Question Gtx 980 suddenly not working (found water on pcb, and on heat pads)

Matthew44

Prominent
Apr 28, 2022
52
3
545
Hi everyone I bought a Kingston nvme 4 ssd and installed it, but wasn’t getting any signal, 4 hours later I switched gpu and got a signal on a hd6450 that’s close to its end. After some time I put my 980 back in and still getting nothing. So I take it out to look at it and there’s somehow water in the graphics card, which makes no sense as my aio isn’t leaking (but there is a weird noise coming from what I think is the pump but the noise isn’t consistent, it’s like once every 3ish seconds like a grinding noise) but it hasn’t leaked. The water was on the thermal pads and on the vrms (I think) and near power regulators. The gpu was working completely fine before the ssd installation so I’m lost for words here as to what’s ended it. I have the msi b550m vdh wifi, rm750x, r5 5500. 2 ssds are in use and 2 hdds are as well. I did have the gpu daisy chained and one of the 6 pin gpu pwr connector pins are pushed back slightly but that’s fine as well so I’m so confused. I have no spare parts apart from the gpu. Please help me fix this. Thank you. (Also the psu is just under 2 years old) (I can’t upload pictures as imgur won’t let me login as I get a server full error when doing so but will update this with pictures when it works again. Thanks)
 
If there is water on your graphics card then either you somehow spilled some water inside the case, or the AIO IS in fact leaking, even if it's leaking so slowly you can't see it (Which is NOT uncommon and can happen in several ways, one of which is permeation. ALL AIO coolers "leak" over time.) OR you live in a jungle or next to the ocean and the humidity is so high that it's collecting on the inside of the PC.

If at ANY point you attempted to run the graphics card while there was even a small amount of water on any critical part then there is the potential for having damaged the card. At this point I'd allow the card to fully dry to make sure there is no chance there is water elsewhere in the card and then try it again WITHOUT the NVME drive installed, just to verify if the drive is causing the problem. If you still have no love but it works fine with the older graphics card, then there can't be a lot of doubt that for whatever reason something is wrong with your GTX 980. At that point you'd probably want to try the graphics card in some other machine with an acceptable power supply installed to verify.
 

Matthew44

Prominent
Apr 28, 2022
52
3
545
If there is water on your graphics card then either you somehow spilled some water inside the case, or the AIO IS in fact leaking, even if it's leaking so slowly you can't see it (Which is NOT uncommon and can happen in several ways, one of which is permeation. ALL AIO coolers "leak" over time.) OR you live in a jungle or next to the ocean and the humidity is so high that it's collecting on the inside of the PC.

If at ANY point you attempted to run the graphics card while there was even a small amount of water on any critical part then there is the potential for having damaged the card. At this point I'd allow the card to fully dry to make sure there is no chance there is water elsewhere in the card and then try it again WITHOUT the NVME drive installed, just to verify if the drive is causing the problem. If you still have no love but it works fine with the older graphics card, then there can't be a lot of doubt that for whatever reason something is wrong with your GTX 980. At that point you'd probably want to try the graphics card in some other machine with an acceptable power supply installed to verify.
Thanks for the info, I don’t live near a jungle and I bought the aio from scan.co.uk on 24th June 22 but it could be faulty as the scraping noise I keep hearing, how long should I wait before trying again? I did clean it myself after posting this, I did remove every drive and only had the gpu installed but still nothing, the vga light isn’t lit up on the board either so that’s weird. I do have another board but the other psu is 350w and only has one pcie so that’s out of the question. But thanks for telling me ( the vga light was lit up, but I removed a stick of ram then it went away but still didn’t solve anything.)
 
You have to also consider that if there was water on the card there was likely at some point water on the board as well. The fact that you hear grinding is not good. I would not recommend using that cooler any more and if possible, return it under warranty. You might want to simply tear it all down, build it on the bench with the other motherboard and using your RM750x, on a static free surface like a piece of cardboard box, or the box the motherboard came in, or a builders mat, to see if it's maybe a board problem. Treat it as a motherboard problem until you know better, using the guide.

 

Matthew44

Prominent
Apr 28, 2022
52
3
545
You have to also consider that if there was water on the card there was likely at some point water on the board as well. The fact that you hear grinding is not good. I would not recommend using that cooler any more and if possible, return it under warranty. You might want to simply tear it all down, build it on the bench with the other motherboard and using your RM750x, on a static free surface like a piece of cardboard box, or the box the motherboard came in, or a builders mat, to see if it's maybe a board problem. Treat it as a motherboard problem until you know better, using the guide.

I haven’t seen any water on the board whatsoever, I had no grinding noise or anything until some weeksafter I upgraded my motherboard from the asus prime a320m-k to the b550
I think I’ll use my other board and buy another psu and test it with that instead, see if it still persisting or not.
thanks
 

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