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Faulty Motherboard?

Basic system specs:
i7 4770k
Corsair H80i
16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866
Asus Z87 Sabertooth
Samsung 840 240GB SSD
2x 1TB WD Black
Seasonic Modular 760w Platinum

So, I built this new pc recently with all of those silly Black Friday deals, and things had been going smoothly. I didn't have a graphics card at build time because I was in the process of rma'ing a GeForce 460 (fan died). Everything booted up first try, got all my drivers updated, bios flashed, Steam installed, backups restored, etc.

Everything felt... good. I was able to overclock the ram a bit, and got the cpu to 4.5 stable fairly easily. The on-processor 4600 is capable of much more than I was expecting, given past experiences with, for example, onboard GeForce 6150 chips. That said, I was anxious to have a dedicated video again, so I was giddy when the manufacturer told me they were upgrading my hardware and that the card was going to arrive in two days.

When the video card did arrive, I stuck it in, expecting the plug-and-play experience that I have become familiar with over the past few years of pc building. Instead, I was met with something like this: http://i.imgur.com/H6kvTv9.jpg That piture is from the latest rma'ed card, but both cards have had the same sort of issue.

To see if I had bad pci-e slots, I salvaged an old GeForce 9400 (single slot no psu connector) and stuck it into the top two pci-e slots. The 9400 worked fine; Slow, but fine. With that, I sent replacement 1 on it's way back to the manufacturer.

I got replacement 2 back a week or so ago, and ran into the same problem. After contacting the manufacturer again, the CS rep suggested I try the card in a different system. Following his advice, I stuck the card into my old system, and lo and behold: no artifacts!

After telling a friend about this affair, he suggested that the power supply may have been the culprit. So, I bought a psu tester AND a new backup psu. The Seasonic power supply showed no deviation from advertised voltages on the tester, and neither did the new psu, which suggested to me that something else was the issue.

Having just installed and gone through multiple configurations of bios settings and hardware configs ranging from one less fan to nothing-connected-but-the-cpu-cooler, I am at a loss. Hell, I even took the single slot AMD 7750 that I was going to give my sister for Christmas (I'm a horrible person) and stuck it in. Works fine, and I'm using that card to write this post.

 

What else I have done: Test with different monitors and cables.

So, TL;DR: Unsure if two bad cards in a row or faulty motherboard. Are there possible bios fixes? Do I need to call Asus for an rma? Should I rma the card (AGAIN)?

Thanks in advance,

Jammy

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I would update the bios, see if that works

[AMD Athlon 64 Mobile 4000+ Socket 754 | Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro nForce3 | OCZ 2GB DDR PC3200 | Sapphire HD 3850 512MB AGP | 850 Evo | Seasonic 430W | Win XP/10]

 

 

 

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The gpu that isn't working is a GTX 460?

80+ ratings certify electrical efficiency. Not quality.

 

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No. I HAD a 460 Twin Frozr that had one of the fans die. I rma'ed it and got a 560ti 448 as a replacement. After the first round of symptoms, I rma'ed the first 560, thinking the gpu was at fault. Then I got the second one and found that it had the same issues in the new pc. So I contacted MSI rma again and they asked me if I could possibly try the card in a different computer. I did, and it worked fine. So now I'm not sure if the card doesn't work with this new system or if the new motherboard is defective. I'm using the new build right now with a AMD 7750 in the #1 pci-e slot; no issues, games run fine.

 

So yea, really confused.

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Have you tried all three PCI Express slots? After trying a different card, and a new PSU, the only logical option left is a bad slot, hence a bad motherboard.

 

Oh, and if you picked up the type of PSU tester I think you did, they only test the voltage with no load. The voltage could fluctuate once a load is introduced onto that rail, translating to a defective PSU, that you wouldn't have noticed with the tester. I doubt that's the problem though.

Spoiler

Gaming PC

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  • PowerColor Gigabyte RX 6750 XT
  • Storage:
    • Samsung 970 Evo NVME
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    • MyDigitalSSD BP4 250gb (mSATA inside 2.5" enclosure)
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Media Server

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  • MSI GTX 1050 Ti
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Oh, I feel that I should also mention that I can freely access and use the UEFI bios and get to the desktop with the 560, but it invariably BSoDs before loading all startup programs.

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Have you tried all three PCI Express slots? After trying a different card, and a new PSU, the only logical option left is a bad slot, hence a bad motherboard.

 

Oh, and if you picked up the type of PSU tester I think you did, they only test the voltage with no load. The voltage could fluctuate once a load is introduced onto that rail, translating to a defective PSU, that you wouldn't have noticed with the tester. I doubt that's the problem though.

 

I have tried the 560 in slot #2. Same problem. Slot #3 is essentially inaccesible because it is at the bottom of the board; Only single slot gpus could possibly fit there.

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I doubt it's a hardware issue. The fact that other gpu do not have an issue suggest to me that it's likely a driver issue. If you have a second monitor you could set up with a working gpu driving the primary display and the second monitor on the 560 Ti. You could then check the settings, etc.

80+ ratings certify electrical efficiency. Not quality.

 

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