Will it last?

[yeahmanitsmurph]

I bought a used MSI Aero 1080 Ti 11G OC around the release of the 2080 Ti for about $400 USD off of eBay. It was clearly used for bitcoin mining because the pictures from the ad were from a mining rig with multiples of the same card.

 

I didn’t have any issues initially, it ran amazingly well until just recently it started to have this issue where it doesn’t turn on right away from a cold boot. It will post, get to MSI Windows 10 splash/loading screen (MSI motherboard) but then display numerous white lines, go black and then to “No Display.” It stays like that until I hard reset my computer, then it works perfectly. Sometimes I’ll do the same thing, but when I get to the login screen, or just after logging in and on the desktop, it will display purple/pink artifacts and freeze. From there the display resets on its own or I have to hard reset the computer again. Worse case: it’ll sometimes have no display at all, even at start, blower fan will crank up to 100% fan speed and stay like this until it is hard reset.

 

I’m sure it’s my graphics card. I’ve swapped in my 1050 Ti that I had originally on both my original motherboard and the one I’ve since updated to and it works perfect even from a cold boot. I’ve used DDU, I turned off fast boot in Windows, changed all the power settings to maximum performance in Windows/NVIDIA control panel, I made sure the display was set to PEG0 in the BIOS, I’ve even upgraded to a higher rated PSU because I thought it might of not been getting enough power. I’ve flashed the current vBIOS for the card, I’ve rolled back/updated drivers. I feel like I’m out of options.

 

I’m worried it’s just going to die. It works when it works, but it’s just a pain sometimes. My wife thinks I should just buy a new graphics card, but I keep hoping it’ll last til Ampere. 

 

TL;DR : Dying graphics card, what do?

[Corrupt_Liberty]

MSI Graphics card warranty is for 3 years.  Those cards didn't come out until 2017 so you might want to contact them about warranty service.  Not sure if they'll help you since you aren't the original owner but they probably will.

[dizmo]

You played with fire, and eventually got burned. I'd say you got your money's worth out of the card though.

Sell it on eBay listing the issues, and grab something during Black Friday to tide you over.

[yeahmanitsmurph]

Sorry for the late bump, it’s been hectic couple of weeks at work..

 

To answer I did try the warranty route and was denied for not being the original owner and for obvious signs of tampering (missing S/N1, and the captive screw warranty sticker). 
 

Update: Decided to take the card apart to inspect for any defects and there didn’t seem to be any obvious damage to the PCB beneath the cooler. I’m assuming the previous owner changed out the thermal paste at some point? Upon further inspection I did find some questionable “crusty” residue around some solder points on the back. I’m thinking it was some kind of corrosion or dried up flux?

 

I cleaned it up with some alcohol and a q-tip (cleaned the rest of the card while I had it taken apart) which revealed some pitting in the solder. I didn’t do much from there, but after the deep clean, DDU and a fresh install of the newest Nvidia drivers it booted up with zero issue! It had one instance of artifacting/freezing initially when starting up a benchmark, but it reset and didn’t reappear after multiple boots/hours of play time.

 

If issues do reoccur, then I’d probably suspect the pitting in the solder and will probably do something requiring a little more big-brain-time.

Current cost:

 

$400 GFX

$8 Denatured Alcohol

$4 500 ct box of Q-tips

 

[Brent744]

This is why I never purchased cards which I suspect were mined with, too much abuse. These consumer level cards were never designed to run 100% 24/7. Happy to hear that you've been able to correct the issue for the time being. In the meantime i'd be putting some cash away to purchase another card down the road.