Confirm PCIe 16x Issue and Course of Action

[msconfig]

Long story short, I'm from US and my job working abroad was cut short due to the pandemic and I'm now working back on home turf.  I had a supervisor from overseas ship my PC back to me about 1 year ago and, of course, he doesn't remove the video card as requested and it went through a lot of punishment. 

 

See attached video of the issue and HW Specs at the bottom.

 

I first discovered the plastic latch that locks the video card in place broke off after I went to reseat the card.  I was happy to find that everything appeared to function properly at first, but then over time, video started stuttering and on occasion completely cut off requiring a restart.  That would usually fixed the problem.  My first thought as a quick fix was to simply use the 2nd PCIe slot on the MB, which is still an option, however the 2nd slot is PCIe 8x slower than the current PCIe 16x that I want to continue using for better gaming performance.  Reseating the card sometimes helped, but ultimately found that applying very light pressure to the card to cause it to "sag" just a bit more, provided stable video.  As you can see in attached video, lifting the card out of the "sag" position cuts off the video.  Recently, something as simple as lightly bumping the table can cause the video to cut off.  It's been running moderately stable for about a year, but it's now reached the point where I'm now going to take action. 

 

My motherboard selection was a bit overboard as I'm not a creator.  I primarily use it as a VM lab for studying/tinkering for work (reason for high core count / memory capacity), and also for performance demanding games as time permits.

 

I simply want to confirm this is a 100% Motherboard issue and replacing the MB will fix the problem?  If the answer is yes, I planned to buy a cheaper motherboard that better suits my needs (Lab / Media Consumption / Gaming) then sell this MB on eBay as damaged of course and I would post a link to the video showing the issue with the PCIe 16x slot.  Is that my best course of action?  Any suggestion are welcome.

                                                                                       
MBManufacturer                 MBModel          CPU                                           OsName
--------------                 -------          ---                                           ------
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.  Z490 VISION D  Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10850K CPU @ 3.60GHz   Microsoft Windows 10 Home

 

VideoCard
-------
AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT

 

MemorySlot  Cpty(GB)  speed
---------   --        -----
BANK 1      16        3200
BANK 3      16        3200

 

 

 

[spitfire2717]

Do you have another system you can verify that it's the motherboard or gpu? Swap gpus or swap motherboards?

[msconfig]

13 minutes ago, spitfire2717 said:

Do you have another system you can verify that it's the motherboard or gpu? Swap gpus or swap motherboards?

I don't, but, I could just put the card in the secondary pcie slot and see if it has the same problem.  If it's totally stable in the 2nd slot I'll assume MB replacement is the way to go.   Unless I'm missing something.  Thanks for making me think of that idea. 

[spitfire2717]

1 minute ago, msconfig said:

I don't, but, I could just put the card in the secondary pcie slot and see if it has the same problem.  If it's totally stable in the 2nd slot I'll assume MB replacement is the way to go.   Unless I'm missing something.  Thanks for making me think of that idea. 

If you put it in the 2nd slot, it could be the gpu thought too. I belive it got damaged in shipping, I could be wrong thought. Trying the 2nd slot wouldn't really rule anything out.

[msconfig]

6 minutes ago, spitfire2717 said:

If you put it in the 2nd slot, it could be the gpu thought too. I belive it got damaged in shipping, I could be wrong thought. Trying the 2nd slot wouldn't really rule anything out.

That assumes I continue having the issue.  If I put it in the second slot and it works perfectly, then it's the issue with first slot, but yes, if I continue having the problem then nothing is ruled out... If that happens I'll buy a cheap card to use for testing purposes then go from there. 

[msconfig]

13 minutes ago, spitfire2717 said:

If you put it in the 2nd slot, it could be the gpu thought too. I belive it got damaged in shipping, I could be wrong thought. Trying the 2nd slot wouldn't really rule anything out.

Okay, confirmed it works perfectly in the 2nd PCIe slot... Stable video no stuttering whatsoever.   Doesn't this confirm the issue is the 16x slot?  Or maybe it's still a Video card issue that only presents itself in a 16x slot.  Ugh, wish I had more components to test with... I guess I'll make some purchases. 

[SimplyChunk]

start with an old second hand geforce 210 or something.  It doesn't need to really be that powerful and you'll probably pick one up for 10 bucks

[msconfig]

On 5/18/2022 at 12:54 AM, spitfire2717 said:

Do you have another system you can verify that it's the motherboard or gpu? Swap gpus or swap motherboards?

Just following up to post that the issue was indeed the 5700 XT.  Gave me an excuse to upgrade to a Radeon 6750 XT, just got that today and I'm on cloud 9.  I'll just sell the 5700 XT as damaged on eBay, full disclosure with a post of the video.  No idea what I'll get for it.