Good morning all! I've recently been through this issue and thought I'd share my experience. I thought I had it fixed, but of course as I'm typing this the issue occurred again. Still, posting my current progress and info here. I apologize that it's a bit long winded, but I figure more info is better than not enough. There's a TL;DR at the bottom.
First off, some specs:
Intel 9700k
Nvidia RTX 2080ti (EVGA FTW2 Ultra edition)
Asus ROG Z-390E Mobo
32 GB (4x8 GB) TridentZ RGB RAM @ 3200 MHz
The device has never been seriously overclocked, so most things have been running clock speeds and shouldn't have much wear - I've turned on basic XMP settings to make sure my RAM was running at the proper speeds and did some minor tinkering in EVGA Precision X to make my fan's cooling curve a bit more aggressive while maintaining standard speeds for the GPU. I did tinker with Asus AI overclocking from the UEFI BIOS during the process of diagnosing this issue, but didn't have much luck with it so it remains disabled. Most components are also only about 2 years old, but 2 of the RAM sticks have been carried over from my previous build and may be closer to 3 or 4 years old.
The issue began around 2/19/2021 after updating to Nvidia driver version 461.40. The "Event Code 14" popped up in my Event Viewer shortly after the driver update and while I wasn't doing much on the PC - just some Youtube videos streaming into a Discord call and an Android emulator running (CPU heavy but not GPU intensive from what I can gather.) The crash simply resulted in my two monitors flashing off to black for a few seconds, then coming back. During the outage, video and audio from the browser/VOIP programs seemed to work normally (though those in my Discord call mentioned my getting laggy when I spoke during this time.) After my monitors returned to normal, nothing seemed to seriously crash or provide an error message, but any application that may have been seriously using my GPU such as games would no longer be rendering - in most cases, the program would still be there and the window still open with audio continuing, but either a black screen or an empty/transparent window took the place of any rendered image. These would not seem to recover and required the program to be rebooted. The computer did not seem to need to be power cycled afterwards, as most things continued working just fine. The only sign of the crash was in Event Viewer.
I didn't think much of this - just some growing pains after the driver update, so continued about business as normal. Played some more graphically intensive stuff later in the evening including Valheim, Guild Wars 2, and a handful of other games from my Steam library. No serious problems or changes in performance in any of these, and I didn't experience any crashes over the course of my Friday night gaming session.
I left my PC on overnight and woke up to a few more cases of the crash in Event Viewer in the morning after the computer should have been idle, so I got to work troubleshooting and stumbled across this thread. My first day of fixes included the following:
- DDU + Reinstall the 461.40 driver (no major changes)
- Checked for BIOS updates with Asus EZ Update (had one update to BIOS version 1802 but no major changes after)
- Checked Intel/Asus website for other chipset/BIOS updates and utilities (Found nothing - chipset up to date)
I was pretty frustrated that the issue continued, so I spent my Saturday mostly just watching Youtube videos while getting some work done. The issue happened a number of times throughout the day which was pretty annoying, but I put off more troubleshooting until Sunday/Monday:
- DDU + Revert to previous 461.09 driver version (no improvement)
- Monitored GPU-Z and noticed my Bus Interface/Clock speeds seeming to lower into power saving more often
- Ensured that no power saving functions were enabled in Windows/Nvidia Control Panel (no improvement
- Flashed the BIOS again against my better judgement (no improvement)
- Intel CPU Diagnostic (no issues found)
- MemTest (no issues found)
- Opened a ticket with Nvidia support
Once again, I couldn't make much progress and the issue persisted - in fact, it seemed to become more frequent of an issue, which is why I finally decided to submit the ticket to Nvidia, though I have yet to hear back from them.
I've continued to tinker with the issue the last couple of days, mostly trying to narrow down the source of the issue. I've noticed that the issue seems to occur most often when the computer or GPU is in a more idle state. As mentioned in the previous section, my Bus Interface seems to lower from the expect x16 3.0 @ x16 3.0 down to x16 3.0 @ x16 1.1 or 2.0 more often than usual. I'm aware that this can be caused by power saving settings, but nothing on this front has changed and none of these should be on - I've confirmed that Windows is using the maximum power profile, Nvidia Control Panel is set to maximum performance, and Link State Management is turned off for good measure, but the card still ramps down more than previously, and this is when the crash most often happens - not when it is under load.
Based on suggestions in this thread and elsewhere online, I reinstalled EVGA Precision X and enabled the "Boost Lock" function and noticed that this has so far seemed to completely solve the problem when enabled, so it is working as a good band aid for now.***
Last night, I tried running a PassMark Performance Test for the heck of it and noticed my scores - particularly for 2D/3D rendering - were lower than normal which I suppose is to be expected. Oddly, I tried a Windows file check (sfc /scannow) this morning that found a few corrupt files and noticed that the clock speeds were maintaining a more normal/midrange value after that and a reboot (even without EVGA Precision X), so I ran the test again and got the usual high marks I would have expected before this issue. That and an hour or so of stable performance almost had me convinced the issue was gone, but as mentioned the crash happened again while writing this so I'm back to the Precision X band aid.
I'm hoping Nvidia will reply soon with some additional steps to help - I've sent them an update with my ongoing troubleshooting and attempted fixes to keep them in the loop. I really hope my GPU isn't dying on me, but I'll accept the L if it is - luckily, I think the card is still under warranty, so I might be able to get some repairs/replacements. Won't be so lucky if it's a CPU/Motherboard failure though, so I hope it's not that. I'm really stumped as I've seemingly been able to narrow down the issue, but I'm completely at a loss for more potential fixes.
TL;DR - Event Code 14 on an Nvidia + Intel system after driver update to 461.40 on 2/19/2021. Seems to occur when GPU is in an idle/power saving state, but also power saving seems more aggressive/broken than previously. Crash does not seem to occur when GPU is actually in use and under load. Not fixed with driver reinstall or downgrades, BIOS update, or other general troubleshooting outlined above. No noticeable performance drop, but PassMark gave lower scores than usual. Seemed to improve after Windows file check/repair (PassMark score back to normal, GPU clock holding steady) but resurfaced within an hour. EVGA Precision X Boost Lock function works as a band aid for now and the issue does not happen when this feature is active.***
***Update: While finishing up this post, the crash happened again with Boost Lock active.

Not too surprising since PC is mostly idle, but disappointing none the less. I noticed in Precision X after this that the clock speed was down to around 340 MHz but still highlighted in blue as if boost/Boost Lock was still enabled. I toggled Boost Lock off and on again, and it's back up to 2010 MHz.
Might try physically inspecting hardware later - do some cleaning and reseat the GPU, check power cables, all that. If anyone potentially has some tips for anything else to look out for while doing so, let me know!
Update 2: So, after the Windows repair seeming to fix things earlier, I decided to also take a chance on a total Windows reinstall - kept general C drive files and programs from off C. Ever since (it's been 6 hours now - full day of work and games, idle and under load on and off) and I haven't noticed a crash, Event ID 14, or any clock speed throttling on my GPU. It might have just been Windows having problems as it tends to do? I'll run a few more tests and things in the coming days and report back!