PC won't start is graphics card may be bad, need second opinions

[WNCaptainjOE]

Today I put my computer to sleep. About half and hour later I can to it and it was off and purely would NOT start to power up. I tried resetting the strip it was on. Unplugging it for good measure. Nothing. So I pulled the graphics card. The computer booted fine. So I believe a bum card but I wanted to ask you guys a few questions. How do I know if the card is bad vs the mother board pcie slot is bad? Like do they go bad? I haven't messed with my computer in several months as far as installing new parts. Could it be PSU? I haven't noticed anything like fans not firing or anything like that. My computer was working great then, bam, done.

I have not been overclocking cpu or psu nor have I changed defaults.

Am I right to assume that the card is dead?

 

[Onus]

Please provide your complete system specifications, including the brand and model (not just wattage) of the PSU.

 

[tiny voices]

Could definitely be the PSU. Doubt it is GPU related. What make/model is it, and what are the rest of the system specs?

 

[WNCaptainjOE]

Ok so my rig is

mb: Gigabyte b75m D3h
CPU: i5-3550
Ram: Gskill 1333 mHZ 4x4gb
GPU: Sapphire r9-280x Dual X
PSU: xfx ts550 550w http://xfxforce.com/en-us/products/ts-series-full-wired/ts-series-550w-psu-p1-550s-xxb9

The psu is like 4 months old and hasn't seen any heavy use.

 

[Onus]

The PSU should be fine. Does it start up now with the card back in it? The card may just have needed to be reseated in the slot.

 

[WNCaptainjOE]

I tried putting it back in and restarting. Still didn't work :/ . I'm bringing it over to a friends to try in his rig. But my suspicions seem to be correct?

 

[tiny voices]

I really doubt it. I would not expect a GPU to completely prevent a PC from starting up. Try it in your friend's PC and see what happens.

 

[WNCaptainjOE]

Tried it in my friends machine. He has a higher end machine witha seasonic 750 W psu and all of that jazz. Same reaction. The Power LED flickered and the computer was fine. Put his card back in and the comp started right back up. I didin'tknow a gpu could do that. Out of curiosity how do you trouble shoot a psu?

 

[Onus]

I don't quite follow your last post. The card worked in your friend's PC, or the power LED flickered but it stayed off? "The computer was fine," meaning after you put his card back in?
Perhaps a VRM on the graphics card fried shorted. The PSU's protection circuits shut it off right away.

PSUs are hard if not impossible for the end-user to troubleshoot. There are things that will tell you it's bad (e.g. those $20 PSU testers), for example missing a rail, but no certain way to tell it's good without a load tester.

 

[WNCaptainjOE]

It didn't work at all with my card. We installed the card in his pc, removing his original one. When attempting to start up the power LED flickered and then nothing. We reinstalled his card and everything was back to normal.

And that's possible. I noticed the card ran a little hot and over the past week I had finally put it through it's paces a little. Either way I can't get a machine to power on with this card so kind of a moot point I guess. Just trying to understand what happened. Like maybe the card just had it coming, or maybe my tower isn't ventilated enough and I'm overheating my cards. In which case I'd like to remedy that quickly.

 

[Onus]

You can probably RMA the card under warranty. An overheating card should throttle or shut down, not simply croak.

 

[WNCaptainjOE]

Well I don't really have any of the original paperwork so is that even and option? I bought it from someone else. The card was new but I don't have anything else besides the card.

 

[Onus]

Call up the manufacturer and give them the serial number. The worst they can say is "Sorry."