Red LEDs of Death (Radeon HD 4870)

Long story short...

I bought a system with a VisionTek Radeon HD 4850 and plugged my CoolerMaster eXtreme Power 550W PSU into it. It worked brilliantly and I loved it, blah blah blah. Then my pay check came in and I got a little cocky and returned the 4850 for a VisionTek Radeon HD 4870.

My problems starts with the installation of the new 4870. Sometimes, my system would be able boot into Windows without crashing. The other times, it shuts off after the loading of the OS or gets a BSoD.

A week or so later, my PSU seemed to have fried itself and wouldn't start at all. I unplugged a bunch of peripherals but it still wouldn't turn on. Then I got another pay check and returned the oh-so-cheap CoolerMaster eXtreme Power 550W and purchased a Thermaltake Toughpower 750W PSU.

So I plugged two, 6-pin PCI-E connectors into my 4870 and tried to boot up my system. I heard a rather loud spark-kind-of sound and could smell smoke for a few seconds. I looked into my case and didn't see any smoke or anything, but my monitor wasn't getting a signal.

I tried to boot various other times and sometimes I wouldn't get a signal at all, but other times it did. Whenever I did get a signal, I would try to do a normal boot but it would either freeze at the loading screen with the little green bar stuck or it would get a BSoD right before or during the load.

Then I tried booting into safe mode. It would load all the files and crap but soon after, when I should be able to see my icons, it just stays a black screen with the mouse cursor in the center. I moved my mouse but the cursor didn't move so I suppose my system froze or my 4870 wasn't giving out a signal. Freezing in safe mode? Totally a hardware problem!

I noticed that three red LEDs would flash once in sync when I do a cold boot. There are four LEDs that each indicate different things.



From top to bottom, they are:

• D1601 - Red LED On, shows critical temperature fault
• D601 - Red LED On, shows critical Core power fault
• D1602 - Red LED On, shows External power connector A was removed
• D1603 - Red LED On, shows External power connector B was removed

D1601, D1602 and D1603 are the ones that flash whenever I do a cold boot. I don't believe that it's a temperature problem because my card idled at 45 degrees Celsius and loaded at 60 when it would work before my old PSU was fried.

I can't believe that it's got anything to do with the PCI-E connectors not being connected either. I tried using various connectors from the dual-molex connector that was included with my card to any of the three native PCI-E connectors on my PSU.

Like WTF, do you think the GPU is fscked? Could my former, 2-rail CoolerMaster eXtreme Power 550W have done anything to my card when the PSU stopped working?

I'm going to exchange my 4870 for a new one to see if it works... Thanks in advance.

yeah, looks like the old PSU blew up the card.

however, before exchanging that card, do your best to check if your new PSU is faulty or not. if you have an old card with a PCI-e power connector, try it to see if that blows up or not.

yep only way to failsafe say if the card isn't fried too.

my old psu gave up on me (in the second pc) about 2 days ago, replaced it today.

But i had something similar happen with an old 5950ultra card from nvidia (the memory controllers burnt out (probably a manifacturers fault))

It could be that the old Cooler Master supply simply went into shut down due to an overload. If that happens, you need to disconnect the AC power from it for a few seconds to "reset" it. It may still work.

The loud snap was, no doubt, something frying, but it could be hard to discover what - it could be just one small component in either the video card or the power supply.

As an off-hand guess, I'd say that the video card is/was faulty or it isn't/wasn't fully seated in the PCI-E slot or you plugged the 6-pin power connectors in incorrectly (it's difficult, but possible).

If you have an old PCI graphics card lying around, or the mobo has on-board graphics, you could try using that to make sure the rest of the system works.

P.s. I think those LEDs are supposed to flash once during bootup to verify that they are working. The fact that one doesn't may indicate a problem. I have a HD4870 myself, but the "manual" that's on the CD that came with it, only goes up to 3800 (?) so I don't know if mine (Sapphire) even has the LEDs.

I love how this is one of the only viewable pages on guru. So nice...

Quaker - I think that you are right about the LEDs flashing briefly during bootup... A guy that attends LAN parties in my area has a 4870 and some of us were checking his system out, the LEDs came one and I think it was all 4 of them. :/