- Sep 28, 2001
- 8,464
- 155
- 106
Ok, try to make this short.
I am not a newbie when it comes to PCs. My system however is old.
Asus Z87-Pro, EVGA 970 SC, Toughpower 800W PSU, 16GB Ram, Win10 x64.
The PC worked for years without issues, but in the last few days I noticed there is a problem with sometimes the PC not coming up from a cold start in the morning. What happens is that the screen stays black, and the bright VGA LED near the PCIE slot on the board lights up.
After a while, for (still) unknown reasons, after many switches on/off, cold and warm starts, the PC might finally boot. It can also sporadically happen that the PC boots, but the system then only sees the GTX 970 as some weird VGA card w/ error 43, with GPU Z unable to get any information, like memory, sensors etc. EXCEPT the bios information that it's a GTX 970. Then I boot again, and the system finally recognizes the GPU and the system works entirely normal.
* What I already did:
Of course, re-seating the card, 5x+ times. Also tried on other slot.
Today I opened the card entirely and did a new thermal paste job as well, just out of boredom. (Very simple on those old EVGA cards)
Right now, after messing with it for hours today and several attempts to boot, now I am working in Windows as usual and everything is ok, except there is always a chance that the system won't recognize the card again at the next boot.
"Common sense" of course tells me it's the GPU slowing going, but I still can't explain the behaviour that ultimately after several attempts to boot, PC on/off etc. it at some point works. If the GPU would be shot, well logic says it would be shot and not work after some time.
Any idea? Maybe weak soldering spots on the GPU? Hair-line fractures or something?
Ty!
I am not a newbie when it comes to PCs. My system however is old.
Asus Z87-Pro, EVGA 970 SC, Toughpower 800W PSU, 16GB Ram, Win10 x64.
The PC worked for years without issues, but in the last few days I noticed there is a problem with sometimes the PC not coming up from a cold start in the morning. What happens is that the screen stays black, and the bright VGA LED near the PCIE slot on the board lights up.
After a while, for (still) unknown reasons, after many switches on/off, cold and warm starts, the PC might finally boot. It can also sporadically happen that the PC boots, but the system then only sees the GTX 970 as some weird VGA card w/ error 43, with GPU Z unable to get any information, like memory, sensors etc. EXCEPT the bios information that it's a GTX 970. Then I boot again, and the system finally recognizes the GPU and the system works entirely normal.
* What I already did:
Of course, re-seating the card, 5x+ times. Also tried on other slot.
Today I opened the card entirely and did a new thermal paste job as well, just out of boredom. (Very simple on those old EVGA cards)
Right now, after messing with it for hours today and several attempts to boot, now I am working in Windows as usual and everything is ok, except there is always a chance that the system won't recognize the card again at the next boot.
"Common sense" of course tells me it's the GPU slowing going, but I still can't explain the behaviour that ultimately after several attempts to boot, PC on/off etc. it at some point works. If the GPU would be shot, well logic says it would be shot and not work after some time.
Any idea? Maybe weak soldering spots on the GPU? Hair-line fractures or something?
Ty!