**The Mysterious Case of the Faulty Graphics Card**

As we delve into the world of computer hardware, it's not uncommon to encounter issues with various components. In this particular case, our attention is drawn to the graphics card, which has been malfunctioning in a rather peculiar manner.

At first glance, the system seems to be functioning normally at idle, and the user had left it in that state for over an hour without any issues. However, when the graphics card is subjected to heavy loads, such as the Heaven Benchmark test, the system crashes, displaying a black screen. This behavior suggests that there may be a manufacturing defect or a driver issue with the graphics card.

To further investigate this issue, we've checked the software and drivers, and it appears that updating the graphics driver could help resolve the problem. We've also noticed that the M.2 storage device is installed incorrectly, which could potentially cause compatibility issues with the system. Fortunately, these issues are relatively easy to fix, and by removing the faulty card and swapping it with a different one, we may be able to identify the root cause of the problem.

The user has been using a PNY XLR8 graphics card, which is a division of Gigabyte, and we've decided to swap it out for my own Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC. This process involves removing the faulty card and replacing it with the new one, ensuring that all connections are secure and properly seated.

After swapping the cards, we've run the Heaven Benchmark test again, and we're pleased to report that our 3080 performs flawlessly. The results are consistent with what I've experienced in the past, and I'm confident that this card will provide smooth performance without any issues.

The fact that my own 3080 is functioning correctly while the user's card fails suggests that there may be a problem with the graphics card itself, rather than a driver or software issue. By swapping out the faulty card, we've been able to identify the root cause of the problem and take steps to resolve it. However, we must also consider the warranty implications and ensure that any repairs do not void the owner's guarantee.

In conclusion, this case highlights the importance of proper installation, driver updates, and regular maintenance when it comes to computer hardware. By taking the time to troubleshoot and address potential issues, we can help prevent problems like the one experienced by our user and ensure a smooth computing experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en1(fan buzzing)2(fan buzzing intensifies)3And it crashed.4Will be right back.5(fan buzzing intensely)6Yeah, I turned off MSI.7All right, so as you can see,8the monitors are now both black and then the PC.9(fan buzzing intensely)10The video you just saw is from a viewer11with a very broken gaming PC, as you could see there.12This is the system, and ultimately what happens13is that while gaming, and just abruptly,14the screens will turn black and the fans in the rig15will ramp up to what seems like full RPM,16and he won't be able to do anything else with the PC17unless he resets it and starts over,18only to have the problem happen over and over again.19So essentially what we have here is a gaming PC20that cannot play games for longer than, what?215 or 10 minutes?22That's how long the viewer says it takes for this system23to completely crap the bed,24which is what you, again, saw just now.25I don't usually show footage from viewer submissions26in these videos, just because,27if it's a PC that doesn't turn on,28what good is a video gonna do for me, right?29It doesn't help me narrow down the culprit, but here,30because he was saying that his system would be running fine31for a little while and all of a sudden cut to black screens32and the fans would ramp up,33I wanted evidence beforehand because I wanted to, (sighs)34I wanted to kind of rule out35it being something that I wasn't sure36I would be able to fix quickly here in the office.37I try to move as quickly as possible through these inquiries38so that we can get as many PCs fixed as possible,39and the thing is that we don't charge for these services,40I'm kind of at the,41I'm in a position where I can kind of handpick the ones42that I wanna fix, and this one I was hesitant about43because of the symptom, but after seeing the video,44I had a pretty good idea of what was going on,45I think something is overheating,46and if something's not overheating,47there's possibly a power delivery issue.48I think the fans that we're hearing ramp up49are coming from the graphics core.50I don't think the power supply fan would get that loud,51but there are three smaller fans in here,52and I think that's what we're hearing.53So it's possible that this RTX, what?54I think it's a 3080, might need to be replaced,55it's a newer card, it was only purchased a few months ago,56so it's not one that I wanna take apart,57I don't wanna risk voiding any warranty58or return authorization he could get with Micro Center59'cause that's where he purchased these components,60maybe we can reach out to Micro Center directly61and see if they can send us a replacement card,62if it needs to be replaced,63but I do think that the sound we're hearing64is coming from this.65So with that video in mind,66I'm going to try my best to narrow down the issue,67and we're gonna try to try to fix it,68I'm not sure if we can, but worth a shot, right? (laughs)69Stay with me.(air whooshes)70To get rid of that annoying Windows activation watermark,71head on over to VIP-scdkey,72purchase a Windows 10 Pro OEM key73for a fraction of the price of retail,74just use a secure payment method like PayPal,75enter your product key in your PC settings window76and say bye-bye to the watermark.77And be sure to use our offer code SKGS78for a sweet discount.79Hey there, my name's Greg,80and this is the Fix or Flop playlist,81I'm not gonna run through the typical spiel,82if you have a broken system,83and you live in or around Orlando, Florida,84and you want a chance to have it fixed for free85here on the channel, 'cause we charge nothing86for these services, then submit a form87linked in the video description.88Let's get straight into the troubleshooting.89I'm gonna go ahead and power this on,90and show you, guys, or attempt to show you, what happens,91it's gonna be presumably a bit difficult to replicate,92we'll try our best.93So right away, we've got the system powered on,94you can see it posted, no problem, I don't hear any issues,95no clipping fans, or anything of the sort there.96Power supply fan is spinning,97graphics card fans are all spinning,98they might have a zero stop function, no worries99if we're not under load.100All case fans are spinning, including the three up front101for the 360MM Corsair AIO.102Looks like a healthy system as is,103so, (sighs) yeah.104Let's try right away, attempting to replicate the power off105or the screen off thing that we saw.106So I'm gonna open up AIDA64 Engineer,107'cause I've already installed that108just in preparation for this here,109and I'm going to put both the GPU and the CPU,110including the FPU, cache, as well as system memory111under a sustained load,112and we're gonna see if anything happens.113Two hours later.114Fast forwarding just a bit,115and I'm only doing this116because this involves a lot of long-term testing117to try to narrow down the issue,118this is why I don't usually take these kinds of problems on119in the Fix or Flop playlist,120nonetheless, AIDA64 revealed nothing wrong121with either of the primary components we were testing here.122Well, actually three, including system memory,123temperatures all looked fine,124occasionally the CPU temp would spike to mid 80s125and then back down again to upper 70s,126which is perfectly fine for a chip like this,127and same goes for the GPU.128I noticed that the GPU memory is, eh, it's a tad toasty,129but it's again, nothing outta the ordinary.130That said, AIDA64 doesn't traditionally bestow131a very heavy load on, especially the graphics card,132so the next thing I wanna try133since we couldn't get the system to behave the way134we're looking for here,135I'm gonna try opening up the Heaven Benchmark,136which should stress just the graphics card,137and this will be a pretty heavy test.138If we don't get an issue there,139then it's likely the CPU or possibly the power supply140that is cutting out on us mid game.141I'm just gonna let this run through, again,142my suspicion is that it's the graphics card143because of the fans ramping up the way we heard,144it's a more high-pitched sound,145you get that from smaller diameter fans,146and so that's, it is getting, it's getting loud.147All of a sudden, that was pretty quick.148Temperatures are only at 60, 63, 64 C,149I expect that'll hit mid 70s150by the time the card fully warms up.151We also have the left side panel off152and this isn't really indicative of real-world performance,153so we should probably put that on.154That said, if we're getting the symptom155with the side panel(fan buzzing intensely)156It just did it.157(fan buzzing intensely)158Holy cow.159(fan buzzing intensely)160That is definitely the graphics card.161(fan buzzing intensely)162These case fans are at normal RPM,163not sure if the lab mic is picking that up,164but it's quite loud, very high pitched,165just like we saw in the video.166(fan buzzing intensely)167Yeah, it's coming from the card168and it is just pumping out air.169That is,(fan buzzing intensely)170that's really something.171What's strange though, is that the GPU temps172were not very high at all.173(fan buzzing intensely)174That's a tough one.175All right, let's reset the system and focus a bit more now176on the graphics card, 'cause I definitely think177this is where our attention needs to be.178It's strange because at idle the system seems fine,179and I've left this at idle,180actually before I started filming, for well over an hour,181no issues at all, so it only happens when the graphics card182in particular is under pretty heavy load.183Again, with the Heaven Benchmark184we got results in literally seconds,185which was pretty shocking,186the card didn't even have enough time to warm up.187So there's either some sort of manufacture defect here,188or maybe there's a driver issue,189I'm gonna go through software,190I'm even gonna go so far as to update the BIOS,191make sure that this isn't something192we could very quickly fix with a fast flash,193and then what we can also do is monitor memory temp centers194as we're a tad high, we'll check usages as well,195and see if we come across anything196that could point us in the right direction here.197I'm tempted just to swap the card out,198and I'm fairly certain that would fix the problem,199but obviously, if this being a newish card,200that's gonna set this owner back a few weeks201with regards to RMAing.202So (sighs) I'm gonna do my best here203to avoid that necessity.204Right ahead in GeForce Experience,205I noticed that we are not on the latest graphics driver.206Now, I haven't seen older drivers207cause the issue we're seeing in this 3080,208that was weird, screen just cut out,209went back to the way it was before,210there's probably something physically wrong with this.211I'm gonna update the driver anyway,212and then just run the test again to be on the safe side.213Now, while waiting for a lot of this stuff214to install or be updated,215I noticed that his M.2 is not installed correctly,216we'll take care of that right now.217So you can see the M.2 is slammed218right against the motherboard219and that's not how it's supposed to be,220actually supposed to wedge it221between this Phillip screw and this standoff here,222so he's actually got the standoff acting as the screw223that holds everything down.224So this will be a quick fix,225but just to be on the safe side,226we'll take care of this form.227I've gone ahead and removed his graphics card,228this gear is an XLR8,229which is a division of PNY, RTX 3080, 10 gig graphics card.230I went ahead and ran the Heaven Benchmark again231after updating the video drivers232and we got the exact same results.233So I'm going to swap this card for a 3080 of mine,234I think I have a 3080, I might have a 3070,235but we can just slot it in,236the drivers are pretty much the same for these cards,237and then we're gonna run the same Heaven Benchmark test238and see if we can replicate the black screen,239if we can't, then we know we've narrowed down240at least to this graphics card,241and I'm not entirely sure if I want to open this up242because it does have the warranty seals,243I know that, technically, at least in most countries244that I'm aware of, removing these stickers245shouldn't actually void the warranty,246that's not something that the manufacturer can do,247but I don't wanna ruin any chance248that the owner has here of returning this thing249to Micro Center or wherever he bought it.250So the card we're swapping with his251is my Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC,252I think is what this is.253Yes, another 10 gig card, of course,254and I'm expecting this thing to run just fine,255I've tested this in the past, I know that it works,256I also know that it runs very cool,257so we'll see what Heaven throws our way.258In she goes, this is also a beefy card like his,259and thankfully we still only need two 8-pins.260And after running for several minutes,261I think it's safe to say that, yeah,262my 3080 is fine, his is not.263So I've been in talks with the owner of the system,264I basically told him, \"Point blank, it's the graphics card,265I swapped yours with mine, mine works fine,\"266and I'm actually even tempted to put this in my own rig267just to make sure that it's the card and not something else,268although these two have the exact same TDPs, more or less,269and are in the exact same systems.270We can do that just to triple check.271But anyway, I told him that, at this point,272it being the card,273he'll probably just wanna reach back out to Micro Center274and get it swapped out,275especially if it's gonna be something that they'll cover.276I don't know what Micro Center's return policy is,277if it's not six months or longer,278which it might not be if you didn't buy a protection plan,279then what he can do is RMA it with the manufacturer,280this being an auxiliary card, he'll go through PNY.281I do have a contact at PNY and because of that,282and because of the fact283that RMAs usually take several weeks,284I told him that I can still take it apart for him285just to make sure, just to be on the safe side286that it's nothing we can't fix here,287especially if he's missing, let's say,288thermal pads for the memory chips.289I can't even get this card to stay on long enough290to even monitor temperatures.291I mean, when I connect this and I run Heaven,292it turns off in like 10 seconds,293and by then there's not enough time294for temperatures to really ramp up anyway.295So unless there's some random spike296or maybe there's an issue with power delivery,297there's really nothing else to go off of here.298So just as a last-ditch effort,299I'm gonna try taking it apart, and again,300I don't think PNY is gonna have a problem with that,301they shouldn't anyway,302because we've already proven here on video303that the card is bad.304So (sighs) let's dive into it.305I think this is the last thing we're gonna do here,306I'm not gonna replace the card because, again,307he can RMA it, it is under warranty,308and this is one of the very few 3080 I have,309holy crap, oh, this thing's hot,310it's been running for like 30 minutes now.311I'll go ahead and turn this off, but yeah.312Once we're ready to go here, how do you get out of Heaven?313Doing this inverted so it's a little awkward.314Yep.315There we go.316So let's take this apart, shall we?317We don't really need to mess around at all318with the cooler, again,319we saw that the fans were spinning320and they were ramping up just slightly,321they only had like, again, a few seconds to do so322as the GPU and the memory was heating up.323So I know that they function,324I don't really wanna, again,325dive deeper than we need to here.326I think this is just gonna be a board-related issue.327So let's get these screws out.328Ah, see here, couple more Phillip screws, and wow,329there's like no slack in these at all.330Okey-doke.331Disconnecting from this side.332So it looks like every memory chip here333was making contact with a thermal pad,334which lines up what we were seeing in AIDA64,335temperatures were not out of control.336Yeah, this is a very dense board,337there's a lot that could go wrong.338See if we can separate, there we go, back plate.339Put that aside.340Oh boy.341I'm going over here, as many SMDs as possible,342just looking for any obvious physical issues,343so far though, I don't see any.344If this was a short somewhere,345then I don't expect the card would work at all,346the fact that it does when it's under load,347maybe there's some sort of stress and some minor expansion348in some of these connections here,349and it's maybe shorting at that point,350that would explain why it doesn't happen at idle,351but when something around the GPU gets hot,352that is where I'm expecting to find an issue.353I'll be honest though,354everything looks pretty darn good so far.355Gonna give us a quick spray here of isopropyl alcohol,356clean things up around the dye,357and I guess the most we can do at this point358is just repaste everywhere that we can.359There's a lot of excess paste around this chip,360but so far big daddy GA102 here is looking really clean361and don't see any issues362with the tiny SMDs around the dye.363So yeah, I was hoping we would see something pretty obvious,364but at this point I think our best bet,365just to play it safe because I'm not that most savvy366when it comes to actual board repair,367is go through the manufacturer.368So we'll have 'em reach out to PNY369and hopefully we can get a replacement form370sooner rather than later.371(machine whirring)372I went ahead and cleaned up the thermal pad residue373atop the memory chips here, surrounding the GPU itself,374as well as the mosfets, thermal pads,375pretty much everywhere.376It looks like it's designed well,377I noticed that the back things were pretty clean as well,378there's also thermal pads at the back here,379so the back plate is kinda functional, which is cool.380You know, every AIB is gonna have381a slightly different board design,382with the exception of those that use the reference model,383I'm not even sure if a reference model exists for these,384I know that the Nvidia cards aren't reference,385they're Founders Edition, and they're shaped very oddly,386very dense cards.387So we'll put this back together and just triple check388that what we did here, cleaning things up,389didn't fix anything, and we'll have to call it.390Let's see, I've been letting the benchmark run391for a little over a minute now, not too bad,392just gonna see if I can get it cutting out on camera,393assuming it will, 'cause again,394we didn't really change anything395except for the thermal paste, I suppose.396I think it's gonna happen any second now,397I can hear things getting pretty loud.398Let's see what's our temperature.39974, 75 C, still nothing abnormal.400See, I'm gonna task manage out of this401just to check temperatures.402Motherboard, oh no, that's GPU memory,403okay, I was about to say.404So GPU memory is getting pretty hot.405I'm not super confident in what's going on here,406it still could be an overheating issue,407maybe there's just an issue with the thermal pads,408but I'm kind of surprised it hasn't cut off yet409to be honest.410Okay, it's been a few more minutes411and it still hasn't turned off, I'm slightly confused.412Now, you'll notice I actually have the back plate removed413this time around and, yeah,414still going strong a few minutes later,415there's no way this is causing the problem, there can't be.416And don't get me wrong,417this thing is cranking out some heat,418it is definitely working hard here.419I'm really surprised that it's still going.420Yeah, this is kinda weird.421So yeah, look, this one's been topsy-turvy,422I know, I'm sorry, I don't really have a way423of preventing that, when it comes424to just random issues like this,425the video was super helpful,426it helped me kinda hone in on the graphics card,427and I really didn't expect just repasting the GPU428and receding thermal pads to fix this,429but it does look like it did for some reason.430The PCI supplemental power connections were fine beforehand,431we checked that.432I don't really know what else it could be433apart from, maybe, a bad overclock.434Now, I don't see any overclocking software on here435apart from MSI Afterburner,436but what I've done, just to be on the safe side,437I don't think it was needed,438but I'm just doing it, just to be, again,439just to have that extra peace of mind.440I've underclocked his GPU about a 100, 150 megahertz,441and I've done the exact same thing for the memory.442We're at what?443230, 240-ish FPS here and have a benchmark 1080p.444We're talking about an inconsequential amount445of frames per second,446you aren't likely to notice any difference at all there447accounting for that small frequency delta448for the GPU memory, but I did it449just because I don't want this graphics card450crapping out on him451in the middle of maybe a streaming session,452or just gaming with friends, whatever,453it's the worst experience to have454when hardware continues to fail you over and over again,455you can't make any progress in any game at all.456So if the frequency was to blame,457which it very well could be,458doing a bit of research there,459and actually in my own personal experience,460if you do have a bad graphics card overclock,461either the GPU or the memory,462what could happen is the screen just cuts to black463and the fans ramp up to max speed.464In hindsight, I should have probably seen that coming,465but then again, all we did to actually fix it466was just repaste,467and we didn't have temperature issues beforehand,468so I'm not entirely sure what's going on here,469but you can see the card's running fine now,470and I suppose that's where we can leave it for now.471What I will probably do, because I trust this person,472he actually disclosed some very, very exciting information473about a potential job opportunity coming up.474I might lend him my 3080 while he RMAs this one,475and then he can give that one back476once he gets his new card,477that's something I'm fine doing with this person,478and that way he doesn't have to have any downtime,479he can immediately start working again with his rig,480he needs this rig for that job opportunity coming up,481so I don't want there to be any downtime there,482we might do that.483But for now it looks like this is okay again,484maybe there were just some tolerances,485some issues there486with the way the graphics card was assembled,487and reassembling it, repasting fixed that?488Doubt it, but who really knows?489A bit finicky, this one,490the good thing is it's working491and it's standing up to the test for sure,492it already would've crapped its pants if it was going to,493so that's good news.494It's been like, again, over an hour.495Crossing my fingers it stays that way.496With that, thanks so much for watching this far497into this one, I really wish I had more to tell you,498more to show you, sometimes tech can just be finicky.499Usually we can pinpoint the problem,500and I highly doubt that repasting alone fixed this,501but I think that underclocking,502that kind of preventative maintenance step503was the wise thing to do here,504just for the sake of trying to avoid future calamity,505especially if streaming is involved506or something similar to that.507I suppose that the one good thing that came from this,508apart from the system working again, at least for now,509is that the owner now knows that the graphics card510is the thing that will need to be replaced,511should it come to that, so mission accomplished there.512Consider giving this one a thumbs up if you enjoyed it,513that would be greatly appreciated.514Subscribe if you have not already,515and remember that if you have a broken system516and you live in or around Orlando, Florida,517you have a chance to have it fixed for free518here on the channel,519just submit a link in this video subscription,520send us your photo, send us your info521about why the rig isn't working the way that it is,522and we just might get to you.523We have a lot of submissions, most of them, frankly,524don't even apply to what we do here,525it needs to be more or less hardware related,526something that we can hone in on fairly quickly here.527If it's software related,528and frequent blue screens of death,529things like that, we just don't have the time.530Software can, it can be chased down531such deep rabbit holes with software, and to be fair,532the hardware stuff is more camera friendly anyway.533No one wants to see a screen cap 24/7,534that just gets old, it's not the kinda content535I wanna have here on the channel anyway.536So again, thanks for watching this far to this one,537and I'll catch you in the next one.538My name is Greg, thanks for learning with me.\n"