Question Pls help, bricked GPU BIOS think I can fix but I can't POST

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So I bought a Zotac GTX 1050 Ti LP for my Optiplex 7020 and it worked pretty well but it has a high idle fan speed that bothered me. I found instructions on using GPU-Z to backup my current BIOS and use nvflash to flash an EVGA BIOS to lower the minimum speed from 45 to 30. It allowed me to drop it to 40, but not 30. Emboldened by my first success, I tried a newer EVGA BIOS for the same card and it too worked on my Zotac but it didn't resolve the fan weirdness. I stupidly doubled-down on those successes and flashed the BIOS of another dual fan 1050 GTX Ti card that seemed to be on the compatibility list here at TPU, but while it flashed fine when I rebooted I was greeted by the message:

"Please power down and connect the pcie power cables for all graphics cards"

and the machine will go no further. It has an integrated Intel GPU and when I remove the Nvidia GPU it boots fine. The Nviidia GPU seems to do normal POST-routine startup stuff with the fans and such, too, and it appears to be working fine, but I guess it's telling my mobo that it needs an additional power connector which of course my LP card doesn't have - it's all provided by the PCIE-x16 slot (wired as x4 on the 7020). The BIOS allows me to specify the primary card as Auto/Integrated/PCIe) but even if I select integrated it stops POST with the above error.

To the gurus here: do you think another PC with more user control (i.e. non OEM) might allow me to set the video to integrated/non PCI and POST enough to boot DOS or windows to use nvflash to recover my GPU? Are there other options I'm not considering? I removed the fan and heat sink to look for some sort of points I could reset/short but decided that was well beyond me without help so I'm putting thermal compound back on and putting it back together.

Any help is HUGELY appreciated, and yes, I know I'm an idiot for getting myself in this predicament.

Mark
 
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Well, honesty is best. These things happen i guess. Although not the best idea, no idiocy involved, we have all thought about doing something similar or have done and perhaps failed too :)

You could have tried MSI Afterburner, and set a GPU fan curve manually to fix the high idle fan speed. That would be a good bet next time ;)

On the recovery, unless you have the original bios for your SPECIFIC GPU, then I'm not sure if there is much point. Trying any of the 4 current bios' on TPU will prob not yield any better results. Looking at Zotac's website, it appears they don't offer the bios for download. So, like I said, unless you have the exact bios needed, you may not have any success. And it would be pointless trying. By changing the bios, you've no doubt voided the warranty too.

You could maybe try email support, and bluff through and see if they might agree to send you the bios you need.

Otherwise your options are limited. Others with advanced electronics back-round may be able to help 'short' the board somehow to fix it, or maybe someone might be familiar with adapting a bios (after all, it's just code) to help.

I expect you may have to bite the bullet and get a new GPU. Hopefully, someone on Tom's has more knowledge to advise you more comprehensively.

Best of luck, and let us know how you get on.


PS. Lesson to learn: Always, always, make a back up of the bios before upgrading/changing. This is standard practice. Same for a mobo, although you can download those easily from most manufactures, for the mobo - not so for most GPU manufacturers.
 

burntoc

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Thanks for not being too brutal on me. I was at least smart enough to back up my original BIOS, so I do have that. And it was MSI Afterburner I was using to modify the fan curve . I just wish I had a machine that would POST with the integrated GPU indicated, because then I'm virtually certain I could flash this.
 
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burntoc

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In Video it gives the option Auto, Intel HD Graphics, and Nvidia HD Graphics (only if the card is plugged in). None work, they all end up aborting at that error . There is another Menu item for multiple displays that just allows you to enable or disable that, but it doesn't seem to make a difference either. I keep getting stuck at the same spot. I think I need a BIOS that allows me to ignore the PC.

UPDATE - VICTORY! While I've been specifying Intel HD graphics as the card to boot, and tried toggling Multiple Displays on and off to no avail, maybe I didn't get it to save the Multiple Display settings. Disabling that again (so it wouldn't worry about it being a GPU) allowed me to POST and I was able to nvflash the original BIOS back. Everything is working great, and if I use the MSI Afterburner settings to keep it from trying to go below that floor it idles smoothly as well. Thanks everyone!