Problem with Gigabyte GTX 980ti G1 GAMING

Kermuz · October 24, 2019

Hi,

I recently bought GTX 980ti G1 Gaming graphics card and i have a problem with it. Now it is installed in my computer but from time to time it randomly shuts off, i installed MSI Afterburner to monitor its behavior and i can see that core and memory speed are oscillating ( core from ~620MHz to ~1367MHz and memory from 810MHz to 3305 Mhz). When testing a few times screen turned white and one or two screen turned purple. If i want to restart computer i have to shut it off manualy with PSU switch or main "turn on computer button" long press. GPU temperature is oscillating between ~49*C to ~55*C. What should i do to get it to work properly or should i get rid of it?

My computer specs:

i7 4790k stock (Noctua NH-D15S)

ASUS Z97 PRO GAMER

2x4GB G Skill Trident X 2400MHz cl 10

2x SSD Samsung Evo 850 240GB + some HDD for storage

BeQuiet Power Zone 750W

+

GTX 980ti G1 Gaming

Attachment represents behavior of clock speeds under load (minecraft on ultra shaders) but when i test its "stability" in FurMark it looks the same way.

Little update:

Card does not seem to shut off because of core or memory speed, tested underclocked as well as overclocked, i don't see any pattern of shutting off but i think inoticed something. Core clock is climbing up it hits about 1360MHz and also gpu reaches about 135 -147% power limit and then clock speed is reduced significant until power limit reaches about 70% then core speed is climbing again. Memory clock is a completely different story, memory clock speed is increasing when core speed is decreasing and it stops when clock speed is all the way down and when core clock is increasing memory clock is decreasing and over and over...

MadAnt250 · October 24, 2019

2 hours ago, Kermuz said:

Hi,

I recently bought GTX 980ti G1 Gaming graphics card and i have a problem with it. Now it is installed in my computer but from time to time it randomly shuts off, i installed MSI Afterburner to monitor its behavior and i can see that core and memory speed are oscillating ( core from ~620MHz to ~1367MHz and memory from 810MHz to 3305 Mhz). When testing a few times screen turned white and one or two screen turned purple. If i want to restart computer i have to shut it off manualy with PSU switch or main "turn on computer button" long press. GPU temperature is oscillating between ~49*C to ~55*C. What should i do to get it to work properly or should i get rid of it?

My computer specs:

i7 4790k stock (Noctua NH-D15S)

ASUS Z97 PRO GAMER

2x4GB G Skill Trident X 2400MHz cl 10

2x SSD Samsung Evo 850 240GB + some HDD for storage

BeQuiet Power Zone 750W

+

GTX 980ti G1 Gaming

Attachment represents behavior of clock speeds under load (minecraft on ultra shaders) but when i test its "stability" in FurMark it looks the same way.

Set your clock speeds to stock or reset everything to default and see what happens.

Make sure your connections for the power are good and your connection in the PCIe slot is good, bad connections can cause freaky behaviors sometimes.

Kermuz · October 25, 2019

12 hours ago, MadAnt250 said:

Set your clock speeds to stock or reset everything to default and see what happens.

Make sure your connections for the power are good and your connection in the PCIe slot is good, bad connections can cause freaky behaviors sometimes.

I have checked power connection as well as PCIe slot connection and all is working properly. I took my old Evga GTX 960 4GB and its working perfectly fine in the same conditions. Testing 960 with FurMark and all clocks are stable, core at 1455MHz and memory at 3506MHz. Power goes up to 76% at the beginning and then drops to 73%.

Power limit is jumping right to the top maybe that is a sign of some (i hope minor) damage and that is why it is limiting itself and crashing.

Maybe 980ti has a blown fuse or a resistor, maybe thermal paste on core has some gaps with air inside?

Card was bought used from first owner, he had two identical cards in SLI and he told me both cards were behaving the same just random shut offs from time to time.

I took the cooler off and that's what i saw, i don't think that looks as it should but maybe that's the way they did it.

Nothing seems to be burned or damaged in other visible way.

I scraped the thermal paste with flat piece of plastic and it is super dry. Thermal paste on the square piece around chip is the driest paste i ever saw. Thermal paste on the chip was dry too but it was “more” like a liquid but very far from good consistency of a thermal paste

AkSo2504 · October 25, 2019

Could you try to set the Power Limit to the Max in Msi Afterburner and see what happens?

Kermuz · October 27, 2019

On 10/25/2019 at 8:14 PM, AkSo2504 said:

Could you try to set the Power Limit to the Max in Msi Afterburner and see what happens?

Power limit set to max and that does not affect performance, as i said before power in some cases jumps to 147% even that limit is set to max which is 139%.

Yesterday i saw something interesting. When i was inspecting PCB at the angle i saw a rainbow-ish area. In center of this area there are 4 memory chips so after a few minutes i came up with conclusion.

This area looks very overheated and i think it happened because of enormous power draw so i think there must be some short or burned transistor, capacitor, resistor.....

I have checked fuses and they are not damaged. I will check more things when my lab power supply will and i need to ask some friends to borrow thermal camera to see what is causing problem.