Dead graphics card, but what went wrong?

[DontCareTm]

Hello! 

 

So recently my graphics died ina very abrupt way... I was playing a fairly intense game and all of a sudden i get some crazy artifacts and then my pc crashes. I tried to boot up into windows but it crashes at the boot scene (as show in gallery).  I also tried booting into safe mode to see what I could do and it did boot into windows but with artifacts (shown below), followed by a crash. I have now taken apart my gpu too see if there is any physical damage and the images below are my results. A lot of chips seems to have grease in them? Or some kinda of sticky substance.... I’m not sure what this could be... I was thinking it might have overheated but I’d think it would throttle down before that happens. Anyone got any ideas?

 

thanks

[Streetguru]

7 minutes ago, DontCareTm said:

 

Either it decided to die, or the power supply killed it, which is much more unlikely

You could see if lowering memory or core clock speeds does anything

[191x7]

Which EVGA card is that exactly?

[KarathKasun]

The thermal paste was not covering the whole core.  It is likely a core failure due to excessive hot-spot temps.

[RuberoDX]

Thermal paste not full? Also why does the card look damp or burned?

[KarathKasun]

2 minutes ago, RuberoDX said:

Thermal paste not full? Also why does the card look damp or burned?

Thermal pads have silicone grease in them, and that stuff can creep over time if they are cheap pads.

 

Look at the core in image 4, the thermal paste was not 100% covering the core when the cooler was removed.

[iamdarkyoshi]

1 minute ago, KarathKasun said:

Thermal pads have silicone grease in them, and that stuff can creep over time if they are cheap pads.  Look at the core, the thermal paste was not 100% covering the corw when the cooler was removed.

Half the paste stuck to the cooler, other half to the die

 

I'm sure the coverage was fine

[KarathKasun]

1 minute ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

Half the paste stuck to the cooler, other half to the die

 

I'm sure the coverage was fine

No.  Look at the dry ring around the core.  Good coverage does not leave a gap like that with any thermal paste.  On a GPU you want 100%+ coverage, as there is no heat spreader.

[RuberoDX]

Hmmm, then does it need new paste and pads? 

[RuberoDX]

Also some cleaning, I see dust  

[iamdarkyoshi]

8 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

No.  Look at the dry ring around the core.  Good coverage does not leave a gap like that with any thermal paste.  On a GPU you want 100%+ coverage, as there is no heat spreader.

Weird. Every intel CPU I've delidded has the same pattern, and the same with GPUs

 

The empty spots on the die have always been on the heatsink though for me. 

 

Either way, the card is likely toast at this point. It looks like a memory failure, GPU failures are almost always just a black screen.

 

A repaste and cleanup might help it run a little longer, but I'd start looking for a new card.

[DontCareTm]

Yeha I removed the thermal paste so that wasn’t an issue. And yeah it does look burned no idea why lol

[DontCareTm]

Also it’s an Evga GTX 980ti classified

 

[iamdarkyoshi]

Just now, DontCareTm said:

Also it’s an Evga GTX 980ti classified

 

IIRC the 980Tis are all starting to fail, a couple of my friends had theirs kick the bucket not long before yours did

[DontCareTm]

Yeah, seems like a very odd thing to happen, didn’t know that tho^^ it’s had problems a while ago where I had to under-clock the card a lot of else it would give me artifacts and then crash the game I was playing