gigabyte 4 Month Old PC started having random issues.

[CDR710]

PC Specs

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor

 

Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 AORUS PRO AC ATX AM4 Motherboard

Memory: Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory

Storage: Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

GPU: ASRock Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB Taichi X OC+ Video Card

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA GA 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

 

 

I built a PC about 4 months ago and about a week ago It started to give me a vga light on boot. I would reseat my gpu and the power cables that were connected, the computer worked fine the rest of the day. I left my pc on that night to see if I could avoid a boot error but when I started to run a game it would crash and the vga light would come on again. After trying to troubleshoot the software side of the PC (drivers, updates, ect.) I could get it to boot, but every time I tried to play a game or run a benchmark it would crash (both my monitors would go black and my pc would keep running as if it restarted but there would be no signal and occasionally a VGA light), except for Cinebench which I understand as being a more CPU intensive test. All the GPU tests were crashing so I thought It might have been my GPU. I had a friend tell me to uninstall the GPU drivers and reinstall them which seemed to make my pc work longer before a crash. Some of these crashes were just black screen with my pc running and some were the blue screens, but the errors were not the same, they were different every time. I happened to open my case and install this aftermarket cpu cooler that i had bought previously and after hooking everything back up my game was running fine, this was yesterday and I played for about 4 hours. This morning I got the vga light and my Pc would not boot again so I was going to see if it really was my GPU and switched PCIE slots on the motherboard. This allowed it to boot and so far has ran through the 3D Mark benchmark perfectly fine. I would assume my Motherboard main PCIE slot is going bad, but all of my components were brand new and still under warranty. The slot itself looks perfectly fine as well (I used a gpu stand to hold it up and prevent sagging). If this is not a pcie slot problem, does anybody know what could be the cause of the crashes? Lucky my pc is working fine now but tomorrow it might be another vga light. 

 

 

[narrdarr]

sometimes when you see multiple different crashes or errors regardless of the mobo led it can be the ram. try disabling xmp.

[Nathanpete]

Different error's each time? Hmmm, well a black screen usually occurs when an OC is too aggressive or when the driver hangs (aka the driver freezes and restarts itself, wiping out Radeon Software in the process), but a BSOD can occur if the PCIe slot momentarily fails or if the driver flat out crashes. Of course in the event of a GPU caused BSOD, you usually won't see the BSOD because the display would be disconnected. Makes it even harder than your CPU doesn't have onboard graphics. 

 

If you go multiple days without another VGA error you can assume something was wrong with the primary PCIe slot. In that case, I would open up an RMA with Gigabyte and see if you can get your money back or a replacement for (preferably) nothing out of your wallet. Or if you aren't going to bother with an RMA and are content with the GPU running in the middle slot then you are A-OK. IDK if that motherboard supports a Gen 4 connection on both the top and middle slot, either only one at a time or limited to PCIe 4.0 x8 (the same thing as PCIe 3.0 x16 in terms of bandwidth). Either way your choice to lose up to 5% in performance and "imporper aesthetics" or go through the headache some companies make the RMA process. 

Never had to RMA a gigabyte product before, so can't speak from experience. Also if you do, they will ask if you enabled XMP or did an OC. Say no to both. 

[CDR710]

10 minutes ago, narrdarr said:

sometimes when you see multiple different crashes or errors regardless of the mobo led it can be the ram. try disabling xmp.

I did have it running at stock 2666 when most of these crashes were happening, and I ran a couple mem tests which all seemed to not find any failure with the ram

[CDR710]

9 minutes ago, Nathanpete said:

Different error's each time? Hmmm, well a black screen usually occurs when an OC is too aggressive or when the driver hangs (aka the driver freezes and restarts itself, wiping out Radeon Software in the process), but a BSOD can occur if the PCIe slot momentarily fails or if the driver flat out crashes. Of course in the event of a GPU caused BSOD, you usually won't see the BSOD because the display would be disconnected. Makes it even harder than your CPU doesn't have onboard graphics. 

 

If you go multiple days without another VGA error you can assume something was wrong with the primary PCIe slot. In that case, I would open up an RMA with Gigabyte and see if you can get your money back or a replacement for (preferably) nothing out of your wallet. Or if you aren't going to bother with an RMA and are content with the GPU running in the middle slot then you are A-OK. IDK if that motherboard supports a Gen 4 connection on both the top and middle slot, either only one at a time or limited to PCIe 4.0 x8 (the same thing as PCIe 3.0 x16 in terms of bandwidth). Either way your choice to lose up to 5% in performance and "imporper aesthetics" or go through the headache some companies make the RMA process. 

Never had to RMA a gigabyte product before, so can't speak from experience. Also if you do, they will ask if you enabled XMP or did an OC. Say no to both. 

I tried to OC like 2 weeks after I built it and kept it a low oc and even tried to undervolt it but after some research, I found out that running any OC will cause Warzone to crash which was happening frequently after the oc. All other games were stable though! I only ran the Oc for like 2 days and then switched to default and warzone ran perfectly fine. 

 

I just tried to run 3D Mark again and I got the BSOD again but no VGA light on the boot up, it booted back perfectly fine... im trying to run it again because i wasn't paying attention the first time. 

 

How would I fix a driver hang?

I feel like since I got a BSOD on the other slot, my gpu could be faulty? 

[Nathanpete]

21 hours ago, CDR710 said:

I tried to OC like 2 weeks after I built it and kept it a low oc and even tried to undervolt it but after some research, I found out that running any OC will cause Warzone to crash which was happening frequently after the oc. All other games were stable though! I only ran the Oc for like 2 days and then switched to default and warzone ran perfectly fine. 

 

I just tried to run 3D Mark again and I got the BSOD again but no VGA light on the boot up, it booted back perfectly fine... im trying to run it again because i wasn't paying attention the first time. 

 

How would I fix a driver hang?

I feel like since I got a BSOD on the other slot, my gpu could be faulty? 

You can't fix a driver hang. A driver hang is just like an driver crashing, but instead of error code something is just frozen and not changing like it should. Driver hangs are better than a driver crash because a crash causes a blue screen, a hang causes the game to freeze, then the display to go black, and then a couple seconds later the screen returns and whatever programs were using the GPU at that time (usually a game and a browser) would have crashed. I have only had driver hangs in CP 2077 (of course) and once in Forza Horizon 4 when I was trying to OC. 

 

So you have now experienced a BSOD with the GPU in both slots? This could mean one of two things: Either your GPU is at fault, or something we haven't even considered yet is at fault. 

 

I would suggest factory resetting your motherboard (last page in your UEFI or in the exit menu), and then reinstalling all the drivers for your GPU, CPU, and motherboard. I believe AMD makes a piece of easy to download software that does it all for you. (IDK which one it is) But it should be pretty easy to find. I may even be Ryzen Master. 

 

I would also remove everything from any ports that aren't necessary. (Keep your monitor, keyboard, mouse, and preferably that's it). Remove stuff like extra USB cables, spare HDDs, and USB audio cards etc. I just want to remove as many variables as possible when working with you.