A Warning or a Bonehead Move?

RelentlessAF · February 19, 2014

So when I got my first ever gaming build a little under a year ago. (My first tropes in PC gaming were in the early 2000's with a Dell OEM tower and an Nvidia 7800GT) I purchased under the recommendation of a Best Buy employee who knew a lot of what he was talking about the following components. (These are not all of them just those that created a sort of issue). An Asus p8Z77-M motherboard and an EVGA GTX 660 2GB GPU. After excitedly receiving all of my components in the mail I watched many upon many of PC building tutorials assuring I would not get things wrong. I worked on a floor without carpet and used an anti-static wrist strap to ground myself. Iplaced the GPU in the first PCI-E 16X slot on my motherboard color-coded as blue. After less than a month of use there were tons of issues. Video driver crashes, freezes, bluescreens, and episodes of crying. After 6 agonizing months of this and almsot quitting the PC gaming master race all together I switched slots and have never had a problem since and can even healthily OC my GPU even though it is already factory OC'd gotta get that bit of extra performance! All in all I'm not sure if this is a warning to not get the same motherboard as me or If I had made a mistake. So I turn to you, experts of the LTT forums to let me know. Also if it helps, the first slot is compatible with GPU boost and I am unsure i my card is could that have been the issue? That's where I think I had made the bonehead move.

airdeano · February 19, 2014

So when I got my first ever gaming build a little under a year ago. (My first tropes in PC gaming were in the early 2000's with a Dell OEM tower and an Nvidia 7800GT) I purchased under the recommendation of a Best Buy employee who knew a lot of what he was talking about the following components. (These are not all of them just those that created a sort of issue). An Asus p8Z77-M motherboard and an EVGA GTX 660 2GB GPU. After excitedly receiving all of my components in the mail I watched many upon many of PC building tutorials assuring I would not get things wrong. I worked on a floor without carpet and used an anti-static wrist strap to ground myself. Iplaced the GPU in the first PCI-E 16X slot on my motherboard color-coded as blue. After less than a month of use there were tons of issues. Video driver crashes, freezes, bluescreens, and episodes of crying. After 6 agonizing months of this and almsot quitting the PC gaming master race all together I switched slots and have never had a problem since and can even healthily OC my GPU even though it is already factory OC'd gotta get that bit of extra performance! All in all I'm not sure if this is a warning to not get the same motherboard as me or If I had made a mistake. So I turn to you, experts of the LTT forums to let me know. Also if it helps, the first slot is compatible with GPU boost and I am unsure i my card is could that have been the issue? That's where I think I had made the bonehead move.

you should really enter a support ticket at ASUS as there could be many causes of

what might have happened. the slot is routed to the CPU. so either a trace could

have been damaged, CPU pin bent or misaligned, slot connection to GPU PCB was

fouled, lack of power, and many more.

have you retried switching it back to the x16 slot recently? got the newest driver update

334.89? possible the GPU was sagging so much causing the slot/card not to connect

properly?

RelentlessAF · February 19, 2014

you should really enter a support ticket at ASUS as there could be many causes of

what might have happened. the slot is routed to the CPU. so either a trace could

have been damaged, CPU pin bent or misaligned, slot connection to GPU PCB was

fouled, lack of power, and many more.

have you retried switching it back to the x16 slot recently? got the newest driver update

334.89? possible the GPU was sagging so much causing the slot/card not to connect

properly?

I do not have a warranty on the motherboard. Ironically the way I got the PC is my dad used his Best Buy credit card (I'm 17 and cannot get my own) and I payed it off. Which meant he chose the budget based on what he thought I would pay back and there wasn't room for warranties. I have tried switching it back and installing the latest drivers and the crashes still occur.

airdeano · February 19, 2014

I do not have a warranty on the motherboard. Ironically the way I got the PC is my dad used his Best Buy credit card (I'm 17 and cannot get my own) and I payed it off. Which meant he chose the budget based on what he thought I would pay back and there wasn't room for warranties. I have tried switching it back and installing the latest drivers and the crashes still occur.

ASUS uses their serial number for warranty issues. you'd need to "register" the

board and then submit a support ticket to get some information. doesn't matter

who's got the board right now, just that there is an issue and they can suggest

more fixes or information on what can be done. they have a 3-year warranty.

RelentlessAF · February 22, 2014

ASUS uses their serial number for warranty issues. you'd need to "register" the

board and then submit a support ticket to get some information. doesn't matter

who's got the board right now, just that there is an issue and they can suggest

more fixes or information on what can be done. they have a 3-year warranty.

It turns out I cannot, in my ignorance of my first time build I bought thermal adhesive rather than paste and the heatsink is glued to the processor. So I cannot remove the processor and connot get a replacement. Oh well, I was planning onn getting a different motherboard and a haswell CPU anyways. Thank you for the help though