Asus GTX 980ti Matrix capacitor

[Me Again]

Hi all

I am new to the forum and am hoping someone can help me identify a component on an Asus GTX 980ti Matrix graphics card.

Long story short I have no video output from the card but the fans spin up. I have tested a lot of components on teh board and think I have identified a dead polymer capacitor. It appears to be a 150uf polymer capacitor but I do not know what the voltage rating or ESR is so I am having trouble identifying the approriate replacement part. I have attached a picture. Hope someone can help

Thanks

[mariushm]

Re: Asus GTX 980ti Matrix capacitor

It's a polymer capacitor, so the ESR will be very small. The video card receives 12v and 3.3v through the pci-e slot and pci-e power connectors.
The capacitance being so low at 150uF, I would suspect that capacitor is on the 12v input voltage, so it's most likely rated for 16v or 25v.
However, that stylized j makes me think it may be a 6.3v polymer, because these are common letters used to mark voltage on surface mount capacitors:
Letter Voltage
e 2.5
G 4
J 6.3
A 10
C 16
D 20
E 25
V 35
H 50

Also note that the video card has a footprint for a larger surface mount polymer capacitor, basically they made sure to be able to install either this kind of package, or the more common style of surface mount polymer capacitors.

I can't be more accurate from just that tiny portion of the video card. With a larger picture, I may be able to figure out the purpose of that capacitor.

Anyway, if you're impatient, you won't go wrong or do any damage by installing a 150uF 16v polymer capacitor. Look for something that's very low ESR and that has the pads/pins at the right spacing to solder them in the place of that capacitor.

No need to replace with the exact same model from same maker.

[piernov]

Re: Asus GTX 980ti Matrix capacitor

First it would be nice to know what was your troubleshooting process to suspect this capacitor (because just by looking at it there's no reason to). More often than not, no image is caused by a dead GPU.

Btw this is an aluminum polymer, not a tantalum. Aluminum are usually more resistant and may have lower ESR, but density is lower than tantalum so they have bigger packages with lower capacitance and/or voltage rating.

[Me Again]

Re: Asus GTX 980ti Matrix capacitor

Hi and thank you for your helpfull responses

In reply to needing to see a picture of the whole card I have uploaded 2. The capacitory in question is at the bottom edge of the board just to the right of the mosfet heatsink

I dientified this capacitor as being an issue by using a multimeter to do continuity test. This capacitor gave continuity on both sides of the component. There are a number of other similar capacitors on the board all of which only showed continuity on one side. I dont have an ESR meter but cheching resistance of these components all the others gave a reading but this one stayed at 1 (these number displayed on the meter before putting the probes across the componet)

Whilst the GPU chips can and do fail a more common point of pailure is the voltage management which I think this capacitor might be linked to.

Only just learning about electronics so I could have some or even all of this wrong.

[piernov]

Re: Asus GTX 980ti Matrix capacitor

Low resistance to ground is pretty normal on any GPU power rail. GPU VCore will be the lowest, may even be lower than a couple of ohms on very high end GPU.
This specific rail I don't know what it is, but it'll probably be low resistance to ground as well, I guess at least a few ohms if not dozens though.

One of the first part of the troubleshooting process would be to the measure the voltage of all power rails to make sure they're all present and within specs.