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

 

[Graham Lonnon]

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

 

[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.

 

[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.