot device" error and the BIOS had lost the hard drive again.

    So I pulled the card out, put the 4350 back in and once again, everything booted and ran just fine. It makes me think that the common denominator in all this is the fact that the 4350 has no fan and the other two have had fans, so maybe it does mean I need a better PSU as it can't cope with the extra power needed to power the fan?

    I can get a GeForce GT610 which also has no fan, so in theory it should work fine, but I suspect it isn't much of an upgrade to the 4350 anyway ..
  • max99max99 Posts: 9,002
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    It's not about the fan, it's about how much power the graphic card requires - (although a fanless card is more likely to be low power).

    You did connect any additional power cables to the other cards, correct?

    And what make and model is your PSU? Bear in mind that a quality 450W PSU is far better than a cheap 680W.
  • JasonJason Posts: 76,557
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    I didn't connect any additional power cables to any of the other graphics cards - they were all meant to draw power from the PCie slot

    My PSU is this one ..

    http://www.maplin.co.uk/680w-g7-power-extreme-atx-psu-345571

    .. the G7 Power Extreme 680W model. The GT630 apparently only requires a minimum of a 300W PSU according to their product page.

    http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-630/specifications

    I'm loathe to fork out more money for a better one because i've spent enough as it is, but then part of me thinks that if it'll improve the performance overall and allow me to have the card I want, I might have to consider it - especially since when I screwed the PSU back in after looking at what brand it was, i booted up and got the "select new boot device" error again. unplugged and plugged in the SATA cable for the hard drive again and it booted fine.
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