ASUS Turbo GTX 1080 no display/black screen

[Malwarewolf]

Hey guys n gals.

 

I'm hoping the LTT community can help me in my time of need.

 

The short of it is that I acquired an Asus Turbo GTX 1080, however it does not want to display. I boot up and just a black screen and eventually "no input" on the display. I tried all 5 of the outputs (2x HDMI, 2x DP, 1x DVI) It came from a working system and the card worked in it's previous system. However I hooked it up to mine and suddenly it doesn't want to display and took a hell of a time to get it to even be recognized by windows. If it helps, I do get a warning display via the DVI that if I boot without putting in the VGA power plug, I get text on the screen to plug in said power plug. Other than that, nothing.

 

Here's the specs of the system I want to put this 1080 in:

 

FX-8350 Asus Sabertooth 990fx r2.0 - bios version 2901

16gb ddr3 (gskill ripjaws)

Adata boot ssd + 2x 4TB HDD

corsair vs 550w PSU

windows 10 home - version 2004

 

To give a small backstory, these parts bought I off a friend (the CPU, mobo and ram) and have worked fine for the past year with an old xfx radeon hd 6870, which then I upgraded to an rx 460 (which died, hence me replacing it with the 1080). I got this as a backup/storage pc and with the 1080 I was thinking I could even game if I wanted to.

 

Things I've tried:

 

As I said before, I boot up and get no display/no input. The fan and ASUS logo on the side spin/lights up. However, I did manage to get it to boot into windows and was able to verify/browse the desktop via the chrome remote desktop app with a laptop. I get a 480p resolution screen through the app which makes navigating and trying to tweak anything near impossible as windows won't scale down enough and when I try to change the display settings, its blown up too big and the page doesn't scroll. However, while in this instance, I was able to verify that device manager did recognize the card and had the display adapter installed. Also, I will note that when only the 1080 is in the system, the VGA post light is lit up (which, according to the manual, when the VGA light illuminated means there's a post error). Thing is despite that lit up, I was able to still boot into windows. That's about as far as I got with just the 1080 in the system.

 

Next, I put in my old radeon hd 6870 in the first PCIe slot (which the 1080 was in previously), and then moved the 1080 down to the 3rd PCIe slot (wouldn't fit in second). This is the card I have been using previously and works as it should. I get a 1080p resolution. I check device manager and both display adapters for the radeon and gtx card are there. At this time I was able to install geforce experience and install the most up to date nvidia driver (forget which version # but it was as of 5/27/2020). I will note that I am unable to power both cards properly, as the radeon requires 2x 6 pin VGA power and the 1080 requires 1x 8 pin VGA power. My psu only has 2x 6+2 pin VGA power. Hindsight I wish I got a slightly bigger psu.

 

Anyway, next I tried reflashing the bios with the factory vbios from techpowerup. I installed GPUz which was able to recognize the 1080, however sometimes it would have all the fields blank and others where some fields were filled (like architecture and manufacturer) and some were not (like clock speeds and vbios version). Not sure why GPUz was spotty but it varied between reboots. Eventually I was able to use nvflash to reflash the factory bios onto the card while in safe mode. I will note here that according to nvflash, I was flashing the same vbios that already existed on the card, so not sure why it wouldn't show up on GPUz. After fiddling with all that, nothing changed after putting only the 1080 back into the pc and booting up. I was only still able to view the desktop via chrome remote desktop and having a 480p screen. At this time I opened Speccy to see what the graphics were displayed as. This is where I saw it was only at 480p and Speccy gave something nondescript, so between GPUz and Speccy, the 1080 wasn't still being properly recognized, despite having now the correct (according to geforce experience) driver installed. Also despite having geforce experience installed, I could never get nvidia control panel to install/open properly in any of these instances.

 

I also reset and updated the mobo bios and that didn't help. I updated windows and made sure there weren't any more feature/quality updates before starting this adventure. I also ran SFC, DISM (as I wanted to make sure I could get anything from windows update I could for the card), and CHKDSK /f /r just for extra peace of mind. I suppose the only thing I can think of that I haven't done yet is reinstall windows fresh and only have the 1080 card installed at first bootup.

 

Lastly I did try putting it into my main rig, which is as follows:

 

8700k w/ nzxt 240mm AIO

aorus gaming 5 wifi - bios version f15a

32gb trident z

1080ti ftw3 hybrid

nvme boot + 4TB hdd

EVGA supernova g3 850w 

windows 10 pro - version 2004

 

Thing is I stuffed all the above into a meshify c and the huge 1080ti is a fingernail width away from the fins of the AIO rad, thus making it a tetris puzzle to disassemble this pc. Hence why after seeing the 1080 not being recognized at all in device manager or GPUz and unable to install the display adapter even, I didn't have the patience to fiddle with it anymore. (this was after reflashing the vbios). My thought was that with the nvidia drivers already installed, it'd have a chance to pick right up and I could worse case use chrome remote desktop again but perhaps find that it has a better resolution than 480p. No dice though.

 

So yea, that's about all I could think of/do before pulling my hair out. If you have any ideas of what I could do next, please let me know. Also if you need more details or pictures like of the card's PCB, please say so. I apologize for not taking any screenshots, however with no display I can't think of many applicable instances where they'd be useful here lol. 

 

At this point, the one video of Linus baking a card in hopes of reviving it comes to mind...

[Robchil]

7 minutes ago, Malwarewolf said:

If it helps, I do get a warning display via the DVI that if I boot without putting in the VGA power plug, I get text on the screen to plug in said power plug. Other than that, nothing.

 

 

so you get a warning you need to put in the 6 or 8 pin PCIE powercable?.. and you havn't done it yet?  last time i checked 6+2 makes 8... 

 

[Malwarewolf]

1 minute ago, Robchil said:

so you get a warning you need to put in the 6 or 8 pin PCIE powercable?.. and you havn't done it yet? 

 

Apologies, I suppose that might cause confusion. I mentioned the warning to point out that was the only thing I could get to show up on any display I plugged into the card. Any troubleshooting I have done after were all done with the VGA powercable plugged into the 1080, except for when I had the 6870 in the first PCIe port and the 1080 in the 3rd PCIe port when I was trying to flash the bios and other troubleshooting to see if there was something wrong with the card software/firmware wise. My PSU can only power one card at a time. 

[Robchil]

 

8 minutes ago, Malwarewolf said:

Apologies, I suppose that might cause confusion. I mentioned the warning to point out that was the only thing I could get to show up on any display I plugged into the card. Any troubleshooting I have done after were all done with the VGA powercable plugged into the 1080, except for when I had the 6870 in the first PCIe port and the 1080 in the 3rd PCIe port when I was trying to flash the bios and other troubleshooting to see if there was something wrong with the card software/firmware wise. My PSU can only power one card at a time. 

with other the 1080 installed, disconnect all harddrives and periferals that draws power. test if it works then.. 

sounds like it wants more power than your psu can deliver. and one 6+2 or 8 pin doesn't matter. it should be the same. altho some PSU's have separate cables for each 8/6+2 pins and/or double 8/6+2 connectors on one cable. 

if you know someone with more powerful PSU ask if you could test it. 

if it works then you know what you need. 

 

Edit: altho there should light up a white diod on the card next to the powerconnector if it has issues usually.. on some cards it lights up constantly and goes out when it don't get enough power... depending on vendor. 

 

 

[Malwarewolf]

14 minutes ago, Robchil said:

 

with other the 1080 installed, disconnect all harddrives and periferals that draws power. test if it works then.. 

sounds like it wants more power than your psu can deliver. and one 6+2 or 8 pin doesn't matter. it should be the same. altho some PSU's have separate cables for each 8/6+2 pins and/or double 8/6+2 connectors on one cable. 

if you know someone with more powerful PSU ask if you could test it. 

if it works then you know what you need. 

 

Edit: altho there should light up a white diod on the card next to the powerconnector if it has issues usually.. on some cards it lights up constantly and goes out when it don't get enough power... depending on vendor. 

 

 

I will keep that in mind next chance I get to do further testing. The 550w psu does have one VGA power cable with 2x 6+2 pin connectors, so it should be able to power a card that has two 8 pin connectors. The 1080 requires one 8 pin connector and when I do plug in the power cable, there is a white light that does illuminate just above the female connector on the backside of the pcb. Then it illuminates red when there isn't enough power/no power cable is plugged in. The white and red lights are stable when illuminated. 

 

As I mentioned, I did try it in my main rig which has a 850w psu in it that powers a 1080ti just fine. I'm open minded to the possibility, however I'm thinking lack of power to the card isn't the issue. Unless if the power delivery chips on the pcb are compromised. I haven't tested any connections on the pcb (yet). 

[Robchil]

2 minutes ago, Malwarewolf said:

I will keep that in mind next chance I get to do further testing. The 550w psu does have one VGA power cable with 2x 6+2 pin connectors, so it should be able to power a card that has two 8 pin connectors. The 1080 requires one 8 pin connector and when I do plug in the power cable, there is a white light that does illuminate just above the female connector on the backside of the pcb. Then it illuminates red when there isn't enough power/no power cable is plugged in. 

 

As I mentioned, I did try it in my main rig which has a 850w psu in it that powers a 1080ti just fine. I'm open minded to the possibility, however I'm thinking lack of power to the card isn't the issue. Unless if the power delivery chips on the pcb are compromised. I haven't tested any connections on the pcb (yet). 

ah. so you tested it in your new rig and it didn't do any good either.. 

and you got it from a guy that had it on the shelf to replace the old ati card that died.. sounds like that one has died too tho.. or something is internaly wrong with it. have you disasembled it and checked the board itself? 

 

[Malwarewolf]

1 hour ago, Robchil said:

ah. so you tested it in your new rig and it didn't do any good either.. 

and you got it from a guy that had it on the shelf to replace the old ati card that died.. sounds like that one has died too tho.. or something is internaly wrong with it. have you disasembled it and checked the board itself? 

 

Yea the rx 460 started to "melt", meaning I'd get screen corruption and screen freezes and then eventually it'd freeze/crash by the time I got to the windows login. 

 

I took off the shroud and heatsink and nothing stood out to me but I don't quite have an eye trained for that sort of thing. I did plan to see if I could find a high res picture of the front and back of a reference pcb to see if any chips, resistors or capacitors have somehow fallen off. I gave the traces for the HDMI ports a scrub with some iso alcohol just to see if anything came up. Nothing did. I didn't see any corrosion or liquid damage to the board. 

 

As stated, the system previous this card was in worked just fine. Just when it was taken out and put back in any system afterward it started to act up. The gold fingers on the PCIe connector are clean and all there. 

[Malwarewolf]

I appreciate robchill for their help but any other insight or suggestions from anyone else would be greatly appreciated as well. 

[Malwarewolf]

Here's some pictures of the bare pcb for those able to tell if something fell off or has better trained eyes than mine who could spot something. I tried finding a pcb reference image but asus created their own rather than using the reference FE pcb and can't find one that matches. To me everything seems normal though I do see several bare spots where resistors or chips could be but I figure those are empty since this is the 1080 and not the Ti variant and things are trimmed off as they're not needed. Any feedback would be appreciated.