What's wrong with my 980 ti?

[Deus Machina]

I've got an Inno3D GeForce GTX 980Ti Hybrid Black Edition GPU. A few months ago I started having problems in most games, getting the "Driver stopped responding..." error (with no apparent pattern, sometimes it crashed quickly, sometimes after an hour or two). I googled and tried all software solutions I could find without success. The temperature seemed to be OK. The games it never crashed in were Steel Division, XCOM2 and, I think, DOOM 2016.

 

Recently I was running Heaven benchmark to stress the GPU. I had the case open and accidentally touched a watercooling fan of the GPU for a fraction of a second. The system restarted and I felt a faint smell of burned electronics.

 

Since then I'm still able to use the GPU in 2D  in Windows UI and even in menu screens of the games; but whenever a 3D scene starts, even if it's a 3D on a webpage, the whole system crashes and restarts. The device manager doesn't report any problem with the GPU. I tested with the built in CPU graphics and it doesn't crash.

 

In my understanding, if the main GPU processor died, the card would be completely unusable. Maybe it's a safety mechanism that restarts the system, because the GPU thinks it's got no cooling (all fans are working)?

 

Does anyone have any ideas on what could cause such a behaviour? Any suggestions what I could test to find out what the problem is? Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

Other specs:

Asus Z170 Pro Gaming

i6600k

32GB ram

m.2 + ssd

[AngryBeaver]

10 minutes ago, Deus Machina said:

I've got an Inno3D GeForce GTX 980Ti Hybrid Black Edition GPU. A few months ago I started having problems in most games, getting the "Driver stopped responding..." error (with no apparent pattern, sometimes it crashed quickly, sometimes after an hour or two). I googled and tried all software solutions I could find without success. The temperature seemed to be OK. The games it never crashed in were Steel Division, XCOM2 and, I think, DOOM 2016.

 

Recently I was running Heaven benchmark to stress the GPU. I had the case open and accidentally touched a watercooling fan of the GPU for a fraction of a second. The system restarted and I felt a faint smell of burned electronics.

 

Since then I'm still able to use the GPU in 2D  in Windows UI and even in menu screens of the games; but whenever a 3D scene starts, even if it's a 3D on a webpage, the whole system crashes and restarts. The device manager doesn't report any problem with the GPU. I tested with the built in CPU graphics and it doesn't crash.

 

In my understanding, if the main GPU processor died, the card would be completely unusable. Maybe it's a safety mechanism that restarts the system, because the GPU thinks it's got no cooling (all fans are working)?

 

Does anyone have any ideas on what could cause such a behaviour? Any suggestions what I could test to find out what the problem is? Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

Other specs:

Asus Z170 Pro Gaming

i6600k

32GB ram

m.2 + ssd

Have you tried cleaning out all your nvidia drivers and installing fresh?

 

As to the fan part.... not sure why a temporary stopping of the fan would cause a burnt smell. Also when it comes to GPU's they can be in varying states of dying. It isn't uncommon to have a gpu that can display 2d without an issue, but has problems with 3d images.

 

I would start with cleaning and reinstalling your drivers. I would then try to run down why it is restarting now and see if you are getting an error message. Then we can try to run down the cause of that error. In the end it could just be your card is starting to die as well.

[Deus Machina]

24 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

Have you tried cleaning out all your nvidia drivers and installing fresh?

 

As to the fan part.... not sure why a temporary stopping of the fan would cause a burnt smell. Also when it comes to GPU's they can be in varying states of dying. It isn't uncommon to have a gpu that can display 2d without an issue, but has problems with 3d images.

 

I would start with cleaning and reinstalling your drivers. I would then try to run down why it is restarting now and see if you are getting an error message. Then we can try to run down the cause of that error. In the end it could just be your card is starting to die as well.

I have tried the drivers, and even the whole system reinstall, before this incident. I'll try re-installing the drivers again now.

 

No error messages now. Before it would say "Driver stopped responding..." in win 8.1, then in win 10 it would leave a notification along the lines of "The application was denied access to using the hardware".

 

Now the log in the Event Viewer simply says "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly." — nothing specific.

[AngryBeaver]

What power supply are you using?

[Deus Machina]

4 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

What power supply are you using?

RMi Series RM1000i

[AngryBeaver]

2 minutes ago, Deus Machina said:

RMi Series RM1000i

Then it shouldn't be a power issue. Have you tried reseating the card?

 

Also you said it was watercooled? What are the temps you are seeing?

[Deus Machina]

1 minute ago, AngryBeaver said:

Then it shouldn't be a power issue. Have you tried reseating the card?

Yes, tried another slot (wouldn't fit it in the third one because of PSU) — no perceivable difference.

[Sensui]

Time for an upgrade.

[AngryBeaver]

1 minute ago, Sensui said:

Time for an upgrade.

Yep, he will need a 2080 ti now.

[Deus Machina]

3 minutes ago, Sensui said:

Time for an upgrade.

I fear it might be. Have no clue what to go for, honestly. Will wait for the Navi to come out and then decide, I guess. Maybe the prices will drop a notch by then.

 

1 minute ago, AngryBeaver said:

Yep, he will need a 2080 ti now.

Don't think so, with all the negative hype it's getting. It would cost more than the rest of the system did when I bought it, and not sure my CPU wouldn't bottleneck the GPU. You've got a beastly setup with that SLI of yours.

[AngryBeaver]

1 minute ago, Deus Machina said:

I fear it might be. Have no clue what to go for, honestly. Will wait for the Navi to come out and then decide, I guess. Maybe the prices will drop a notch by then.

 

Don't think so, with all the negative hype it's getting. It would cost more than the rest of the system did when I bought it, and not sure my CPU wouldn't bottleneck the GPU. You've got a beastly setup with that SLI of yours.

I don't ever get to play on it though. Hell I have a 2080TI that was meant for a 9900x build, but I put that off waiting for the 7nm Ryzen products.