Originally posted by: coachrg
I continued to have problems getting mine to boot reliably. I finally developed a technique where I pulled the plug on the powersupply for the videoboard. The inrush current demands for the 800 Pro were enough to throw the 480 watt power supply into protection shutdown mode so it would never boot. If I pulled the side cover, slipped the connector out of the power supply, hit the button and waited for a second then plugged the connector into the power supply it ran just fine.
Until today. Today I followed this procedure and the 800 Pro flamed. I mean it smoked and threw sparks and just had a great time. I immediately pulled the plug but the damage was done. I pulled the 800 pro and installed my old nvidia board but only got grey shapes marching across the screen. I presume that the video inputs to the MB are fried. I am hopeful that they went before the CPU died but will not know for a while. Any thoughts?
well, my first thought is "its your own fault"...
YOU NEVER PLUG/UNPLUG ANYTHING WHILE A COMPUTER IS TURNED ON
(except USB/Network/firewire...and even then, only the external devices...do not mess around with the motherboard pin-outs...monitor is ok too...)
It sounds like there could've been some static electricity in the card when you turned on the computer, and when you plugged that molex connector in, well...it didn't turn out good...
sounds like you've fried your card and your motherboard...try a PCI GFX card in your board to test if the CPU/RAM still works...
and DO NOT TELL THAT STORY to the computer store that you bought the card (or your motherboard) from, i can almost promise you, they will not warrenty it (i certainly wouldn't)