Question Erratic PC Behavior After Month Away, dead GPU & mobo?

Jul 12, 2021
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PC Specs:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950x
Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero ATX Motherboard
G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB (2x16) ddr4-3200
Samsung 980 Pro 500gb NVME drive
Corsair RM750 80+ Gold PSU
MSI - NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3080 VENTUS 3X 10G OC

the system is about 2 months old

Hello, I recently came back to my PC after a month long road trip. The first boot up was fine, and nvidia GeForce experience automatically updated the display drivers. Shortly after, my USB devices began to connect and disconnect at random intervals. About 10 minutes later, a bunch of green lines began to streak across my primary and secondary display, and then 1 minute later I lost all output. I figured it was a problem with the driver update, and I restarted my PC to try and boot into the BIOS. However, I could not get into the BIOS anymore because I keep getting Q-code 97 on my motherboard. Sometimes if I manually hold the GPU with upward force while plugged into the motherboard I can get to the BIOS but it’s sporadic. When I do get to the BIOS, I see that the GPU is detected and getting adequate power but upon restarting to get back into the system I either get Q-code 97 or b2. I have discovered that around 1/10 times I can boot successfully to the OS if I hold the GPU against the motherboard, but I will quickly lose the display afterwards.

Things I have tried:

removing GPU to get a POST (I get to Q-Code 02 5/10 times, which would let me get to the BIOS if I had a display which I did not lol)
Removing all components and adding more and more to find the issue (q-code b2 or 02 until I add the GPU, then it’s always q-code 97)
Using 2 sticks of ram in all four slots together and on their own (no effect)
Enabling and disabling CSM and trying to boot either way (CSM enabled has slightly increased my chances of getting to the OS)
Removing CMOS (no effect)
3 different monitors with 3 separate HDMI and DisplayPort cables in all 4 slots of GPU (no noticeable effect)
Booting without anything plugged into the GPU (I actually get a POST 30-40% of the time doing this, but the moment I plug something into the GPU the system restarts) ???
Checked all connections to make sure everything was fully connected, including reseating the GPU

At this point I am at a loss. I have spent around 6 hours troubleshooting and I am starting to feel as if my GPU / mobo may be dead or dying but I don’t know how/why that would be. Surprisingly, on my latest attempt, I was able to get into windows with no trouble, but shortly lost display after. I let it sit for maybe 5 minutes, at which point my GPU fans whirred up to 100% from 0%. I went over to my PC and found my GPU to be boiling hot to the touch and quickly shut it off. Everything is now running stock if that’s important. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I don’t know what else to do.
 
If you have access to another GPU to test with that would prove your motherboard...likewise if you can try the GPU in another PC that would prove the GPU one way or the other.

If you can get into Windows with another GPU plugged in try rolling back the nVidia driver update and see if the issue resolves itself.

It is somewhat alarming that by holding the GPU against the motherboard things changed. Is the GPU being blocked by a SATA connector or something else that's keeping it from seating enough to lock into the PCI-E slot ?
 
Jul 12, 2021
3
0
10
If you have access to another GPU to test with that would prove your motherboard...likewise if you can try the GPU in another PC that would prove the GPU one way or the other.

If you can get into Windows with another GPU plugged in try rolling back the nVidia driver update and see if the issue resolves itself.

It is somewhat alarming that by holding the GPU against the motherboard things changed. Is the GPU being blocked by a SATA connector or something else that's keeping it from seating enough to lock into the PCI-E slot ?
Hello, I unfortunately don’t have access to another machine nor another GPU to test with. However, I successfully rolled back the nvidia driver update on a successful boot attempt but the issue still occurs. I have however isolated the issue. I get Q-Code 97 only when something is plugged into the GPU. If nothing is plugged into the GPU, I post successfully every single time. This of course means I don’t have a display output so it’s useless. I tried the 3 monitors and three separate cables in all four GPU display output slots but still got the same behavior. Any clue as to why I’d only post successfully when nothing is plugged into the GPU?