STRIX GTX970 Dead … But is it REALLY Dead?

[Graham Lonnon]

Afternoon Chaps,


A friend’s PC has been sitting unpowered for a few months. He switched it on, installed a new game from Steam and jumped straight in with Ultra settings. It lasted about 10 minutes before the whole system lost power (no BSOD or shut-down processes just literally “pew” and off).

When trying to power the machine back up, system lights come on for a split second and then cut out. Fault finding has shown the GPU to be the culprit. I have confirmed his system runs with other GPUs installed and that other systems do NOT run with his GPU installed. The other systems behave in the exact same way, they try to power on, then immediately cut out after a split second.

From the above I am guessing that heat or power has killed something on the GPU which is tripping either the MB or PSUs built in surge / short protection. The card is out of warrantee by 6 months.

My question to gods would be “just how dead is this thing?”. I have replaced his card with a new one and didn’t want to just bin the old one without trying to learn something from it. I have inspected the card surface to see if anything was visibly fried but I can’t see anything with the naked eye. The 8-power connector seems in good order as well.

I wanted to learn more about possible issues and fixes when it comes to diagnosing faults and would appreciate any links or guides that may be able to help me.

I have taken a photo of the card and can post if needed.

Thanks for reading

Graham

 

[humbug]

If the system isn't powering on with it installed i would say it has a short on it, i wouldn't mess about with it too much, if the PSU fails to detect the short and allows it to power up it could fry the whole system.

 

[Danny75]

Welcome to the forum, Graham.

Sometimes the underside of the PCB will show some damage when the top side does not. Other times you won't see any damage at all.

Windows 10 can sometimes force-update graphics drivers right in the middle of a game. If the PC was unpowered for months, it's very likely the update would have taken place within minutes. While there's not abundant evidence of this bricking (some, not all) cards, there is a little suggestive evidence out there. Playing it safe in such scenarios, best to manually update graphics driver before playing a game when the PC has been off for months.

And what Humbug says is correct. When one of my cards died in my PC, I tested it in my brother's PC (cheap power supply). It failed to detect an issue, and continued, and within seconds the card was smoking.

 

[james.miller]

Get the cooler off and take some photos

 

[humbug]

Good idea ^^^

To expand a little, sometimes a PC can be running fine, you power it down, the next time you power it up its dead.
When you power a system on sometimes you get a short surge of power, If a piece of hardware has a dying weak component on it that could be what tips it over the edge, so powering on a system, in fact more often than not is what puts the final nail in the coffin of something that's on its last legs.

 

[Graham Lonnon]

Thank you for all the information and replies. I have taken the back-plate off the card and taken some pictures.

 

[varkanoid]

Dont know whether its meant to be like that but there are some contacts missing from the PCIE ?
There also seems to be some discolouring where the short PCIE stub is particularly on the back the long thin silver component with green in the middle ?

 

[humbug]

They don't actually show up at my end so i've take them images out from the URL and hosted them myself so others can see.

I can't see anything, the short PCIe pin is normal.

 

[Graham Lonnon]

Thank you humbug, i had no idea how to add picture properly.

I do have a multi-meter but no idea what i am doing with it. I am guessing i can test certain reactions from the board and then try and eliminate all those hat are behaving as expected in some way.

As always, thank you for your support.

 

[humbug]

It wont work when the image is inside a Java container, like it is on flicker, i use imgur, upload the image and right click on it > View Image and copy the URL from the browser into the forum image container.

Just a raw image URL like this.

https://i.imgur.com/rOjJqLy.jpg

I'm not going to comment on your multimeter adventures, wouldn't want to be responsible for you electrocuting yourself

 

[Flake87]

Having suffered similar might I suggest you clean the heatsink & fan to make sure it can efficiently cool? Even when cards are dead, they are worth selling on a certain auction site - they might not fetch much, but its better than nothing.

 

[Van_Dammesque]

Try the card in a different system?

Also this time of year the radiators of the house turn on, is the PC near a radiator?

 

[Graham Lonnon]

Cheers for the replies everyone. The card trips the PSU Safety cut-out in different rigs and those rigs work fine with other cards so it's definitely the card.

I have looked over the board with a magnifying glass and i cant see any obvious damaged components. I think i am going to chuck it in the oven and take my chances, either that or start a new hobby and buy some decent magnification, soldering irons and a test rig

Thanks again everyone.