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New PSU = GTX 780 Ti Dead

Associate
Joined
30 Nov 2008
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1,264
Good morning all,

As the title suggests, I purchased a new Seasonic Focus Plus 550w PSU last week - my 8 y/o Corsair unit was buzzing horribly so decided it was time for a change - rest of the PC is in my sig.

I also moved everything over into a new case at the same time - all went without issue but when it was time to power up the PC, it started for a second then turned straight off again.

Thought it was a bit weird so I unplugged the power cable, cycled power & plugged it back in - PC booted fine this time but there was nothing on the display, checked inside & the fans on my GPU weren't spinning...

Managed to try the 780 in another system this morning & it's doing the same thing, so it looks like the card is dead :(

I guess I'm after some reassurance more than anything; do you think I've "killed" the card by using too small a PSU or is it just bad luck? I did a lot of reading around & seems like the power draw on the 780 Ti's is generally less than claimed/ recommended by Nvidia, so I thought a 550w would do the trick - now I'm not so sure...

The second question is where do I go from here? Leaning towards a used 980 Ti at the moment - budget is £300 max really.

Cheers!
 
Soldato
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I guess I'm after some reassurance more than anything; do you think I've "killed" the card by using too small a PSU or is it just bad luck? I did a lot of reading around & seems like the power draw on the 780 Ti's is generally less than claimed/ recommended by Nvidia, so I thought a 550w would do the trick - now I'm not so sure
I would think the max power draw of a graphics card is only relevant to when it's being fully loaded by a 3D program, so I doubt that's your issue.
 
Associate
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I also doubt that PSU is too small. 550w should be enough for that card to boot the system.

I'd be concerned that the PSU, since it is new, has a manufacturing fault that killed the GPU, I'd likely want to plug something cheap into it first before a £300 second hand GPU without warranty.

That said, the PSU is single rail so you'd imagine if something was wrong with the power delivery that it would affect all components on the system - I don't know enough about PSU internals to know if that's a correct conclusion though.

As for where to go, I think you're on the right track if absolute performance for money is your main concern, second hand 980ti for between £250 and £300.
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Jan 2009
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6,563
£300 is used 1070 money which I would personally take over a 980ti for likely better driver support, lower power consumption and more memory.

Buy a cheap psu tester before you plug another card in though.
 
Last edited:
Associate
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Update:

I RMA'd my 780 Ti to Gigabyte, even though it's out of warranty by over a year - they agreed to take a look for me.

They've just emailed to advise that the card is completely dead, so they'll be replacing it with a GTX 970... pretty blown away to be honest! I really wasn't expecting anything, let alone a replacement card free of charge - fantastic support!!

I've not had any experience with the 9XX series, read many articles regarding gimped memory on the 970's though - should it be about in-line with a 780 Ti performance-wise?
 
Associate
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10 Jan 2006
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1,331
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Scotland
Next week on OcUK: "Blew up my PSU and took out my 980Ti SLI". :p

Actually while typing that I realised earlier I read it as "980 SLi", if those Ti's are clocked don't they pull 300w a piece. :o
 
Caporegime
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Update:

I RMA'd my 780 Ti to Gigabyte, even though it's out of warranty by over a year - they agreed to take a look for me.

They've just emailed to advise that the card is completely dead, so they'll be replacing it with a GTX 970... pretty blown away to be honest! I really wasn't expecting anything, let alone a replacement card free of charge - fantastic support!!

I've not had any experience with the 9XX series, read many articles regarding gimped memory on the 970's though - should it be about in-line with a 780 Ti performance-wise?

That was good of them, the 970 is a good substitute for the 780TI, its faster for a start.
 
Associate
OP
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Cheers for the replies guys, it's as I thought really - I'm very happy with the result & Gigabytes support.

Given the current GPU prices, it looks like this 970 is going to be my card for the foreseeable future!
 
Associate
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29 Jul 2013
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Sheffield
It's a good thing SLI support is so poor. If it actually worked that would be one dead PSU. :p
I honestly don't know how it hasn't blown up, I've just got myself a 850w now but was generally running twin 980tis with a 550w psu with no overclock and it didn't whine or get hot or anything lol.
 
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