aranurea

Does the flickering monitor do freesync? If so, disable freesync and see if it goes away.

While I agree with the overall analysis, I disagree about a few details, the biggest being 400+W cards. 400W is an insane amount of heat to have to dissipate. If there is going to be a 400W number, it'll likely be only on the top end Titan, for the sake of keeping the performance crown, if they were pushed to do so. If they were to run their entire high end lineup at 400W, nvidia would take a huge hit in terms of brand. Currently, people still associate nvidia with efficiency and 400W maybe not be able to be cooled on anything but water or an open bench. Anyone trying to run 400W in a standard enclosure, no matter how good the airflow is, would probably have a terrible time with heat. Even those who can cool the card would probably feel other effects. That's that kind of number that would make a room (my room, at least) uncomfortable to be in. Second, I don't believe the titan is as important as you make it out to be. Sure, I believe nvidia still wants to be able to claim they've got the fastest card, but the impact on lower end card sales doesn't compute with me. AMD haven't completed with the 1080 Ti, nor the the 2080 Ti, but they're not having any problems selling their cards. Sure, they might have slightly higher sales if they had the performance crown, but the biggest factor, imo, is price. People want to buy the best card in their price range, not what's related to the best overall. It doesn't matter if AMD doesn't beat the top end nvidia card because if they can undercut nvidia on price at every level of performance they (AMD) offer, AMD will continue to make a good number of sales. If AMD can say "I can give you more performance for the same/better price as that nvidia card" for everything but the top card, they'll be very successful. That's all assuming AMD can keep their drivers functional. If user support from AMD isn't there, they will continue to be seen as the budget brand. If AMD can pull that off, Nvidia will have to drop prices (which frankly have been bloated since the RTX series dropped).

Do you have another PC that you can try the card in? If so, and it still doesn't work, it might be dead. If it really was the GPU fan spinning up to max, I'd wager the core is dead.

Is he a real friend then...? jk

Old capacitors simply dry out. They slowly lose their capacitance. Only physical damage or extreme voltages (exceeding their rated voltage) can cause them to explode.

NVM. Thought your fans weren't working.

Not sure why no one else has said it but here's the real reason you don't need a 2nd ESP connection: ESP doesn't actually exist on computers. It's mostly associated with living humans.

Damn that sucks. Looks like a new PSU is in order.

Shader cache as an option should always be left on.

Not entirely true. PSUs can be designed to "crowbar". That means shorting the output straight to common in order to prevent any current from reaching the load. During this crowbar state, the PSU is still functioning, just that the load (the rest of your components) are not getting any power. That crowbar cannot be reset without a power cycle. Although that's usually reserved for linear supplies... To OP: Connect your GPU to the PSU using 2 PCIE power cables, not a single one with two connectors on it. Then try again.

In my experience, freesync can cause severe stuttering in certain circumstances, usually involving overlays. It's usually accompanied by flickering on the display as well.

Its pulling a high amount of current, enough to surpass the inrush tolerance of the breaker. And if there is visible arcing to the point where its like sparks, its pulling WAY more than that. I'd guess your components are fine as the only real way it can pull that much current is on the AC side of the PSU (before it gets converted to DC). Chuck in another PSU (a quality one) and you should be good to go.

Disable any overlay application you may have running, like discord or reshade and try again. Keep your RAM at XMP. Again, do you have a freesync display? If so, disable freesync as well.

If it's engineered properly, it'll turn off or crowbar when it overheats. If not, you could end up with catastrophic thermal runaway. Since we don't know it was engineered properly, I'd recommend you err on the side of safety.

If it shuts off instantly when pressing the power button, it isn't posting. What exact model of GTX 980 is this?