Graphics card & hardware repair in Strathmore
CompuTech diagnoses and repairs graphics cards and PC hardware for Strathmore, as a drop-off at the SW Calgary shop. A tower travels fine on a back seat; bring the power cable and we'll test it as components.
- ✓ No fix, no fee
- ✓ One all-in price for parts jobs
- ✓ No charge to look at drop-offs
- ✓ Most repairs done same day
Hours, address and more about CompuTech
| Day | Shop | In-home |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM | 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
| Tue | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM | 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
| Wed | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM | 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
| Thu | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM | 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
| Fri | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM | 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
| Sat | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM | 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
| Sun | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM | Drop-off only |
- 303 Wentworth Row SW, Calgary, AB. In-shop service by appointment. Get directions →
- In-home visits booked by phone or online. Call before noon for same day.
- 587-317-0482
- Hours
- CompuTech's shop at 303 Wentworth Row SW, Calgary, AB is open Mon–Sun 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM. In-home visits across Calgary run Monday to Saturday, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM. In-shop service is by appointment, booked weekdays 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM, weekends 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM. Sunday is in-shop appointments only.
- The shop
- CompuTech's shop is at 303 Wentworth Row SW, Calgary, AB. In-shop service is by appointment, booked by phone or online. Call CompuTech on 587-317-0482.
- Booking
- In-home visits from CompuTech across Calgary are booked by phone or through the site; calling before noon gives the best chance of a same-day slot.
- Pricing
- CompuTech's in-home visits in Calgary are $99 an hour and remote sessions $65 an hour, 1 hour minimum, then billed by the half hour. A repair that needs parts gets one price with the visit included, agreed before any work starts, and if it can't be fixed, you pay nothing. Machines dropped at the shop are looked at for no charge. Outside Calgary a travel fee applies, confirmed before the visit; Calgary has none.
- Turnaround
- Most CompuTech repairs in Calgary are finished the same day. Calling before noon gives the best chance of a same-day slot.
- Who turns up
- CompuTech is one technician who answers his own phone and does the work himself, fixing Calgary's laptops, networks and smart homes since 2015, over 5,000 repairs. CompuTech is rated 5.0 out of 5 across 758 reviews.
- Machines
- CompuTech repairs Windows and Mac laptops and desktops in Calgary, and rescues photos and files from phones and tablets that won't start.
- Customers
- CompuTech works with homes and small businesses in Calgary. Business IT is month to month with no lock-in contract.
- Not offered
- CompuTech is not a phone repair shop, and sends a machine still under manufacturer warranty back to Apple, Dell or Microsoft when that is the better deal for the customer.
- Service area
- CompuTech comes to homes and offices across Calgary and Airdrie, Chestermere, Cochrane and Okotoks. Strathmore, High River, Langdon, De Winton, Rocky View County, Crossfield and Diamond Valley are covered by arrangement.
- Facts reviewed
- Reviewed September 2026. Hours change on the day they change; call 587-317-0482 to confirm before a long drive.
Hardware symptoms and where they point
Loud but still working is the cheap moment. Shutting down is the expensive one.
Straight about the distance
CompuTech will be straight about the distance to Strathmore. We'll be honest about this one instead of pretending. Strathmore is in the wider group of communities Mo travels to, not the four towns on the daily in-home run. An on-site visit here's arranged rather than booked into a standard window.
For most jobs that doesn't matter, because most jobs are better done on the bench anyway. Drop the machine at 303 Wentworth Row SW on your way into the city, we look at it at no charge, we call you with the fault and a price, and it's ready when you next come in. The shop is open seven days, which makes fitting it around a trip easy.
When an on-site visit makes sense
Some work genuinely has to happen where the equipment lives. Network and Wi-Fi problems, a desktop that's part of a bigger setup, a small office with several machines, printers and a shared drive. For those, call and we'll arrange a visit rather than have you disconnect half a room and drive it in. It works like any visit, by the hour, with a travel fee on top that Mo confirms before setting off.
If the job is one laptop with one fault, drop-off is faster and cheaper for you, and we'll say so on the phone instead of quietly booking a trip.
Crashes under load, and what they point at
How CompuTech reads a crash under load, before anything is replaced. A computer that behaves perfectly for email and falls over the moment you play something or edit video is telling you something specific. Load draws power and makes heat, and load failures are almost always about power, heat, or a part that's failing under stress it can no longer take.
Coloured shapes, flickering blocks and torn textures
Artefacts on screen during games are the classic graphics symptom, and they still aren't proof the card is dying. Overheating memory on the card produces the same effect and is often fixed with fresh thermal pads. So does a driver in a bad state, and so occasionally does a marginal power supply. We separate those before condemning a card.
Sudden restarts with no warning or error
A machine that cuts out instantly rather than showing an error is usually a power problem or a thermal cutout. Power supplies degrade with age and the first sign is often instability under load rather than a clean failure. This is a part people rarely suspect and frequently should.
Random crashes with different errors each time
Inconsistent errors that never repeat the same way often point at memory. It's testable, and quick to test, which is a better place to start than replacing the most expensive component on the assumption that it must be the problem.
Nothing at all when you press the button
A machine that won't start is a process of elimination between the power supply, the board, the memory and occasionally the front panel switch itself. Every one of those is testable, and jumping to a new motherboard without doing it's how people end up spending a lot to fix a cheap part.
Most of these are heat, and heat is maintenance
Most of the hardware faults that reach CompuTech's Calgary bench are heat. A large share of the hardware faults that arrive here aren't failures at all. They are three or four years of dust and a thermal compound that has done its job and dried out.
The pattern is consistent whether it's a gaming laptop or a desktop tower. First the fans get louder. Then performance drops off a few minutes into anything demanding, because the chip is slowing itself down to stay within a safe temperature. Then it starts shutting off entirely. People arrive at the third stage convinced something has died.
- Cooling fins cleared properly rather than blown at from the outside
- Fresh thermal paste on the processor and, on cards and laptops, on the graphics chip
- New thermal pads where the design uses them for memory and power circuitry
- Fans checked for worn bearings, which a clean doesn't cure
- Case airflow looked at, because a clean machine in a sealed cupboard heats up again
- Tested under sustained load with temperatures monitored, not just switched on
If your machine is loud but still working, that's the cheap moment to deal with it. Running hot for years is what turns a maintenance job into a component failure.
What can be repaired on a card, and what can't
What CompuTech can and can't repair on a graphics card. Graphics cards aren't all-or-nothing. Several of the most common faults are serviceable parts, not the end of the card.
- Fans that have stopped or become noisy are a replaceable part on most cards
- Degraded thermal pads on memory cause artefacts and are straightforward to replace
- Dried paste on the main chip causes throttling and shutdowns under load
- Dust in a blower or open cooler design is the cause more often than the card
What's not economically repairable is failure of the graphics chip itself, or damage to the power delivery circuitry around it. Those exist, and when that's what we find we'll say so plainly rather than selling you a service that won't fix it.
The reason to diagnose properly is simple. Graphics cards are among the most expensive parts in a computer, and replacing one that only needed a clean is an expensive mistake.
Upgrades worth doing at the same time
Upgrades CompuTech will suggest while a machine is already open, and the one it won't. If a machine is already apart on the bench, the marginal cost of doing other useful things to it's small. It's worth asking.
The one that changes a machine most is storage. Any computer still running from a mechanical hard drive gets transformed by an SSD, and it's not a close call. Memory is the second, particularly on a machine that slows to a crawl with a lot of browser tabs open. A tired power supply on an ageing desktop is the third, and it's the one that protects everything else in the case.
What we won't do is talk you into an upgrade that doesn't address your actual problem. If the machine is fine and the graphics card just needed cleaning, that's what you'll be told.
The one thing to sort before you need it
The one thing CompuTech would rather Strathmore customers sorted before they needed it. Data recovery is the job we would rather you never need. It's also the one where distance matters least, because a drive travels perfectly well in a padded envelope on the passenger seat.
If everything you would miss lives on one computer, that's one failure away from gone. A backup that runs on its own, to a drive and to the cloud, isn't expensive and it's not complicated once it's set up. We'll set it up as part of another job if you ask, which is usually the cheapest time to do it.
And if you're already in trouble, a drive that clicks, a machine that won't boot, files that vanished, stop using the device and call. The odds get worse the longer it runs, and a drive dropped at the shop costs nothing to look at.
No surprises. Ever.
You know what a visit costs before you book, and you agree the price of any repair before work begins. If we can't fix it, you don't pay. Simple as that.
Visits are 1 hour minimum, then billed by the half hour. If Mo can't fix it, you don't pay, and nothing gets opened or ordered until you've said go.
- In-home visit
- $99/hr
- Remote session
- $65/hr
- In-shop drop-off
- No charge to look
Three steps to a stable machine
“Top tier service all the way! I had a laptop display issue that was beyond repair. Rather than recommend a costly display unit replacement, Mohammed gave me a very cost-effective swap option.”
“While many big chain computer repair shops charge absurd prices to run simple diagnostic tests and leave you without your computer for several days, Computech's services are affordably priced and the turnaround time is outstanding. Mohammed takes great pride in his work and in building relationships with his customers- this is uncommon to see in most businesses today.”
“Mohammed provided excellent computer services—professional, efficient, and very knowledgeable. He quickly diagnosed the issue, explained the solution clearly, and delivered exactly what he promised. Highly recommended for anyone looking for reliable and competent IT support. The cookies and coffee he provided were great too.”
Questions, answered
By arrangement rather than as a standard booking. Strathmore is in the wider group of communities Mo travels to, not the four towns on the daily in-home run, so call and we'll sort out what works.
Drop it at the shop at 303 Wentworth Row SW next time you're in the city. It's open seven days, there's no charge to look at a drop-off, and we call you with the fault and a price before anything is done.
For network problems, a small office, or a desktop wired into a bigger setup, yes. For one laptop with one fault, drop-off is faster and cheaper and we'll tell you that rather than book a trip.
Depends on the job and on parts. You get a real timeline with the quote, not an optimistic one, and if a part has to come in you'll know before you agree to anything.
Dropped at the shop, nothing. You only pay the repair price you agree to.
Load failures point at power, heat or a part failing under stress. Everyday use draws very little, so a machine can look perfectly healthy right up until you ask it to work.
Not necessarily. Overheating memory on the card produces exactly that and is often cured with fresh thermal pads. Drivers in a bad state and a marginal power supply can do it too. We separate those before condemning a card.
That usually means power rather than software, because an operating system fault would normally leave an error behind. Ageing power supplies get unstable under load long before they fail outright, and they're one of the least suspected parts.
Classic thermal throttling. The chip is reducing its own speed to stay within a safe temperature because the cooling isn't moving heat away any more. A clean and repaste is the fix.
Every couple of years for most rooms, more often with pets or carpet. If it has never been done and it's three years old, that's very likely your problem.
Usually not. Card fans are a serviceable part on most models, and if the card wasn't run hot for long afterwards it's generally fine.
Failure of the main graphics chip itself, or damage to the power circuitry around it. Those are real and they aren't economic to fix. When that's what we find, we'll tell you rather than sell you a service that won't help.
Elimination. Power supply, board, memory and the front panel switch, tested in that order. All four are testable, and replacing a motherboard without testing is how people spend a lot to fix a cheap part.
Inconsistent errors often point at memory, which is testable at no cost beyond time. It's a better starting point than replacing the most expensive component on a hunch.
Usually same-day as a bench job for both laptops and desktops. Anything needing a part gets a real timeline with the quote.
If it has been throttling, noticeably. You aren't gaining performance, you're getting back what heat was taking away.
Yes. Upgrades, replacement parts and full builds, with honest advice about which parts genuinely change what you do rather than which are most expensive.
If it's still on a mechanical hard drive, an SSD, and it's not close. Memory second if you work with a lot open. A tired power supply on an old desktop is worth doing because it protects everything else in the case.
Yes. Cooling and component work doesn't touch your storage, and anything that does gets backed up first.
Once the faulty part is found you get one price, visit included, before any work. If we can't fix it, you don't pay.
Desktop diagnosis often starts in-home across Calgary and the nearby towns. Thermal work and component-level repair are bench jobs at 303 Wentworth Row SW, open seven days.
Related pages
Crashing under load?
Call and we'll work out the fastest route.