@Bristol_Jonesey: Yes, good to hear that's solved it.

FWIW, on X79 the cpu provides 40x PCIe lanes, so supports 2x PCIe x16 lane + 1x PCIe x16 lane (x8 lane electrically) slots all supporting up to PCIe gen 3.0 (except maybe on some early stepping cpu's?), although the lane arrangement and BIOS support varies between different makes/models of motherboards.

So a PCIe graphics card should (in theory) be usable in either/any PCIe x16 lane slot.


FYI, a quick search on the "R81KLK" number indicated in your gfx card pic indicates it's a Powercolor Radeon HD5450 model supporting PCIe gen 2.1.


From your pic, can't notice any obviously bad caps, although ime they're sometimes not noticeable until they literally blow their tops.


@AT: Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

Thanks for that Goddard - useful stuff indeed.

It's been running now for about 13 hours constantly and no misbehaving of any sort - and I now have one monitor with a full cap. refit.

Life's good.

Which is just as well because today I had to sign a contract for £3,500 to have a new boiler fitted in the house, so no more toys for me for a while