My story begins with the girlfriend using the computer. Go figure.
Normal use of the internet, facebook, email, youtube, computer freezes. I tell her to hit the num lock key and take note of the light on her keyboard to see if its solid, yeah. She cuts the power, and boots back up to find flashy colors and random characters with just a little of what is actually displayed.
The boot locks on the Windows logo several times, and so I pulled out the video card to find that it has 5 blown caps!

Spoiler warning:


Apparently XFX, chose to use the cheapest caps available. From what is still legible on each cap, the most common numbers and letters helped me find more bad news. After a brief search on google, the only results for "FZ77 470 16v" yields cases of failure after failure. If I want it to function properly again, I need to replace these caps, and also if I want the longevity to be something reasonable, I should replace the remaining few as well.

The very same source linked me to some replacement capacitors coming out to 50 and 67 cents each. As is shown in the picture, there are two different caps, one 16v and another 6.3v. Both kinds have in some cases blown.

My plans are to purchase the two kinds, and swap them for the old ones. Hopefully this will be a permanent fix, if not at least to give me some time to play games more demanding than solitaire.

Updates to follow, just like with my Gameboy thread.