[SOLVED] PC freezes after installing 1080ti

uploder

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Jun 14, 2014
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I went from an R9 fury nitro to a MSI 1080 ti DUKE. I installed it on this past monday after uninistalling all drivers with DDU. Now Ive experienced about 3 freezes while doing things as simple as browsing the internet since. My specs:

i5 4670k
gigabyte H87N wifi
16GB Patriot DDR3 ram
EVGA Supernova GS 80 plus gold 650w
2 ssds and 1 HDD (didnt think relevant but listed anyway)

The only thing ive changed is the GPU. I looked at the event viewer and it lists kernel power 41 critical events the same amount of times I've had to reset my PC. All signs point to the GPU. The last freeze just happened like 20 mins ago after just turning on my PC. Do I need to underclock or adjust power settings or something? Im lost.

Any help is appreciated!
 
Solution
Even though you've run the DDU already, I'd go through this, if it happens again, and run it again anyhow, twice. Once for the removal of all AMD drivers and again for the removal of all Nvidia drivers. Both should be done while in safe mode. And you should remove the AMD drivers, restart, back into safe mode, remove Nvidia, restart, install latest Nvidia drivers.

If anything below does NOT apply, ignore it, as this is my standard copy pasta for graphics card related issues, but don't ignore something unless you KNOW it doesn't apply to you.

If there are any steps listed here that you have not already done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that...
You shouldn't need to do ANYTHING related to power or settings, because that card uses less power than the card you removed.

WHERE did you get that card FROM?

Have you TRIED resetting the BIOS, to reset the hardware tables? Sometimes it's necessary to reset the BIOS when a new card is installed otherwise it tends to hang on to some of the old configuration settings. Ones that you can't see or affect manually.

You can attempt to force a reset of the hardware tables as follows.


BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes, press the power button on the case for 30 seconds. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.
 

uploder

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Jun 14, 2014
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Bought the card from Ebay. I have not tried resetting the BIOS yet. Thats fairly involved so ill need to try it when I have more time. Hopefully that does it. Ill complete and report back. I appreciate the info!
 
Bought the card from Ebay.

99% likely THAT is the problem. Hopefully I'm wrong, and it just needs a BIOS reset, but I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope. Most of the Ebay cards I've seen come through here over the last two years, have been faulty. To a card almost they have pretty much all been either ridden to death gaming from irresponsible overclocking or poor cooling or were used for mining. I'm sure there are variations on WHY, but the bottom line is that the majority of cards for sale on Ebay that aren't being sold by somebody who has thousands of previous sales and a 99% or higher feedback rating, are high risk, and you are rolling the dice when you buy one if you are buying it used though anybody that is not an official seller for the brand in question.
 

uploder

Honorable
Jun 14, 2014
11
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10,525
I hear you on the ebay sales. The person I bought it from did have a high rating and numerous previous sales but I know thats not a guarantee. I had more time than I thought and successfully reset the the BIOS. So far so good but I will monitor and see if the freeze happens again. Hoping that does it because the performance of this card is pretty great from the few games/ benchmarks Ive run. Fingers crossed.
 
Even though you've run the DDU already, I'd go through this, if it happens again, and run it again anyhow, twice. Once for the removal of all AMD drivers and again for the removal of all Nvidia drivers. Both should be done while in safe mode. And you should remove the AMD drivers, restart, back into safe mode, remove Nvidia, restart, install latest Nvidia drivers.

If anything below does NOT apply, ignore it, as this is my standard copy pasta for graphics card related issues, but don't ignore something unless you KNOW it doesn't apply to you.

If there are any steps listed here that you have not already done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that possibility.



First,

make sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed. If it does not, then update. This solves a high number of issues even in cases where the release that is newer than yours makes no mention of improving graphics card or other hardware compatibility. They do not list every change they have made when they post a new BIOS release.


Second,

go to the product page for your motherboard on the manufacturer website. Download and install the latest driver versions for the chipset, storage controllers, audio and network adapters. Do not skip installing a newer driver just because you think it is not relevant to the problem you are having. The drivers for one device can often affect ALL other devices and a questionable driver release can cause instability in the OS itself. They don't release new drivers just for fun. If there is a new driver release for a component, there is a good reason for it. The same goes for BIOS updates.


IF you have other hardware installed or attached to the system that are not a part of the systems covered by the motherboard drivers, then go to the support page for THAT component and check to see if there are newer drivers available for that as well. If there are, install them.


Third,

Make sure your memory is running at the correct advertised speed in the BIOS. This may require that you set the memory to run at the XMP profile settings. Also, make sure you have the memory installed in the correct slots and that they are running in dual channel which you can check by installing CPU-Z and checking the Memory and SPD tabs. For all modern motherboards that are dual channel memory architectures, from the last ten years at least, if you have two sticks installed they should be in the A2 (Called DDR4_1 on some boards) or B2 (Called DDR4_2 on some boards) which are ALWAYS the SECOND and FOURTH slots over from the CPU socket, counting TOWARDS the edge of the motherboard EXCEPT on boards that only have two memory slots total. In that case, if you have two modules it's not rocket science, but if you have only one, then install it in the A1 or DDR4_1 slot.



The last thing we want to look at,

for now anyhow, is the graphics card drivers. Regardless of whether you "already installed the newest drivers" for your graphics card or not, it is OFTEN a good idea to do a CLEAN install of the graphics card drivers. Just installing over the old drivers OR trying to use what Nvidia and AMD consider a clean install is not good enough and does not usually give the same result as using the Display Driver Uninstaller utility. This has a very high success rate and is always worth a shot.


If you have had both Nvidia and AMD cards installed at any point on that operating system then you will want to run the DDU twice. Once for the old card drivers (ie, Nvidia or AMD) and again for the currently installed graphics card drivers (ie, AMD or Nvidia). So if you had an Nvidia card at some point in the past, run it first for Nvidia and then after that is complete, run it again for AMD if you currently have an AMD card installed.

 
Solution