Hi all, long post - I appreciate anyone who can make it through. I looked for a similar situation here prior to posting but mostly found people who were having reboot issues while gaming or before ever getting to Windows. I didn't see this exact situation. So here it is:
System Specs:
CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X
GPU: EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming using Phanteks GPU vertical bracket & PCIe 4.0 riser
RAM: T-Force Xtreem 3600CL14, 16gb
MOBO: Gigabyte Aorus X570 Elite WiFi
PSU: Corsair RM750x
CPU Cooler: NZXT X73 360mm w/3 AER2 RGB 120mm fans
Storage: 2x 1TB NVMe SSD’s, 3x 1TB SATA SSD’s
Case: O11 Dynamic
Case fans: 6x Corsair QL120 w/Corsair NODE
SETUP: yesterday (4/26) my system was running the exact same hardware as above, but with a Radeon RX 6900 XT reference card. It had been running this setup, stable, for 4 weeks, passed multiple benchmarks, was getting decent performance on high-demand games (CP2077, heavily modded Skyrim). No issues at all.
My 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming from the step-up program arrived yesterday afternoon, and I wanted to see what it could do. I used DDU to uninstall all AMD drivers, shut down the system, and removed the RX 6900 XT. Then I installed the 3080 in the vertical bracket and connected all the cables again. First power-up, the screen didn’t come alive – it just sat for a few minutes. I hard shut down the computer and powered it on again, at which point it posted. It got into Windows without a problem, I was notified that Nvidia Control Panel had installed, and I set about updating the drivers. I downloaded 466.11 and tried to install it, at which point the computer rebooted.
After the reboot, it posted, but then the screen went blank and it just sat there with all the lights on. The RGB flickered occasionally and my headset beeped periodically. Hard reset, reboot – now it was successfully posting about 3 out of 5 attempts, and the post screen was very slow – I could see the raster travel down the monitor as the Aorus logo was drawn on the screen. Every time I tried to install the 466.11 driver, the computer would reboot, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Some of the times, I needed to turn off the PSU entirely/unplug it and plug it back in to get the computer to post again.
Eventually I got it to Windows again, and downloaded the earlier iteration of the Nvidia driver in case this was a driver issue with my rig. The earlier driver (461.xx?) installed without a problem and my screen resolution finally snapped to the normal 1440p. However, when I used Windows to try to update the driver to the newer version, it did the same reboot cycle.
Now, when the computer starts up, it’s quite slow to post, and if it makes it to Windows, it’s not working correctly. Opening Chrome and trying to do anything with it causes a reboot. Apps open, but they feel jerky and rough. Running a 3dmark stress test gives 9-10 FPS (I exit the test after only a few seconds because it’s clearly not working correctly). The GPU fans don’t even start spinning because the temps on the GPU stay so low – CPU limited? I haven’t even tried opening a game yet. The whole system just feels off.
PrecisionX1 has updated my firmware for the 3080 (so it says) and I’ve enabled resizeable BAR and above 4.0 encoding in my BIOS. My RAM is set to the correct XMP profile and I haven’t altered anything else – no OC, no special timings, nothing. I’ve set 3D settings in Nvidia Control Panel to the “prefer maximum performance” setting for power. My Windows settings are treating my computer like a laptop in the power window – just one slider for “battery life or performance.” Ryzen Master comes up and, on power-up, is limiting the PPT for my CPU to 142 vs the 720 it is allowed with PBO enabled.
DIAGNOSIS:
My first thought is a PSU issue, despite having run the 5900X and 6900XT together on this 1-year-old 750-watt gold-rate PSU without issue for almost a month. Would it explain the random reboots, poor performance, and generally janky behavior?
My second is maybe an unseated PCIe riser cable – it might have gotten wiggled out of the slot during install.
My third is a worst-case 3-way tie between a nuked CPU, toasted RAM, or my boot drive NVMe going bad. I think these are less likely but not necessarily impossible.
I took all precautions while changing the hardware in my system, so I really don’t think I did anything to kill a component – but I may have forgotten some step in the BIOS or settings which could be killing my performance.
TROUBLESHOOTING:
My first move will be to check all cable connections in the entire machine, reseat the GPU and PCIe riser cable, and test.
If that does not fix it, my second step will be to use DDU to clean all drivers and reinstall them to see if this is a software issue.
If that does not fix it, my third step will be to try the computer with a stronger PSU to see if it alleviates the reboots and poor performance.
If that does not fix it, my fourth step will be to use DDU to clean all drivers and reinstall the 6900XT to see if the computer still works correctly with the old card. This might indicate a faulty GPU from EVGA.
If the computer does not recover performance with the previous GPU, I will need to start testing other components.
Does anyone have suggestions for other troubleshooting I can do first, or a direction you suspect I should go in? Thanks for hanging in there.
System Specs:
CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X
GPU: EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming using Phanteks GPU vertical bracket & PCIe 4.0 riser
RAM: T-Force Xtreem 3600CL14, 16gb
MOBO: Gigabyte Aorus X570 Elite WiFi
PSU: Corsair RM750x
CPU Cooler: NZXT X73 360mm w/3 AER2 RGB 120mm fans
Storage: 2x 1TB NVMe SSD’s, 3x 1TB SATA SSD’s
Case: O11 Dynamic
Case fans: 6x Corsair QL120 w/Corsair NODE
SETUP: yesterday (4/26) my system was running the exact same hardware as above, but with a Radeon RX 6900 XT reference card. It had been running this setup, stable, for 4 weeks, passed multiple benchmarks, was getting decent performance on high-demand games (CP2077, heavily modded Skyrim). No issues at all.
My 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming from the step-up program arrived yesterday afternoon, and I wanted to see what it could do. I used DDU to uninstall all AMD drivers, shut down the system, and removed the RX 6900 XT. Then I installed the 3080 in the vertical bracket and connected all the cables again. First power-up, the screen didn’t come alive – it just sat for a few minutes. I hard shut down the computer and powered it on again, at which point it posted. It got into Windows without a problem, I was notified that Nvidia Control Panel had installed, and I set about updating the drivers. I downloaded 466.11 and tried to install it, at which point the computer rebooted.
After the reboot, it posted, but then the screen went blank and it just sat there with all the lights on. The RGB flickered occasionally and my headset beeped periodically. Hard reset, reboot – now it was successfully posting about 3 out of 5 attempts, and the post screen was very slow – I could see the raster travel down the monitor as the Aorus logo was drawn on the screen. Every time I tried to install the 466.11 driver, the computer would reboot, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Some of the times, I needed to turn off the PSU entirely/unplug it and plug it back in to get the computer to post again.
Eventually I got it to Windows again, and downloaded the earlier iteration of the Nvidia driver in case this was a driver issue with my rig. The earlier driver (461.xx?) installed without a problem and my screen resolution finally snapped to the normal 1440p. However, when I used Windows to try to update the driver to the newer version, it did the same reboot cycle.
Now, when the computer starts up, it’s quite slow to post, and if it makes it to Windows, it’s not working correctly. Opening Chrome and trying to do anything with it causes a reboot. Apps open, but they feel jerky and rough. Running a 3dmark stress test gives 9-10 FPS (I exit the test after only a few seconds because it’s clearly not working correctly). The GPU fans don’t even start spinning because the temps on the GPU stay so low – CPU limited? I haven’t even tried opening a game yet. The whole system just feels off.
PrecisionX1 has updated my firmware for the 3080 (so it says) and I’ve enabled resizeable BAR and above 4.0 encoding in my BIOS. My RAM is set to the correct XMP profile and I haven’t altered anything else – no OC, no special timings, nothing. I’ve set 3D settings in Nvidia Control Panel to the “prefer maximum performance” setting for power. My Windows settings are treating my computer like a laptop in the power window – just one slider for “battery life or performance.” Ryzen Master comes up and, on power-up, is limiting the PPT for my CPU to 142 vs the 720 it is allowed with PBO enabled.
DIAGNOSIS:
My first thought is a PSU issue, despite having run the 5900X and 6900XT together on this 1-year-old 750-watt gold-rate PSU without issue for almost a month. Would it explain the random reboots, poor performance, and generally janky behavior?
My second is maybe an unseated PCIe riser cable – it might have gotten wiggled out of the slot during install.
My third is a worst-case 3-way tie between a nuked CPU, toasted RAM, or my boot drive NVMe going bad. I think these are less likely but not necessarily impossible.
I took all precautions while changing the hardware in my system, so I really don’t think I did anything to kill a component – but I may have forgotten some step in the BIOS or settings which could be killing my performance.
TROUBLESHOOTING:
My first move will be to check all cable connections in the entire machine, reseat the GPU and PCIe riser cable, and test.
If that does not fix it, my second step will be to use DDU to clean all drivers and reinstall them to see if this is a software issue.
If that does not fix it, my third step will be to try the computer with a stronger PSU to see if it alleviates the reboots and poor performance.
If that does not fix it, my fourth step will be to use DDU to clean all drivers and reinstall the 6900XT to see if the computer still works correctly with the old card. This might indicate a faulty GPU from EVGA.
If the computer does not recover performance with the previous GPU, I will need to start testing other components.
Does anyone have suggestions for other troubleshooting I can do first, or a direction you suspect I should go in? Thanks for hanging in there.
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