What killed my GPU?

Stale Sweetroll · July 2, 2016

I posted earlier today about some PC issues and discovered it was due to my GPU. The problem was that it crashed while playing Subnautica and the screen was black while sound was still there. Windows failed to boot properly with the 980 Ti installed, and the only thing that gave me my display back and made windows boot up was removing it and putting an old 5770 in its place. Now that I know it was the GPU, I'm really concerned about -why- this happened. Make no mistake, the issue isn't something to be 'fixed'. I'm going through the RMA process with EVGA. I just want to get some insight as to what may have happened so I might prevent this in the future.

There were no signs. I monitor GPU temps like a hawk and never let it go above 80C. I had a +200 Core Clock and +300 Mem clock OC in Afterburner. Core Voltage was pushed to 80 mV OC and power limit was 110%. No artifacting, no driver crashes outside of a single older game, so I assumed it was that game. Even so, the crashes weren't frequent at all. As far as I could tell, the card had no issues whatsoever until in the blink of an eye, it was apparently fried. PSU is fine and currently still in use, so surely it's not that, right?

Was this just a freak accident? A fluke, faulty hardware that was destined to burn out at this point in time? Or was there something I could have done to prevent it? I know many probably can't answer these questions, but if you have some insight from knowledge and experience with GPU deaths, I would really like some logical explanations. I'm terrified of overclocking my replacement card when it gets here and equally terrified of ever launching Subnautica again.

zootcake · July 2, 2016

i wouldn't be scared to play subnautica or oc. could just be the card crapped out.

Cracklingice · July 2, 2016

Only GPU death I've experienced made weird colored ascii all over the screen.

AresKrieger · July 2, 2016

All electronics are doomed to fail, yours just did it sooner than some others, unless there was a power surge, it happened by chance this early. (this assumed everything else is fine in your system)

Stale Sweetroll · July 2, 2016

16 minutes ago, zootcake said:

i wouldn't be scared to play subnautica or oc. could just be the card crapped out.

11 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

All electronics are doomed to fail, yours just did it sooner than some others, unless there was a power surge, it happened by chance this early. (this assumed everything else is fine in your system)

That's what I'm hoping, is that it was just the card's time, even though it was only a year old. It always ran hotter than it should for an ACX 2.0 cooler, so maybe there was always something wrong with it.

My surge protector is about a year old and decent but not some $100 heavy duty thing. The 'protected' light is still on, so I'm pretty sure it should be absorbing any power surges. I'm thinking I would have noticed trouble in some of the other PC components if that were the case though, right?

Anyway, hopefully you guys are right on the money and it was just a faulty GPU that I could have done nothing about.