Question Have I somehow bricked my GPU via BIOS?

puppydust

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Nov 23, 2012
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Hi all, banging my head against a brick wall a bit here.. o_OIf anyone can help I'd be so thankful

Got new components for a new system a couple of days back and yesterday finished building it. I was at the point of installing Windows 10 via USB boot drive, but kept running into errors where it told me "Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation"...

Anyway, I googled the error and found a few suggestions which involved changing some settings in BIOS (Disabling CSM in order to enable Secure boot amongst other things). On one occasion I saved the settings and restarted the machine and... black. Just black. :eek: Could no longer boot into BIOS. Note that up until this point every time I turned it on, I got the motherboard logo, and Windows installation screens. However now I can not see or do anything at all.

I panicked a bit, and searched on how to reset BIOS. Learned about resetting via resetting CMOS on the motherboard, did that. Also removed the battery, and still nothing. Just a black screen. (Strangely no message on my monitor saying "no input detected", just black).

On my Mobo there is a red light with text next to it reading VGA_LED which is fully lit when power is on. So I take it that the Mobo is not connecting properly to the GPU. I tried moving the GPU to my old PC (where it used to work before) and now it doesn't work there anymore.

Is it possible that somehow, by changing some settings in BIOS I have unwittingly bricked (or scrambled up firmare on) my GPU? I'm going to try and source another GPU to test on, though I'm a little scared the same will happen again. Does anyone have any advice as to what I might have done and what I should do? 😓

Thanks so much in advance

Mobo - Gigabyte X570S Aorus Pro AX
PSU - CORSAIR RMx Series RM1000x
CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 5950x
GPU - GTX1080Ti MSi Seahawk
RAM - CORSAIR Vengeance LPX DDR4 64GB (2x)
SSD - Samsung 980 PRO 2TB
Cooler - Noctua NH-D15 Chromax.Black -
 

puppydust

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Nov 23, 2012
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I don't know if your GPU experienced this problem, but it's worth watching this video.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XntRPsYcSQs

Interesting, I didn't know it was an issue. Seems kind of drastic to take the card apart, but maybe as a last resort I could try that. Seems strange that it would suddenly die after the restart though, it hasn't been under any strain at all recently.
 

puppydust

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Nov 23, 2012
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Update: I resolved this issue by updating the BIOS to the latest via Q-Flash +

Quite a challenge even doing this, as it doesn't easily want to accept the USB drive. I tried 3 different USB sticks before finding one that was suitably old (it supposedly doesn't work with newer usb drives)

Once that was complete I could get a picture on my screen again, and I could install windows.

No idea why this all happened, and why resetting the CMOS didn't fix it... but happy to say it is now resolved!