Can a PCIe slot go 'bad' if the video card blows up?

I take it you don't have another GPU to test in order to determine if the GPU itself is bad?
To answer your question, yes, there are situations where damage to a card can lead to damage to the PCI-E bus itself. I'm not sure about this happening strictly from overheating.

The more likely case is that the newer GPU is exceeding your PSU's current capabilities. Can you tell us the GPU and the PSU?

 

How old is the computer? What are the specs?

 

It's time to buy a new computer. No sense in waiting for Broadwell or Skylake since those will be very minor improvements compared to the gains you'll see coming from such and old system to a modern i3 or i5. And if you get an SSD I think your worldview will be altered.

 

Yeah. An i5 with integrated graphics would whup up on that 240.

 

really ?

 

Well the 4600 and 5000 should be faster and then the CPU is WAY faster

 

Considering how old and unimpressive it is at this stage, it's probably best to consider it a write-off. No point in spending any money replacing components in any case.

Do be aware that power supplies are very commonly the source of system flakyness, and your PC has a number of years under its belt, and it's a 300W PSU as well...? There might not be a lot of margin left in that PSU (they age), and if the caps are starting to go bad that could explain your crashes, possibly.

Just speculation. It's really impossible to diagnose computers from across the internet unless the problem's so fundamentally simple that it basically boils down to "you forgot to stick in the power cord" or something like that.

 

Agree with Grall. Most likely candidate is the PSU. They go bad. I've had 2 go bad over the last 7 years and all were higher-end, high-wattage PSUs.

 

My own current monster rig almost did not want to start up from a cold boot the other day. The inrush current limiter relay kept clicking on, and then off again, requiring a number of attempts before the PSU actually turned on completely.

...Not sure WTH is up with that really. Nothing good, probably! PC works fine when it's running though so it's just a startup glitch...for now. These issues have a tendency to grow tho, so I'll have to keep an eye on it.

 

How do you combat that ?
I once had a pc that the psu would click then the pc would reboot (I got a new psu)

 

No idea. I assume the sucker's on the verge of breaking down on me. Can't even tell if it's the relay itself that's screwy or the electronics that controls it... If I was an electro-engineer with a scope and some probes I could probably find out myself what's wrong, but alas. That is not who I am.

 

Wait. Is that the PSU you told me to buy?

 

That looks like a right good deal. Add an SSD I would, and a GPU if you want to do any serious gaming on it (although the IGP will still be faster than what you had).

I do wonder about having a 4GB DIMM in one slot and 8GB in the other. Will it still run in dual channel mode like that?

 

AFAIK, dual channel operation requires matched (size and speed) DIMMs.
Make that rig a 16 GB RAM, add a small SSD for the OS and a GPU and you'll have a great rig.

 

Dont forget 2tb isnt enough for a gaming machine

 

Indeed, yes! Then again, everything breaks, so if we want something that won't ever fail we can't buy anything. You could wear out even an abacus if you wanted to...

Besides, just because my PSU might be getting cantankerous/sickly doesn't mean yours will - you're not superstitious are you?

Modern (Intel atleast) CPUs can map oddly sized RAM sticks so that interleaved addressing is supported for the common address space (IE, say 2GB for a 2GB and a 4GB stick.) Unless you're overclocking your RAM the speed and timings would be set to a common denominator of the available JEDEC SPD profiles - or so I believe anyway... Of course, it's generally somewhat inadvisable to mix memory sticks; it might work but then again it might not. RAM problems can be very dangerous, leading not just to straight crashes but also drive/data corruption, so it's best to use a matched set of memory modules, preferably from the manufacturer's verified list if one is paranoid about compatibility...