I am trying to make this short. My aim is to determine whether the defect could be weak soldering spots on my GPU (GTX 970), or defective components on the GPU. (Caps, chips etc.)
I already did lots of troubleshooting and can relatively certainly exclude PSU, board, so the problem is is with the GPU. This is a ca. 3+ years old EVGA GTX 970.
Since two weeks or so, the GPU is often not seen already in the BIOS. The board shows the red VGA light, indicating a problem with the GPU. (Internal GPU no problem). The board doesn't boot and is "freezing" VERY early during POST with the VGA light on.
Approx. each 10-20 tries to turn on the PC, the GPU is suddenly recognized.
I can then boot, and the system works without a problem. I can even game and do whatever.
Similar to needing 15 tries to switch on the PC until the card is seen, I can also disable/enable the GPU from the running system (Windows 10 x64) from device manager. Most of the time, when I re-enable, the device has a problem, but after 6-8 tries it finally "gets it", and then again it works flawless.
What could explain this strange behaviour? Weak soldering spots, which I could theoretically fix with some type of ghetto-reflow, or would this more indicate a defective cap or other defective component?
What puzzles me is that the problem as it seems merely affects initialization/detection of card, and there is no flakiness WHEN it's seen and the system works. (Common sense tells me a flaky soldering spot would result in a very instable/flaky card and I shouldn't be able to play games with it for hours etc.)
(Note, this is not a software problem, the system worked without a hitch for 3+ years, the problem appeared about 2 weeks ago. System boots fine all the time with IGPU and with the problematic card removed. I troubleshooted already everything possible, like re-seating many times, using other PCIE slot etc.). Although there is a small chance it's the PSU, at this point I would say no since everything else works. I just can't 100% exclude the PSU simply because I didn't test with another GPU in the slot, just with the internal IGPU. But here too, if the PSU for some reason wouldn't supply adequate power to the card any longer (this is only speculation!), I think I would see problems during normal use, and not just with initializing the card?)
I already did lots of troubleshooting and can relatively certainly exclude PSU, board, so the problem is is with the GPU. This is a ca. 3+ years old EVGA GTX 970.
Since two weeks or so, the GPU is often not seen already in the BIOS. The board shows the red VGA light, indicating a problem with the GPU. (Internal GPU no problem). The board doesn't boot and is "freezing" VERY early during POST with the VGA light on.
Approx. each 10-20 tries to turn on the PC, the GPU is suddenly recognized.
I can then boot, and the system works without a problem. I can even game and do whatever.
Similar to needing 15 tries to switch on the PC until the card is seen, I can also disable/enable the GPU from the running system (Windows 10 x64) from device manager. Most of the time, when I re-enable, the device has a problem, but after 6-8 tries it finally "gets it", and then again it works flawless.
What could explain this strange behaviour? Weak soldering spots, which I could theoretically fix with some type of ghetto-reflow, or would this more indicate a defective cap or other defective component?
What puzzles me is that the problem as it seems merely affects initialization/detection of card, and there is no flakiness WHEN it's seen and the system works. (Common sense tells me a flaky soldering spot would result in a very instable/flaky card and I shouldn't be able to play games with it for hours etc.)
(Note, this is not a software problem, the system worked without a hitch for 3+ years, the problem appeared about 2 weeks ago. System boots fine all the time with IGPU and with the problematic card removed. I troubleshooted already everything possible, like re-seating many times, using other PCIE slot etc.). Although there is a small chance it's the PSU, at this point I would say no since everything else works. I just can't 100% exclude the PSU simply because I didn't test with another GPU in the slot, just with the internal IGPU. But here too, if the PSU for some reason wouldn't supply adequate power to the card any longer (this is only speculation!), I think I would see problems during normal use, and not just with initializing the card?)
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