Graphics card blew up? how, why?

Ive been running this rig for 2 years now, stock PC from gateway, GT5456H Windows Vista Home Premium, Intel Core Duo Processor E4300, 250 GB hard drive, Dual Channel 2048 MB DDR2. pretty decent considering but the graphics card i bought is a XFX GeForce 8600 GT 256 MB,



I bought the PC for mostly video games and movies. I played WoW extensively on this PC for about 1.5 years, computer would be on for days at a time with no shut down or restarts, video games or movies running for better part of the day but i never had any problems with the PC or Video card, never had lag or choppy graphics on any game, if you know WoW its pretty demanding with the settings at max.



Today i was playing Combat Arms, a game that i thought would take less "demand" from the graphics card, after about an hour of having the game on i heard a loud pop, almost like a cap gun. Couldnt figure out where it came from.... played the game for another 20 mins or so and closed it, no visual problems at all. Came back to turn the monitor on and there was no visual feed. Apparently the last person to use it turned on the monitor to go on the internet and she saw "scrambled" lines and "checkerbox" patterns. basically going haywire. I originally thought it was the monitor but after some cable changes and monitor adjustment it obviously wasnt it. I opened the PC case and besides some dust nothing looked out of place until i took the graphics card right out of the slot. I dont know much about the cards but it appears the cylinder components ( i think there called caps) that had K precuts on the top of them, 5 out of 10 of them (7 colored blue, 3 purple) were opened/cracked with looks like insulation or wires poking through the cracks. All the cracked ones happened to be the blue ones...



Ive left the card out of the PC to stop more damage if thats possible, im running of the stock card in the motherboard for just basic needs no gaming.



So like i said its all stock except the Card, and ive used it alot in the past but hardly use the PC for gaming for the past 6 months, so why now is it damaged? What caused it, Overheating or just damaged goods? Room temperature is normally 15- 25 degrees Celsius. Collects a fair bit of dust, it sits on a carpet and near our big screen and all that home entertainment jazz. Any help would be great. Im assuming it needs to be replaced which totally sucks. But to stop it from happening again id like some pointers or info if anyone has it.



Thanks, JGraphics card blew up? how, why?
It probably just wore out over the last 2 years from hard gaming. Just get a new GPU



To prevent it in the future, just open your case here and there and remove dust from the fans as much as you can. That will prevent overheating from dusty fans that cannot adequately cool the hardwareGraphics card blew up? how, why?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_p鈥?/a>Graphics card blew up? how, why?
Thanks guys, never liked how yahoo wont let you reply so i have 2 accounts, All three your answers helped. I appreciate that link too, gave me a little insight into the problem. Thanks again
Ah yes, the capacitors blew. That can sometimes happen, and sadly it is quite common with certain manufacturers that use inferior caps in order to save a few bucks on production. It can be fixed, but you'd be better off just getting a new card.