Thought my GPU was buggered, but maybe im wrong?

[refinedskillz]

I have a Palit Jetstream GTX 980 Ti, and I've had a peculiar issue with it in the past few days, that being that my system randomly cuts out and reboots when any load is applied to the card (that being in games). I've figured this out from swapping the card into another system and putting it under load, and the same thing happens, but, I think this might've been a fluke? I only tested it once and came to a very quick conclusion. I bought it in December 2019, and haven't had problems till now. The problem is really inconsistent, sometimes happening every time I dare to load up a game, and sometimes won't happen at all for multiple hours of load. Under no load or very little load it is stable. I decided to fire up MSI Afterburner to see what my temps and usage were like, since I thought maybe I could keep the card below a certain usage to prevent it from crashing my PC? I was playing Skater XL (It crashed many times playing this.). It's semi intensive, using about 50% of my GPU at maxed settings at 1080p. GPU sits at 60-65 degrees ish, normal. However, I noticed the CPU was at 68-69? At 30% load? I sort of brushed it off thinking it must be the card because I put it in the other system. It did perform the same system reboot crash thing in the other system, which I cannot explain, but here is what I did to troubleshoot the card (and my system specs).

 

Ryzen 5 1600u 

Asus B450 Plus AM4 motherboard

Palit Jetstream GTX 980 Ti

16GB 2666mhz Crucial Ballistix DDR4 memory

EVGA GS 650w power supply

2x 1TB WD Blue in RAID 1

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD

W10 64bit

 

Now here's what I've tried, in chronological order since the problem started. I used Furmark and a couple games I regularly play to test whether the problem was still persistent. All below was attempted to troubleshoot the GPU.

 

1. Tried swapping in a new PSU - problem persisted in exactly the same way 

2. Tried reseating GPU - multiple times.

3. Tried a couple of different driver revisions, 2 from summer and 2 from winter 2020.

5. Tried to underclock and undervolt the card and/or limit its maximum usage.

4. Applied new thermal paste and deeply cleaned the heatsink and cooler.

5. Tried flashing motherboard BIOS to the latest revision.

6. Tried looking through the event viewer to find a consistent error relating to the card, but found nothing.

 

Today, I thought I'd just check the CPU, it's on the stock cooler, but I was slightly suspicious since 70c seems too high. I realized that 70C at 30% would mean a very high temperature at full load, potentially too high?  All the screws on the stock cooler were loose, and one had completely come out. After remounting the cooler with new thermal paste, I got 55C on the same game at the same load. Could this have been the problem? And the crash on the other system a fluke? I'm still skeptical that my GPU could be faulty, but since my CPU is now 20 degrees cooler, idk, that seems major.

 

[anonymous2500]

30 minutes ago, refinedskillz said:

I have a Palit Jetstream GTX 980 Ti, and I've had a peculiar issue with it in the past few days, that being that my system randomly cuts out and reboots when any load is applied to the card (that being in games). I've figured this out from swapping the card into another system and putting it under load, and the same thing happens, but, I think this might've been a fluke? I only tested it once and came to a very quick conclusion. I bought it in December 2019, and haven't had problems till now. The problem is really inconsistent, sometimes happening every time I dare to load up a game, and sometimes won't happen at all for multiple hours of load. Under no load or very little load it is stable. I decided to fire up MSI Afterburner to see what my temps and usage were like, since I thought maybe I could keep the card below a certain usage to prevent it from crashing my PC? I was playing Skater XL (It crashed many times playing this.). It's semi intensive, using about 50% of my GPU at maxed settings at 1080p. GPU sits at 60-65 degrees ish, normal. However, I noticed the CPU was at 68-69? At 30% load? I sort of brushed it off thinking it must be the card because I put it in the other system. It did perform the same system reboot crash thing in the other system, which I cannot explain, but here is what I did to troubleshoot the card (and my system specs).

 

Ryzen 5 1600u 

Asus B450 Plus AM4 motherboard

Palit Jetstream GTX 980 Ti

16GB 2666mhz Crucial Ballistix DDR4 memory

EVGA GS 650w power supply

2x 1TB WD Blue in RAID 1

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD

W10 64bit

 

Now here's what I've tried, in chronological order since the problem started. I used Furmark and a couple games I regularly play to test whether the problem was still persistent. All below was attempted to troubleshoot the GPU.

 

1. Tried swapping in a new PSU - problem persisted in exactly the same way 

2. Tried reseating GPU - multiple times.

3. Tried a couple of different driver revisions, 2 from summer and 2 from winter 2020.

5. Tried to underclock and undervolt the card and/or limit its maximum usage.

4. Applied new thermal paste and deeply cleaned the heatsink and cooler.

5. Tried flashing motherboard BIOS to the latest revision.

6. Tried looking through the event viewer to find a consistent error relating to the card, but found nothing.

 

Today, I thought I'd just check the CPU, it's on the stock cooler, but I was slightly suspicious since 70c seems too high. I realized that 70C at 30% would mean a very high temperature at full load, potentially too high?  All the screws on the stock cooler were loose, and one had completely come out. After remounting the cooler with new thermal paste, I got 55C on the same game at the same load. Could this have been the problem? And the crash on the other system a fluke? I'm still skeptical that my GPU could be faulty, but since my CPU is now 20 degrees cooler, idk, that seems major.

 

Stress test the gpu again and see if it crashes because it seems like the CPU was the problem.

[refinedskillz]

8 hours ago, anonymous2500 said:

Stress test the gpu again and see if it crashes because it seems like the CPU was the problem.

Yep, I did, and it still crashed, forgot to update thread.

[anonymous2500]

8 hours ago, refinedskillz said:

Yep, I did, and it still crashed, forgot to update thread.

In that case I would recommend booting windows into safe mode, download a GPU stress test. This would tell us if a program could be causing this.