Let's talk about dead GPUs, or other components

[Seelowe]

First of all I want to make it clear that I'm not asking for help with this. I made my own research on this whole thing, the card is 100% dead and under warranty so I'm going to send it back. I just think this will be a fun thing to talk about and share stories. And to vent my frustration because I waited a long time to finally use the PC I built last year just for this to happen.

 

I own a Gigabyte 3080 Ti Gaming OC something - it's the base model (not the Eagle or Master). I was just playing Insurgency Sandstorm when the screen went black (Displaying the No Signal message) and the GPU fans ramped up to 100% speed. I restarted my system after like 20 seconds, but the monitor kept saying it has no signal and the motherboard was showing me a VGA light so I kind of knew what had happened at that point.

 

I removed the GPU for about 10-15 minutes while I was reading up on some information about this. After installing it back, I turned on the system, got a no signal message again and I turned it off immediately. That's only because I kept my hand on the GPU and I felt it as it got hot in the span of 5 seconds, hotter than I've ever felt it under load - and this happened on startup. And there was a smell but not of burnt electronics and certainly not smoke, I know those smells. It was more like the smell of newly manufactured plastic combined with the smell of it getting very hot. Just hot plastic which went away after it cooled down again.

 

This did happen to me one other time, a month go. Same thing - black screen and 100% fans, the only difference is that it worked perfectly fine after restarting the system. I ran some tests on it and everything was fine - the card peformed properly, without any artifacts and there were no signs of instability so I just attributed it to a driver issue or something else. I always monitor the sensors and the card worked perfectly fine the whole time I had it. Even earlier while I was playing, temps were in check along with everything else then suddenly I got the black screen and it was the end. So I put back my old 1060 and everything works fine.

 

I did check for the common cracked PCB on Gigabyte cards, but there were no cracks that I could see with the naked eye and I sincerely doubt that's the reason since I nerver took the card out until now because I barely used my PC for the most part due to work. Unless it cracked by itself.

 

I'm not gonna bother with troubleshooting it further since it's pretty clear that it's dead, but mostly because it's under warranty and I don't want to give them any reasons to void it.

 

With this being said, let's share our misfortunes. What unfortunate stories do you have to share? I remember a friend of mine had his PSU blow up in a spectacular fashion, maybe I got off easy.

 

 

 

[GoldSrc]

I've had an old GTS-250 just die on me, screen went black and that was it.

I still have that card somewhere in a box, just because it was my first substantial upgrade from an 8400GS.

And I'm pretty sure I still have that 8400GS somewhere, and I know that it still works lol.

[thrasher_565]

i have a evga 6800 ultra pcie that got from ebay but no video...

[Seelowe]

6 hours ago, GoldSrc said:

I've had an old GTS-250 just die on me, screen went black and that was it.

I still have that card somewhere in a box, just because it was my first substantial upgrade from an 8400GS.

And I'm pretty sure I still have that 8400GS somewhere, and I know that it still works lol.

I swear it's always the newer, better part that fails and the older part still goes strong after that. I have an old Athlon 64 somwhere tucked away, I should probably find it and put it on display since that was the CPU of my first proper PC.

[Seelowe]

6 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

i have a evga 6800 ultra pcie that got from ebay but no video...

I'll keep you in my prayers. Buying second hand is both a blessing and a curse

[emothxughts]

I once had a Sapphire Pulse RX580 I bought used for a whopping MYR1300 ($280) back in the scalped GPUs era of 2021. Unfortunately for me it had a nasty habit of black screening like OP did, but the fans simply stop instead of ramping up to 100%. My PC stops responding and I have to force shut my PC by long pressing the power button, feels like I'm strangling somebody. Eventually it blackscreened while idling in the desktop, making the GPU useless for even light tasks. I eventually sold it for parts for a measly MYR60. What a waste of money. And shame on the seller I guess.

 

In my attempt to replace the junk ass RX580 I got, I decided to buy a used Gigabyte Windforce RX5600XT a year later. Unfortunately this one's a piece of junk too. While gaming, my PC would crash with a black/gray screen and repeated audio, then restart. When I check the Event Viewer afterwards, I get Kernel Power 41 (not the real error, just means the PC wasn't shut down properly) and WHEA 18 Cache Hierarchy errors. At first I thought my CPU the R5 3600 was at fault, so I RMA'd it. I still get the same crash with the replacement CPU I got. I eventually determined that the RX5600XT was at fault. Sent the card to a repair shop, they couldn't fix the problem either. Now it sits in its box on my shelf, rotting, unsuitable for gaming.

 

I'm running yet another used GPU right now, a Zotac Mini GTX1070. No problems no crashes so far, just that it runs at x8 lanes instead of the x16 that it's supposed to be.

[r00tb33r]

I've had a lot of defective stock back when I was in business, but I've never had one of my personal GPUs die.

[WallacEngineering]

I was transporting my system when I got T-Boned by some idiot in a giant Suburban (I was in a small sports car - Hyundai Tiburon)

 

Not only did it break my leg so badly that the bone is now replaced with metal (as in the pieces of bone had to be surgically removed because it would NEVER heal), but it obviously broke my PC quite badly.

 

PCIE Port Mangled, basically dead Mobo, RX 5700-XT permanently damaged, but it still somehow turned on.

 

This is what the audio sounded like when the GPU was the one processing it (Audio over DisplayPort into monitor). It was easy to determine it was the GPU as if you plugged in a headset - therefore swapping to motherboard audio processing, the audio would clear up immediately.

 

There was also crashing very often, overclocks wouldn't hold anymore, ECT ECT...

 

Unfortunately, this was during the scalping era and I couldn't bring myself to buy a new card with the outrageous prices. So, I bought a new MoBo ONLY and while this did clear up some of the problems, the GPU audio issues were still there, although nowhere near as bad.

 

Then I noticed the card was stuck in PCIE 3.0 x 8 mode and refused to ever connect all 16 lanes or run in 4.0 mode no matter what I tried.

 

It was tolerable after some work though, and I ran the card about another 2 years until about 2 months ago when I picked up my new Red Devil RX 7900-XTX for the deal of a lifetime (see signature for build).

 

 

[r00tb33r]

@WallacEngineering surely the settlement money would have been enough for a new rig or two.

 

Hope you're doing well.  I've had an ankle injury that didn't heal right.  It kinda sucks.

[WallacEngineering]

8 hours ago, r00tb33r said:

@WallacEngineering surely the settlement money would have been enough for a new rig or two.

 

Hope you're doing well.  I've had an ankle injury that didn't heal right.  It kinda sucks.

 

There was no settlement money, the police declared it non-fault because they are idiots. I fought them for over a year about it.

 

But ya know, no human being alive can actually challenge the government alone, so I lost.

 

But ya Im fine, it was a long time ago now.

[thrasher_565]

On 7/1/2023 at 3:53 AM, Seelowe said:

I'll keep you in my prayers. Buying second hand is both a blessing and a curse

ya got my money back but now i have an expensive coaster... it be nice ti see if it can be fixed... its about $600-1000 when working

[r00tb33r]

Incidentally I emailed Tony at northwestrepair a couple weeks ago.  His base rate is $80 + shipping both ways.  Totally reasonable IMO for high end boards but he said he will work on anything.

 

https://youtube.com/@northwestrepair

[Hassie]

I have a Gygabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC graphics card I bought in october 2020, I used to play games  a lot on my gaming pc but after i left home for college, I only get to play on weekends. This january I was away for a month and when I got home I played games on my PC just fine, the next day I woke up to find my pc not beign able to boot. I could hear a clicking sound from my PSU, only after I disconnected the power conectors from my GPU could I get my pc to boot. I took the gpu to the store where i bought it and they said it was burned, I was able to claim the warranty and they fixed my gpu. I dont think they gave me a new unit, they just fixed what ever was broken but I am not sure whether I was given a new unit. Anyway, fast forward a few months and I find my self in the exact same position, Used the PC after about a month of non use and the GPU burned on the next day morning. I have 2 months left on the warranty I maybe able to claim it. I am not sure what is causing this to happen. Is it because I didn't use it for  a month? I heard that not using electronic devices can lead them to burn when turned on? Could It be my PSU, it is a 750 W gold one, or could It just be a problem with a graphics card and when they fixed it the first time they didn't properly remove the cause for the issue? I can only claim the warranty one more time and I can't afford another GPU I can't be in this situation again, what can I do?

[WallacEngineering]

20 minutes ago, Hassie said:

I have a Gygabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC graphics card I bought in october 2020...

 

I would 100% RMA again, and be sure to tell them that you have already RMA-ed due to the same issue once before and you would like a different GPU if possible. Its not like GPUs are cheap, make sure you actually get what you paid for, I would be raising hell over something like this.

[Atlooos]

Well, last week my Vega 56 died on me. I wasnt even doing anything, just watching YouTube on the other monitor while browsing for some games to buy.
It blackscreened on me, so I restarted it thinking it was just a bug. After 10mins it happened again, blackscreen but still audio so I got worried..
I unplugged the GPU and put it back into the system hoping that would fix but it blackscreened again after 30sec into windows.
After that it didnt post anything at all anymore, I kept hearing the windows 11 start up sound in my headphones when trying to restart but it never posted again.
I bought a new mainboard in hopes that it might just be a broken PCIE slot or something, but no the card was dead.
SO I ordered a new GPU, a RX 6700XT (which I will return because they dont have the bundle and buy back somewhere else just to get the Starfield bundle haha) which DID not work on my OLD motherboard. It didnt post like the Vega 56, at that point I thought that my PSU might be dead.
I put it in the new mainboard where the Vega 56 also didnt work on, and it worked. So it seemed like that my old mainboard and my Vega 56 died at the same time?

Well at least now everything is working again and im getting way more performance than before..