Question Opened RTX 3080 to check cooling and now it won't boot

[NelsonTheSmith]

My RTX 3080 had been running incredibly hot (sometimes up to 116c for the VRAM) and I had seen lots of posts about this issue. Everyone obviously recommended changing thermal pads on the VRAM and reapplying thermal paste to drop temperatures. I had also seen posts by these people who had shown their GPU internals before they swapped pads and half of the stock pads would not even be covering the VRAM or important components. To make sure this was not my situation, I opened my card up by following a good teardown video to the letter and after checking (everything looked good) I put it back together and re installed it to my computer.

Since then it has been stopping my entire PC from booting. My MSI motherboard shows that it is a VGA error through the ez debug system. I was able to boot my computer one time primarily off my old 1060 with the 3080 also installed and the 3080 showed up in GPUZ (including current clock speeds and temps) and device manager, but it showed up as "not working properly". The cards lights and fans turn on and spool up but for some reason the card just refuses to work. Since that time I have been unable to get the computer to boot at all with the 3080 installed.

I have tried everything I can think of: reflashing bios, clearing cmos, uninstalling nvidia drivers via DDU, reopening the GPU to make sure there is not paste where it shouldn't be. I tried taking it apart one more time and replacing the stock thermal paste with new paste as I had "broken the seal" but it still is not working. Everything works just fine with only my 1060 installed.

It's to a point now where I am likely just going to try to RMA the card if I can.

I am at a loss here and would greatly appreciate any advice you all have!

RIG:
MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX
AMD RYZEN 7 2700x
4*8GB 3000Mhz Corsair Vengeance RAM
MSI RTX 3080 SUPRIM X
MSI GTX 1060 6GB
EVGA 1000w PSU
Various SSDs/HDDs

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

The thing is that you might not be able to RMA the card because it was working but you took gpu apart that might void the card from getting repaired. Have you tried resetting BIOS and making sure cables are connected correctly and such!

 

[NelsonTheSmith]

The thing is that you might not be able to RMA the card because it was working but you took gpu apart that might void the card from getting repaired. Have you tried resetting BIOS and making sure cables are connected correctly and such!

From what I've seen, that is within the right to repair but I could be wrong. Again, I know for sure that the card is not dead since it showed up exactly like normal in GPUZ with the correct live stats.

As far as resetting BIOS are you referring to the mobo bios or the gpu bios? I have done a flashback on my mobo bios and sadly that did not resolve the issue. The whole card was correctly installed. I have removed it and reinstalled it multiple times correctly now just to make sure.

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

From what I've seen, that is within the right to repair but I could be wrong. Again, I know for sure that the card is not dead since it showed up exactly like normal in GPUZ with the correct live stats.

As far as resetting BIOS are you referring to the mobo bios or the gpu bios? I have done a flashback on my mobo bios and sadly that did not resolve the issue. The whole card was correctly installed. I have removed it and reinstalled it multiple times correctly now just to make sure.

Try RMA and see what happens!

 

[NelsonTheSmith]

Try RMA and see what happens!

I guess that's the plan then. I'm still going to try and fix it since it's the weekend but I will reach out to MSI on Monday.