Help with broken 980Ti, please

[strumpusplunket]

I bought a 980Ti from the MM here in February 2017, and was using it quite happily until I took it out of my system and sold it a couple of weeks ago.

The buyer contacted me to say the card was broken, causing PC restarts and showing screen corruption. I got it back, tested it in my PC and sure enough, it's karked it.

On reinstalling it, it booted into Windows fine, but after a couple of minutes (I assume when it tried to find and activate drivers) the screen went black with broken vertical blue lines running down it and the PC restarted. I then couldn't get back into Windows and got caught in a boot loop. On putting my 1080Ti back in there I got the BIOS recovery screen, exited and then the PC then booted as normal.

This is the same behaviour from the 980Ti that the buyer reported happening in two PCs, so there's definitely something wrong with the card itself.

I've never had this happen with a card before and I'm a bit embarrassed to have posted someone a card that doesn't work, especially over Christmas. I'd appreciate any advice from anyone with more experience with graphics card faults on this.

What could have caused it? There are no signs of damage or mishandling, there's plenty of packing foam in the box and I shipped it with the card's original box well-wrapped in bubble wrap.

Things to note:
1. I put it on my bare desk to take photos prior to listing on the MM - it's fairly clean but I guess there's some possibility of particulate contamination?
2. I notice when I opened it up again that I put it in a conductive grid bag rather than the more usual silver type of anti-static bag it came in. I can't remember where this bag came from - I must have grabbed the wrong one from my collection of component bags. Does this type of bag potentially transmit ESD from hands to the bag contents? Could this explain it?
3. When I got my UW monitor I overclocked the card a bit. Nothing too aggressive, and using Afterburner which I assume is perfectly safe(?). I took it slowly in increasing the core and mem clocks. I did get a few driver crashes before I found a clock that worked, but I played through the whole of Rise of the Tomb Raider on these settings with no crashes, and temps topping out in the high 60s celsius with a custom fan curve, so I would have thought that was all okay?

And, perhaps most importantly - anything I might try to get it working again? I recall there's an "oven trick" with dead graphics cards, but I don't know what kinds of faults this can potentially cure.

 

[strumpusplunket]

The grid type bag you describe sounds typical of the anti static bags that some GPUs come in to me.

Overclocking the GPU with AB shouldn't damage it, though I guess it could finish off a card that was on its last legs a bit quicker if you are upping the voltage.

If it were mine, I would probably take the cooler off and examine both sides the pcb and the underside of the cooler carefully to see if I could spot anything potentially causing a short, then give it a good clean up with alcohol or similar. Probably best to keep your expectations low though.

I don't think you have really done anything wrong in the handling or packaging of it, maybe its just "one of those things". Your meant to use an antistatic band when handling computer components, but I don't know anyone who actually does that lol. It could equally have been the buyer who killed it when he handled it (Not suggesting he mistreated it, just in handling it normally)

I heard of some people having success with the oven thing, but from memory it tends to be a medium term fix if it does work and the cards die again soon. It would probably be more ethical to sell it as spares or repair as it is, than to bodge it working again with the oven trick then flog it as working.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, guess I'll have to put it down to one of those things. I have some days off next week so I will have a look at the card without the cooler to see if I can see anything that might be problematic, but yeah I'm not going to get my hopes up.

I do usually at least ground myself before handling components, but as this card has a backplate and fan set-up that pretty much completely covers the card I was maybe a bit less careful as I thought the only part of the card I could potentially damage with ESD would be the PCI-E contacts, which I wasn't touching anyway.

I wouldn't sell this thing now it's been confirmed as faulty, but I was thinking I could put it in one of my kid's PCs if I could somehow resurrect it.

 

[strumpusplunket]

Another thing to check is that the original bios is on the gpu, the buyer may have flashed it trying to get a better overclock. Does it have dual bios switch? Also you can use onboard CPU graphics as primary, 0r if you have x2 pcie slots use your pcie 1 slot for your 1080ti, and 2nd slot for 980ti.

Then using gpu-z access the 980ti and read the bios info.

How long did the buyer have the card before reporting it broken?

Well, it was a couple of days I think, but I know it wasn't intended for his own PC so it does fit that it would take a day or two to install. This is an established forum member with good trust, so I'm not inclined to be overly suspicious, but I guess I could have a look.

 

[strumpusplunket]

Is it definitely the card you sent him? Sorry haven't doubled checked whether this was mentioned.

No, it wasn't mentioned. But yeah, I always photograph and check serial numbers whenever I sell anything.

 

[strumpusplunket]

Just noticed you said it was a trusted member on here. Apologies if he read my post... No offence meant.

Ha, yeah I'm sure it's okay. Obviously it just makes sense to check these things as a matter of routine whoever it is. I just wanted to make clear that I'm in no way aiming suspicions at this guy for the card not working. I'm sure he was (almost ) as ticked off as I was that it didn't work.

 

[strumpusplunket]

I sold a motherboard and RAM on the MM and the buyer returned both as they were faulty. They had both been working fine for me for some time.

It's just one of those risks you take when selling second hand goods, the posting and handling process has its risks. It could have happened at your end or his, who knows.

At the end of the day, you've refunded the buyer and that's why the MM is a million miles better than eBay.

P.S. good luck getting it fixed.

Yeah, this is pretty much exactly my thinking.

I started the thread with a very small hope that there'd be something I could try to resurrect the card or someone would point out something I'd done that might have caused the fault so I could lessen the chances of this happening in the future.

One thing I forgot to ask regarding the card BIOS: as the Strix comes with a factory overclock, I guess it's possible it might just no longer want to work at higher clocks, so would it be possible/worthwhile to flash it with a standard 980Ti BIOS? If so, is there any particular BIOS I should look for?

 

[strumpusplunket]

You could try underlocking it with afterburner to see if that helps first before flashing a bios

I would do this, but I can't get it to install nvidia drivers. It seems to work in terms of booting into Windows initially with the default MS display drivers but it doesn't last long. I can't fire up any apps that recognise it properly.

Ive used the oven trick on my 8800gtx ages ago. It worked a treat and the card carried on working for a couple of years after this.

Take off all the plastics and cooler that you can. Roll up some tin foil and balance the cards pcb on several of them on a tray. Say 4, one in each corner. Put the card in a preheated oven at 190c for 10 minutes.

This will hopefully result in any micro fissures in the solder being repaired. Refix everthing to the pcb making sure you use paste on the chip and see if it works.

You have nothing to lose. You can still sell it on as spares and repairs.

Make sure you put the card in the oven so that capacitors and chips are pointing upwards... You don't want bits dropping off while it bakes

Yeah, I'm thinking if I can't get it working with a lower-clocked, lower-power BIOS I will have nothing to lose by at least trying the oven fix. Thanks for the instructions! (Never done this fix before)

 

[strumpusplunket]

How old is the card? think there is something in the air my 3 year old 980ti died last week, it started burning out can't see where from as it's the hybrid version, but yeah it stinks lol

Just over three years since the original purchase. Wonder if these higher end cards just don't have the lifespan of some earlier ones, then?

 

[strumpusplunket]

An updated request for help here:

I got the card out again last week and tried to put it in my kid's PC as he has a 2200G with iGPU. Except - of course - it won't fit in his micro-ATX case!

I guess the only option if I want to try flashing it with a lower-clocked BIOS is to stick it as a secondary card in my PC. But I've never done this before and I have a few questions:

• How do I make sure the PC boots up using my 1080Ti as the primary display card? Is there some BIOS option for this?
• I'm assuming that then it won't matter if the 980Ti isn't working properly as it won't need to drive a display? Will the system just not use it unless I tell it to?
• When I come to use nvflash to flash the 980Ti's BIOS, how can I make sure I don't flash my 1080Ti by mistake? Is this easy to do?

 

[strumpusplunket]

Plug the monitor into it, and plug nothing into the 980ti

Oh! Simple as that?

Is it straightforward to read and flash the BIOS of the correct card with GPU-Z and nvflash? I have this (possibly irrational) fear of bricking my 1080Ti by flashing it by mistake!

 

[strumpusplunket]

Pull the 1080ti out of the machine and use the onboard graphics (plug HDMI into the motherboard HDMI slot).

I don't have onboard graphics on my pc. My son's does, but that's the one I can't fit the card in.