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GPU seems dead - Black screen

machine101

machine101

machine101

Associate
Joined
14 Mar 2019
Posts
22
Hello,

a couple of days ago I had a situation with my graphics card where in the middle of the game it gave some artefacts and restarted the computer. There was no image on screen after restart, although the computer seemed to boot correctly. Somehow after a couple of minutes a restart worked and it was giving video again. Cleaned it afterwards and it seemed to work fine.

Today after a couple of hours gaming, same artefacts and shutdown, but this time no luck - it won't display the image on screen. The GPU had 3 fans, one of them is not spinning. The computer seems to boot fine otherwise.

Tried HDMI port (instead of current DVI) and still no signal. I am guessing it died from heat. Are there any tricks to try to bring it back to life? It was an old R9 280X.
 
Question... will it run OK off the iGPU?

And out of interest, what's the Graphics card?

PS. Sorry just noticed that you already said what the card was. I'll put it down to my age:D
 
No problems. Yes, the image is shown when the monitor is plugged into the iGPU, but only when the GPU is removed. If the GPU is still in the case, it's blacks screen off of both. Some fans are spinning and Windows boots fine, so it's not completely burned I guess.
 
Definitely sounds like the card to me.

Problem for you will be buying something half decent at a sensible price.

Good luck.

PS. Though ultimate test for the card would be obviously to try it in another system. Not always an option for folks.
 
This was actually in my bro's PC, so I could try the GPU in my PC, but since 1 of 3 fans isn't spinning and the PC without it works fine I didn't even bother to try in the other PC.

Strange that it "came back to life" the first time after a while. The second time I wasn't so lucky. Is this situation repairable, or should it be just declared dead?
 
machine101 said:
This was actually in my bro's PC, so I could try the GPU in my PC, but since 1 of 3 fans isn't spinning and the PC without it works fine I didn't even bother to try in the other PC.

Strange that it "came back to life" the first time after a while. The second time I wasn't so lucky. Is this situation repairable, or should it be just declared dead?
Click to expand...

Hard to say really! Doubtful. Unless it's something as simple as dirty contacts or damaged PCIe socket. More likely I suspect is that some component on the GPU PCB was starting to "let go" and it just failed completely in the end.

As the card is getting on a bit. I would just bite the bullet and sort a replacement. Easy for me to say, as it's not my money.

Unless anyone else has any suggestions.
 
Enable Remote Desktop on the PC then boot up with the card installed and login to check GPU-Z. If the card is showing up in GPU-Z, read up on BIOS modding the card and make a BIOS with conservative clocks etc and flash it via the Remote Desktop login. Hopefully it'll come back to life and you can then tweak the BIOS to get it working decently without issues.
 
Yes, the card was pretty old, and it wasn't really maintained very well. I cleaned it again afterwards, without repasting, and that didn't help.

Didn't really test the fan, although I was planning to look into that if I can get the image on screen.

I could try the Remote Desktop solution, but that seems like a lot of work for a long shot. I look into it when I get more time.

Thanks for the suggestions!
 
@machine101 there could also be a decent chance of fixing it by uninstalling the AMD Radeon drivers then booting with the card installed again and it'll boot into Windows without issues and will even continue to work when you reinstall the Radeon drivers.
 
str said:
@machine101 there could also be a decent chance of fixing it by uninstalling the AMD Radeon drivers then booting with the card installed again and it'll boot into Windows without issues and will even continue to work when you reinstall the Radeon drivers.
Click to expand...
Tried it, sadly it didn't work.

Tried it in another PC, same thing. Oh well.
 
With one fan broken and it working for a while, even if a very short while i'm wondering if the memory is overheating.

Can you underclock the memory? if you have a house fan can you use it to blow cool air over the GPU as a test?
 
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