Used 3090 doesn't POST

[invectiv]

Hi all,

 

This post concerns a used graphics card I purchased, the Gigabyte 3090 Gaming OC Non-LHR. Was claimed to be working, but woes of the used part market aside, when I tried to swap it in, it did not POST. ASUS Mobo indicated it was the graphics card which had the issue.

 

Here's what I've already done:

• Reseated the GPU, turning off the power supply and all; no difference made
• Reverting to my previous GPU, which worked fine.
• Disassembling the card, nothing I can tell as being out of the ordinary

Here's what I'm planning to do:

• Repaste/apply pads
• Testing for short circuits with a multimeter, which is en route

Are there any other steps you would take to diagnose or fix what's wrong at home? I know Alex's dead GPU vid featured one which had been used for mining and which produced a display upon updating or reverting the bios away from the mining bios, but I'm unclear on how to do that for this card. Would be happy to try.

 

Current system runs an ASUS TUF Gaming x570 Wi-Fi and Corsair RM1000x.

 

Thanks!

 

Edited for clarity and additional info

[--SID--]

Reset motherboard BIOS solve the issue sometimes.

 

What's your motherboard and PSU?

[invectiv]

2 minutes ago, --SID-- said:

Reset motherboard BIOS solve the issue sometimes.

 

What's your motherboard and PSU?

Asus x570 tuf wifi, corsair rm1000x. Motherboard is newish, purchased in March

[Pandur]

If the GPU have switchable bios, try the other one.

 

Do NOT disassemble, repaste, etc if you want to return it.

 

From what I can tell your motherboard support dual GPUs. Install the new one in the secondary slot and your old in the primary slot. See if it will post and boot Windows. Then you can check if it is visible in Device Manager in Windows.

 

First impression is that this smell like a dead old miner though.

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 minutes ago, Pandur said:

Do NOT disassemble, repaste, etc if you want to return it.

They already did the first.

[Levent]

All of the signs so far indicate you got scammed. Where did you get the card? Hopefully you used an intermediary service (like ebay)?

[invectiv]

Not an intermediate service; hwswap on Reddit. Fully willing to accept I got scammed, but want to see what I can do to repair. At least I could save this thing from a landfill.

[Levent]

5 minutes ago, invectiv said:

Not an intermediate service; hwswap on Reddit. Fully willing to accept I got scammed, but want to see what I can do to repair. At least I could save this thing from a landfill.

Sadly if you cant even get the system to POST with card installed, it probably means it has some sort of initialization issue (lack of voltage rails, lack of power to vbios chip are the two ones that I can think of at the top of my head). I have been watching this guy on youtube and seems to be doing a great job fixing computer parts and he has a website where you can request a quote from him, might want to contact him if you are in the US.

 

EDIT: He actually has couple of European "alternatives" in his youtube recommendations as well.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Levent

[Pandur]

7 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

They already did the first.

I see that now.

 

1 minute ago, invectiv said:

Not an intermediate service; hwswap on Reddit. Fully willing to accept I got scammed, but want to see what I can do to repair. At least I could save this thing from a landfill.

Do what I wrote above: Try to boot your computer with this card in the secondary pcie slot. And your old gpu in the primary slot with a monitor hooked up, so you can see what happens. The bios often have a sub menu that show vga and dimm slot status, should give you an idea if the bios even notice a device in the slot at all. If you can get into Windows you can check device manager if it shows up there. Then gpu-z, nvflash and other options are available.

[invectiv]

Thanks both for the tips. I'll try the 2nd slot first and see if there's any info I can glean.

[invectiv]

1 hour ago, Pandur said:

I see that now.

 

Do what I wrote above: Try to boot your computer with this card in the secondary pcie slot. And your old gpu in the primary slot with a monitor hooked up, so you can see what happens. The bios often have a sub menu that show vga and dimm slot status, should give you an idea if the bios even notice a device in the slot at all. If you can get into Windows you can check device manager if it shows up there. Then gpu-z, nvflash and other options are available.

Thanks for your advice. I couldn't find anywhere in my BIOS that indicated a 2nd graphics card, nor does it show up in GPU-Z and Device Manager. Please let me know if I'm missing some information here.

Edited May 18, 2022 by invectiv
Added info

[Levent]

Just now, invectiv said:

Thanks for your advice. I couldn't find anywhere in my BIOS that indicated a 2nd graphics card, nor does it show up in GPU-Z. Please let me know if I'm missing some information here.

Nope, card is not initializing otherwise you would have seen it somewhere (either here or in device manager). You might want to look at repair options like the one I linked above.

[Pandur]

10 minutes ago, invectiv said:

Thanks for your advice. I couldn't find anywhere in my BIOS that indicated a 2nd graphics card, nor does it show up in GPU-Z and Device Manager. Please let me know if I'm missing some information here.

I had to double-check your motherboard manual since it says that 1650 is running at the full x16 lanes. But that makes sense since your motherboard have the other PCIex16 slot wired to the chipset with x4 lanes.

 

The 3090 should show up both in that dropdown menu in GPU-Z. And if you look in device manager under display adapters it should have showed up as either RTX 3090 or standard VGA adapter. If it is kind of, but not entirely, broken it should show up as unknown device, Which would be visible in device manager when you open it. No need to expand a category to find unknown devices.

 

Even if it is not visible you can run nvflash and scan for devices, just in case. Because what you have basically done now, is boot your computer to flash the bios of a non-posting GPU. So you can run the command to list devices if you grab a compatible version of nvflash from e.g. techpowerup (nvflash.exe --list). If it is not showing there either, you are looking at a very dead GPU.