The weirdest gpu issue

[ukbilleh]

Ok bear with me. This isn't from my machine. I sell quite a bit of used hardware and generally deliver it personally. Occasionally I also trade items if they are financially in my favour.

Anyway...

I arrive at guys house ready to trade an EVGA 650GQ PSU for a PNY 1050ti. He states that he's just purchased a GTX 1660ti XS OC Ventus as he believes his Corsair VS550 PSU is causing his 1660ti to not output any display or be recognised by his board. There is no issue with the PNY 1050ti when installed on the board (note: it has no ext 6/8 pin power connectors and just uses the 16x PCIe slot).

Before I go on I should probably list his and my hardware which is present.

i5-8400
Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR4 2666Mhz (2x 8GB)
Gigabyte B360M H MATX Motherboard
PNY 1050ti 4GB
MSI 1660ti Ventus 6GB XS OC
(mine) EVGA 650GQ 650w PSU 80+ Gold
Corsair VS550 550w PSU 80+ (not bronze, silver or gold)

I think his logic is fairly sound and he's used a process of elimination to figure out the VS550 is most likely at fault by failing to provide enough power (or is faulty) for the GPU and thus it isn't detected by the motherboard at boot and thus no display.

We switch out the VS550 to the EVGA 650GQ, install the 1660ti and still no display. The motherboard however is now displaying via the IGFX through HDMI whilst the 1660 is installed. Weirdly (no matter which PSU is used) no GPU is detected as being installed on the board.

(I should say at this stage the board BIOS was up to date)

BIOS reset...

Still nothing...

Over the course of an hour various BIOS options are switched on and off including turning off all additional power settings, forcing output to the PCIe slot, disabling IGFX, varying the Gen tech for the PCIe slot - everything in every section is tried. Still no display.

The board, gpu, psu, ram, cpu etc are removed from the case and placed on a box - still no display.

Then in a moment of madness we connect both PSUs. The EVGA 650GQ remains connected to the board 24pin + 8pin and the VS550 is connected solely to the GPU 8pin and pins are bridged in the 24pin connector to power it on manually. The VS550 is powered on first and the board is powered on second.

Display!!

Display is now output from the 1660ti and it is recognised by the board in the 'plugged in devices' section. Returning back to a single PSU configuration gives no display output. Switching back to a dual PSU configuration gives display output. The process is repeatable.

I've never seen anything like this before. What is going on as I'm at a complete loss?

Some theories:
a) There is a fault with the board.
b) Power isn't being supplied to the GPU quick enough when the board is powered on and thus there is no output display.
c) The use of the 1050ti with no additonal power connectors has damaged the PCIe x16 slot.
d) The GPU requires some sort of BIOS update.
e) The board requires some sort of BIOS update.

Any light on this would be much appreciated as I'm curious to understand what is going on/wrong.

Many thanks

 

[Danny75]

If you can get the EVGA 650BQ to establish a solid connection with the board and GPU, you might find that from then on it's fine. Press firmly on the ATX cables every few seconds while it's powered, and you might get a display. Doesn't matter if the ATX connector is firmly plugged in (although of course this should be the case always), just try the cable pressing anyway.

It could be a board/board slot issue or VS550 issue (or both). Had a board recently that wouldn't provide display but got it working. Then it really wouldn't like whenever I swapped the PSU. I'd have to press on the ATX cables a bunch of times. After that, it would display and restart fine and kept doing so for a week while we waited for new replacement PSU to arrive. New PSU arrived, had to do cable pressing thing again to establish a solid connection, powered on and since then it's been fine according to the owner.

I can't say why really. Swapping motherboard battery did help a bit at first, too. It's almost like the board had become accustomed to the faulty PSU's voltages/ripple or something (or partly degraded with it), and found it hard to establish connection with a different PSU. Until it did.

 

[WantoN]

I’d be trying a different Mobo, and an alternate gpu of the same type. My opinion is the Mobo.

Strangest issue I’ve ever heard of though.

 

[Ezyryder]

nevermind

 

[ukbilleh]

Thanks for the replies all. The board and the old 1050ti work perfectly with either power supply. We were able to disassemble them and build them back up and each time the board would post and display through the gpu fine. The 650GQ was previously my PSU powering a 7700k + 2080ti and never once had an issue so I was certain the PSU couldn't be at fault.

We were both swaying towards the board being the issue towards the end of the night.

The guy just messaged me back today this:

I think the 1660 is at fault. I put the 1660 on another motherboard and the 650GQ PSU and same result again, no display. However, if I use the VS550 PSU to solo power the 1660 everything works fine.

So it's looking like there is some bizarre issue with the 1660 not drawing enough current when powered on and thus it isn't detected by the motherboard and cannot output any display.

I'll update with the final outcome as I think the guy is returning it today.

 

[ukbilleh]

Well looks like it was sorted in the end. The guy headed back to the shop and persisted that they test the 1660 in front of him. They declined (even though they have a test bench) and after some 'encouragement' replaced the card. They guy has just tested it and no issues. So looks like it was the card after all...

Happy ending (oi cheeky...)