Question GTX 1060 artifacting and crashing

Jul 2, 2024
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As stated above, out of the blue I've started having these problems, I went through all the usual troubleshooting methods (including DDU and a bunch of other things) and what my guess is that one or more of the VRAM chips died or is dying, I dont know how these issues started but I think it could be cause someone hit my laptop with their foot by accident right in the belly of the laptop. I noticed that FurMark and Kombustor will stress test normally most of the times but not always, and when I open a slightly demanding game it starts artifacting and usually crashing. The game I was testing at the time kept crashing but when I lowered the resolution to 1024x768 at the lowest settings it stopped and played normally but as soon as it went to 720p it crashed since more memory started to get used (my guess). After that it won't even lower to the previous resolution to work and just crashes until after a while (few hours) it goes back to "normal". Even the preview in the control panel of the spinning nvidia logo sometimes works normally and sometimes artifacts to hell. Even Android Studio is artifacting too much and too laggy to use. I also tried undervolting, underclocking and many other things to no avail. The temperatures also seem okay, I replaced the thermal pads and paste a few months before this started happening. All the drivers are also updated to the latest ones. Below is an example of the artifacting going on while doing furmark (although it only happened for like a few seconds) and trying to open Genshin which started throwing random colors before crashing within 15 seconds. It also gave an error in the event viewer nvlddmkm event id 153 after the game crash.

Now my question is, is this at all fixable and if it is, is it even worth it, how can I find out what the exact problem is, because I'd like to have this laptop in full working condition, as would anyone. I currently have the GPU disabled and im using the iGPU but the integrated GPU is horrible. The laptop specs if needed are:
Acer Predator Helios 300 (2018) - i7 8750h, 16gb ddr4, GTX 1060
 
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

1| See if your laptop is pending any BIOS updates.
2| Go into Device Manager and see if your GPU is flagged with a yellow exclamation mark.
3| For 2| if you do see it flagged, see if it's error code 43.
4| If so, then yes your GPU is dead...or needs to be RMA but judging from your laptop's specs, you're outside your RMA period = no it's not fixable.
 
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

1| See if your laptop is pending any BIOS updates.
2| Go into Device Manager and see if your GPU is flagged with a yellow exclamation mark.
3| For 2| if you do see it flagged, see if it's error code 43.
4| If so, then yes your GPU is dead...or needs to be RMA but judging from your laptop's specs, you're outside your RMA period = no it's not fixable.
Thank you for your welcome and for the help!

- The bios is up to date (v1.26 is the latest one which I already have installed)
- In device manager to GPU is shown as working properly ('This device is working properly'), no yellow exclamation marks or anything

Is there anything else I can check or do? Thank you in advance.
 
It's probably not a bad VRAM chip but just a cracked/cold solder joint that still works when it touches at certain temperatures.

Looks way too complicated for the usual last resort the GPU oven trick
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so would require a hot air rework station to try reflowing just the 6 memory chips and the GPU. Fortunately the price for those has come way down, low enough for the hobbyist.