Question EVGA RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra keeps freezing PC

[L0N3STARR]

I bought the GPU used and everything else new. Seller claimed he bought it B-Stock and ran it for 6 months with no issues.

Running:
Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Ultra MOBO
Intel i9-12900k CPU
EVGA Supernova 1000 G+ 80 Plus Gold PSU
Corsair Vengeance 5600 MHz DDR5 RAM
EVGA RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra GPU

I've tried stress testing everything else so I'm confident it's the GPU as it freezes when stressing the GPU. I can provide thermal numbers if helpful.

Did I get scammed and sold a lemon, or could something else be going on?

If it's a bad card, what can I do? Does EVGA do repairs on cards bought used? I assume RMA is out of the question. Can I repair myself if it's a faulty card? I am an electrical engineer so I am comfortable taking it apart, but less comfortable doing any soldering on the board.

Any help appreciated.

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

I do think you should not bought it without testing it first because it could be faulty card and he sold it to you, You can check to see anyone can fix it for a price like repair shop. But buying used GPU off market is risky. So really the seller bought used GPU and sold it used so had around 2 owners. Also your PSU specs are good so could off been sold faulty card

 

[faalin]

Download EVGA precision x1. If the original owner never ran it, it might do a bios update. You can also try and limit the power usage to see if that will help the issue. The nice but troubling thing with these cards are they overclock themselves. If temps, voltage, and power limit are not reached it will keep boosting the card till one is meet.


by limiting the voltage or power limit you will restrict how far the boost can go and might not cause the failure.


Remember that anything over 1800MHz is over the boost limit and technically not covered a failure by the Manufacture.


My EVGA RTX 2080 ti FTW3 Ultra according to EVGA boosts to 1755MHz, but without touching anything will do almost 2000MHz and if i max out the voltage and power limit will almost hit 2200Mhz. EVGA guarantees 1755MHz and if it cant do that then there is an issue, anything over that is just gravy.

 

[L0N3STARR]

Download EVGA precision x1. If the original owner never ran it, it might do a bios update. You can also try and limit the power usage to see if that will help the issue. The nice but troubling thing with these cards are they overclock themselves. If temps, voltage, and power limit are not reached it will keep boosting the card till one is meet.


by limiting the voltage or power limit you will restrict how far the boost can go and might not cause the failure.


Remember that anything over 1800MHz is over the boost limit and technically not covered a failure by the Manufacture.


My EVGA RTX 2080 ti FTW3 Ultra according to EVGA boosts to 1755MHz, but without touching anything will do almost 2000MHz and if i max out the voltage and power limit will almost hit 2200Mhz. EVGA guarantees 1755MHz and if it cant do that then there is an issue, anything over that is just gravy.

Thank you very much for the feedback! These are great suggestions!

I'll definitely do a check on the bios. That would sure be a nice and easy solution, eh?

I saw someone mention trying to underclock the memory so I tried underclocking the memory and the boost by 100 MHz and it still crashed, but it was 4:00 am so I didn't experiment too much beyond that. Doing a voltage limit sounds like a great idea. I can also set up some fan throttling. Do you think limiting to 90% voltage in afterburner is enough, or would you go lower? With a little research it looks like the boost for this card is 1800 MHz, so maybe I'll try limiting to that as well.

EDIT: Just realized that EVGA Precision x1 is similar to afterburner so I'll use that instead. Still the question remains on how far to voltage limit!

 

[faalin]

Theres no, here is your issues solution. You will have to play with the voltage percentage till it ether always fails or starts to work.

You could contact EVGA and see what they say. if you could contact the seller and see if they still have the receipt, that should be the only thing you need for a RMA if its still under warranty. I know back in the day EVGA was the best on RMA's (have used them once before) but now that they arent making GPU's anymore they might be a little tighter on the RMA process