GTX 780TI Not giving display

[Whizkid97]

Hello Tomshardware!!! i am stuck in a pretty bad situation and im going to write each and everything in detail, so this is gonna be a long thread, i just received an EVGA 780Ti custom water cooled with NZXT G10 Bracket and Corsair H40 Cooler from a very very nice and humble friend I am so thankful to him that he sent so much worthy stuff for free!!!! I was so excited and all! Now the problem: So i have a old dell t3500 with a 130watt TDP Processor Xeon W3550 and some corsair vengence 8gig rams (He sent these rams also!!) with a 525watt 80PLUS psu which only has 1x6pin pcie and a molex conneter which i converted to 8pin i.e molex to 8pin PCIE to power the 780ti. The dell motherboards do not have any 3 pin or 4pin fan ports, So i could not run the Gtx 780TI on water cooling since i needed 3x fan ports to run pump, rad fan, and nzxt vrm cooler fan. So i had a dead GTX 760 Windforce layin around which was in excellent condition. So i thought i why not give it a try and try to install the windforce cooler on the 780TI and make it air cooled and yes! The windforce cooler fitted perfectly! But when i installed it and ran the PC first of all the PC would not boot and give 3,4 error diagnostic codes, then after alot of tinkering like removing ram etc, i made it work! The 780ti gave display! But as soon as i tried to install the Drivers the 780TI just cuts the display signal and lcd goes to "no signal" i tried using DDU etc everything to make the drivers work nothing worked, also i noticed that the fans were really ramped up to 50ish% speeds and were making a decent amount of noice and one more thing whenever i tried to install the drivers the fans would go full speed 100ish% and more noise started coming from the fans when the drivers installed and the display got blank! So after this sad story i took a good look on the GPU and saw that the cooler was not getting in full contact with the gpu because of the thick thermal pads of NZXT G10 on VRAM's causing the gigabyte cooler to not sit flush with the gpu in which the GPU was cutting display in order to save it self from overheating... then i removed the NZXT G10 thick thermal pads, AND installed the gigabyte thermal pads and the cooler got seated perfectly intact with the GPU. Everything fitted perfectly! I also cleaned and replaced thermal paste everytime i took apart the cooler, after doing all of this finally installed the gpu on the pc and booted up the pc and instantly noticed one thing that the fans were almost dead silent and very slow so now i knew that the cooler got in contact with the GPU core! thats why GPU CORE was cool and not ramping up the fans but the PC could not boot and gave a 3,4 diagnostic code which means memory failure on dell official site, then i tried to reseat the corsair rams and did not work out, as soon as i removed the gpu and installed a differnt gpu (NVS QUADRO 290 128MB) the pc would boot just fine on the same RAM. Then after trying different PCIE slot's on Dell motherboard (t3500 has 2x 75watt PCIE express slots) after trying the pc finally booted on the 780TI but the graphic card did not give any display on either HDMI or DVI, Did i fuck up my gpu? I cannot bare to fry this GPU this was my dream gpu and also my great friend gave it to me for free i dont want his great 780ti to be fried by my own hands please help me!

Now i have not tried this gpu on another system like a good custom PC with a decent PSU and Motherboard like Asus, Msi etc. Can someone please shed some light on what happened? IS the gpu dead due to something? this is the last thing i wanna hear I am really scared! This 780TI is my ultimate dream. Been a long time on a 128MB NVS QUADRO 290. Finally got a great GPU and i messed it up i guess.

My last opinion: I think my PSU is not enough to power this beast of a gpu! and that is why the pc is not booting up and the gpu is not giving display (but it did give display yesterday but cut signal upon the installation of the drivers), im no expert but i know how to do things i have done alot of PC Builds for friends and family, but never got the chance to do for my self due to some financial reasons! Please help me and shed some light on what should i do next? Thanks in advance!

 

[esco_sid]

Most likely its the PSU but no way to test except get a different one my guess the 6pin does not have enough juice to power the 8pin.

 

[Whizkid97]

Most likely its the PSU but no way to test except get a different one my guess the 6pin does not have enough juice to power the 8pin.

someone from another source told me that the windforce cooler is causing a short/ trip protection on the card. Is this also a possibility?

 

[esco_sid]

Most likely its the PSU but no way to test except get a different one my guess the 6pin does not have enough juice to power the 8pin.

someone from another source told me that the windforce cooler is causing a short/ trip protection on the card. Is this also a possibility?

When you are running things out of spec such as putting on different cooler from different cards anything is possible although i would not think a different cooler would cause such an issue.

I still think just grabbing a good PSU from bestbuy or something just to test it and return it would be best option.

 

[Whizkid97]

Most likely its the PSU but no way to test except get a different one my guess the 6pin does not have enough juice to power the 8pin.

someone from another source told me that the windforce cooler is causing a short/ trip protection on the card. Is this also a possibility?

When you are running things out of spec such as putting on different cooler from different cards anything is possible although i would not think a different cooler would cause such an issue.

yes, also the cooler seated perfectly intact with the gpu core. what could be the possible issue? im running out of luck here.

 

[esco_sid]

Most likely its the PSU but no way to test except get a different one my guess the 6pin does not have enough juice to power the 8pin.

someone from another source told me that the windforce cooler is causing a short/ trip protection on the card. Is this also a possibility?

When you are running things out of spec such as putting on different cooler from different cards anything is possible although i would not think a different cooler would cause such an issue.

yes, also the cooler seated perfectly intact with the gpu core. what could be the possible issue? im running out of luck here.

Your best option is to test the GPU in a know working system with a good PSU and see what happens if not id say get a new PSU to test with and if no dice return it.

 

[Whizkid97]

Most likely its the PSU but no way to test except get a different one my guess the 6pin does not have enough juice to power the 8pin.

someone from another source told me that the windforce cooler is causing a short/ trip protection on the card. Is this also a possibility?

When you are running things out of spec such as putting on different cooler from different cards anything is possible although i would not think a different cooler would cause such an issue.

yes, also the cooler seated perfectly intact with the gpu core. what could be the possible issue? im running out of luck here.

Your best option is to test the GPU in a know working system with a good PSU and see what happens if not id say get a new PSU to test with and if no dice return it.

I will try to test it on another custom pc on a local store soon, but one more thing the thermal pads for VRAM were kinda gone bad and some VRAM modules aren't even covered with thermal pads on the gpu. Could it be a possible problem also?

 

[Eximo]

Well the two GPUs have no where near the same TDP, so I wouldn't think a GTX760 cooler would do very well on a 780Ti.

525W Bronze should be enough for a single GPU, even with a power hungry CPU. Could still be an issue.

Not applying all the thermal pads certainly wasn't a good thing to do. I hope you used new thermal compound between the GPU and heatsink at least.

I would put the water cooler back on. Running some fans on straight voltage from the PSU isn't the worst thing in the world, they won't auto adjust with temperature. If you find them too loud you can always wire them up to 7V and make them a little quieter.