I saw the Graphics Card Necromancy - EVGA 980 Ti Classified and figure this is the right place to ask for inspiration (but as a forum newbie, please (please?) correct me). I was surfing the internet and found an EVGA GTX 980Ti for $50. The seller was up front that it was definitely not working, and looking for something to do during lockdown, I figured there would be less time consuming ways to spend my money so I bought it.
I received the card, inspected it for obvious damage and finding no tell tale scorch marks or bruises, (other than a burn on the PCIE 12Volt rail) I took the chance at trying the card in my Razer core eGPU casing to see what success I might have (and later my regular desktop as a differential diagnostic that had identical results). To my delight, the card LED's lit up, the fan spins at a regular idle and it is detected by my operating systems (2 windows 10 installations and ubuntu linux). Once the drivers are downloaded and installed, windows throws an error 43 cannot start device, and the LED's switch off. Because this in my Razer core, I can connect/disconnect the thunderbolt cable to the same result every time under multiple versions of the Nvidia driver with the same result.
BUT, interestingly, when I plug the thunderbolt connection in, the card powers on, and there is a 3 second window where there is a brief "blip" of an output on the HDMI port (enough to wake the display) and then the card errors out again)
GPUz tells an interesting story. The card is detected, but the core frequency and memory are unknown.
If I uninstall the driver (so that it doesn't stop the device, and use the generic windows basic display adaptor) the LED stays on, GPUz can see a core frequency but still no memory.
So the logical conclusion is - no power to the memory - right?
Now Youtube is full of videos explaining the dozens of cards that have had inductors and MOSFETS fail on the memory power delivery side, so I open up the card, and inspect these components more closely.
Still no visible damage, a muti-meter probe shows 12 Volts before the MOSFETS, and 1.5 Volts after the inductors. And 1.5 across the capacitors interspaced between the memory chips.
I figure that there must be a bad connection or dust somewhere I cannot see. Having had success before resurrecting xbox 360's with a red ring of death by reflowing the solder, I clean the board with Isopropyl alcohol and (once dry) retry the board. no change
I bake the board at 150 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. but still no change. I'm looking for suggestions on what to try next. It seems like there is a damaged connection somewhere that is telling the board that there is a problem, and thats why windows is throwing the error 43, but other than systematically replacing every component on the board (working from the 12V PCE input) I can't see the answer....
Thoughts?
I received the card, inspected it for obvious damage and finding no tell tale scorch marks or bruises, (other than a burn on the PCIE 12Volt rail) I took the chance at trying the card in my Razer core eGPU casing to see what success I might have (and later my regular desktop as a differential diagnostic that had identical results). To my delight, the card LED's lit up, the fan spins at a regular idle and it is detected by my operating systems (2 windows 10 installations and ubuntu linux). Once the drivers are downloaded and installed, windows throws an error 43 cannot start device, and the LED's switch off. Because this in my Razer core, I can connect/disconnect the thunderbolt cable to the same result every time under multiple versions of the Nvidia driver with the same result.
BUT, interestingly, when I plug the thunderbolt connection in, the card powers on, and there is a 3 second window where there is a brief "blip" of an output on the HDMI port (enough to wake the display) and then the card errors out again)
GPUz tells an interesting story. The card is detected, but the core frequency and memory are unknown.
If I uninstall the driver (so that it doesn't stop the device, and use the generic windows basic display adaptor) the LED stays on, GPUz can see a core frequency but still no memory.
So the logical conclusion is - no power to the memory - right?
Now Youtube is full of videos explaining the dozens of cards that have had inductors and MOSFETS fail on the memory power delivery side, so I open up the card, and inspect these components more closely.
Still no visible damage, a muti-meter probe shows 12 Volts before the MOSFETS, and 1.5 Volts after the inductors. And 1.5 across the capacitors interspaced between the memory chips.
I figure that there must be a bad connection or dust somewhere I cannot see. Having had success before resurrecting xbox 360's with a red ring of death by reflowing the solder, I clean the board with Isopropyl alcohol and (once dry) retry the board. no change
I bake the board at 150 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. but still no change. I'm looking for suggestions on what to try next. It seems like there is a damaged connection somewhere that is telling the board that there is a problem, and thats why windows is throwing the error 43, but other than systematically replacing every component on the board (working from the 12V PCE input) I can't see the answer....
Thoughts?
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