[SOLVED] I believe my GPU might've just died. Getting no signal from my monitors after restarts. Let me elaborate.

[Emma Tors]

Greetings! First my rig:

GIGABYTE GA-AB350-Gaming 3 Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 1600
Corsair 16 GB RAM
EVGA 750 BQ PSU
EVGA GeForce 970
Windows 10 Pro
(for troubleshooting purposes: EVGA GeForce 650 Ti Boost)

I was playing a game and stepped away for a few to get some food. I come back to find my dual monitor set up both in sleep mode and I wake them to find No Signal on either. I believe the GPU driver crashed as it has happened before during certain games. The GPU driver crashes, monitors go into No Signal, afterwards restarting the PC would fix it. I am 95% sure it was due to overheating on every occasion. This time around, restarting the PC still leaves my monitors with no signal. I checked connections, also tried using my old 650 I have lying around. That one works fine.

I tried the other PCi slots on my board just in case, no dice. Also, when I boot the PC the fans on the GPU try and spin a bit, and then stop. So, after installing the 650 and keeping the 970 in as well, I went into Device Manager and the 970 isn't showing up. It only showed up when activating hidden devices. Windows thinks it's not installed. So I tried uninstalling the device, rebooting and now it's completely missing, and there's no "Unknown Devices" drop down on my list anywhere, so I can't assume it's just not recognizing the 970. Truth be told, in the span of time I've owned the 970 I believe the driver crash then no signal thing has happened about 10+ times. Always when playing a GPU intensive game, after no input from me for a bit.

In the end, is my 970 dead? Or can I troubleshoot this?
Thanks in advance.

 

[terry4536]

You may be correct about your GTX 970.

I did have a GTX 970 do something similar, but in this case it was brand new. At times it would show up in the device manager , and others it would not. When it it did show up,I would try to update the driver. But when it restarted after the update it would black screen. As a last resort I updated the BIOS. After that it showed in the device manager and updated the driver the first try.

So if you think it is worth the effort, update the motherboard BIOS (to eliminate any corruption in the BIOS).

 

[atomicWAR]

Also try running DDU first. Make sure only the GTX 970 is installed when you reboot (DDU has an option for new GPU install, choose this as it will shut down instead of instantly rebooting). When you finally reboot if the card works reinstall the graphics driver and test it. If it doesn't work you know your GPU is most likely toast (though a windows reinstall might also help).

https://www.guru3d.com/files-get/display-driver-uninstaller-download,9.html

 

[Emma Tors]

You may be correct about your GTX 970.

I did have a GTX 970 do something similar, but in this case it was brand new. At times it would show up in the device manager , and others it would not. When it it did show up,I would try to update the driver. But when it restarted after the update it would black screen. As a last resort I updated the BIOS. After that it showed in the device manager and updated the driver the first try.

So if you think it is worth the effort, update the motherboard BIOS (to eliminate any corruption in the BIOS).

Thanks for the reply, terry4536. I tried updating the BIOS sadly no dice.

 

[Emma Tors]

Also try running DDU first. Make sure only the GTX 970 is installed when you reboot (DDU has an option for new GPU install, choose this as it will shut down instead of instantly rebooting). When you finally reboot if the card works reinstall the graphics driver and test it. If it doesn't work you know your GPU is most likely toast (though a windows reinstall might also help).

https://www.guru3d.com/files-get/display-driver-uninstaller-download,9.html

Thanks for the reply AtomicWar. I tried out the DDU, didn't know about it. Works nice, but it didn't solve my problem. I think the 970 just said its last goodbye. Thanks, though.

 

[terry4536]

I think that you are correct that the GTX 970 is dead. But you gave it a try to save it.