[SOLVED] Something in this system is destroying video cards? 3060 TI and regular 3070 in an MSI MAG B460M WIFI after a move

[heweaver]

I work for a PC repair shop. We have a customer who brought in his MSI desktop PC because he said he dropped it during a move, and he said it sounded like a fan was making noise. We took it in, plugged it in, turned it on, and it was not making any noises. We let it do Windows Updates and made sure it was good overnight, and sent it back. He brought it right back the next day and said when he got it back, he was getting video glitches on the screen and the PC was freezing. He has an MSI GeForce RTX 3060 TI 8gb video card. I plugged it in, and saw the glitches before Windows even loaded. We kept it again. Constant video glitches and freezing / rebooting. So we took one of our MSI GeForce RTX 3070 12gb cards out of one of our own builds and put in his, and it also gave us the video glitches right away... fragmented horizontal lines throughout. We took our card out and moved it back to our PC, and the video glitches and freezing now also affect our card in any other machine. If you can get booted into Windows, as soon as you do anything with Directx12 (and sometimes not even doing that) then you immediately get the glitching and freezing / rebooting.
Now we have two machines doing the same thing basically. I know this could be anything from power supply to motherboard or anywhere in between, but I would like some advice on where to start first, or what you think the issue might be.

His PC is an MSI MAG B460M WIFI running an i7-10700 at base speed of 2.9ghz, with 16gb DDR4 RAM. I can get the specs of the RAM and Power Supply if needed, but since it worked before he moved, the system was dropped and has a crack in the top of the plastic faceplate, but everything appears to be connected properly, if you could give me your best guess as to what it could be, or what I should try next?

Except now we have two trash video cards, I'm afraid to try to put anything else in it, except maybe an older junk card which wouldn't be a good test. Anyway, any tips are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[--SID--]

Brand and model of the PSU.

Something bend in the casing that's making a short with the motherboard/videocard?

 

[Greg Gregorich]

my guess a cracked motherboard he needs a new one.

 

[heweaver]

It all looks fine. We never even heard his original fan noise that he brought it in for, so we never opened it until it came back with the video issues. Let's see...

It looks like it's got an Apex Gaming PSU, the original one that would have come with the MSI MAG B460M MORTAR WIFI build that MSI had. STB-550w 80 plus bronze 550 watt power supply. Which does seem low for any video card in that range...but since his 3060 TI worked before, I was not really leaning toward power supply at first, but who knows...

 

[heweaver]

Except at this point, in order to confirm a power supply, I would have to install a better one, and then get or try another high end card. I was hoping to be able to find out for sure exactly what caused it before we did that...just incase it was a motherboard issue and it takes out any more cards...

 

[RodroX]

I work for a PC repair shop. We have a customer who brought in his MSI desktop PC because he said he dropped it during a move, and he said it sounded like a fan was making noise. We took it in, plugged it in, turned it on, and it was not making any noises. We let it do Windows Updates and made sure it was good overnight, and sent it back. He brought it right back the next day and said when he got it back, he was getting video glitches on the screen and the PC was freezing. He has an MSI GeForce RTX 3060 TI 8gb video card. I plugged it in, and saw the glitches before Windows even loaded. We kept it again. Constant video glitches and freezing / rebooting. So we took one of our MSI GeForce RTX 3070 12gb cards out of one of our own builds and put in his, and it also gave us the video glitches right away... fragmented horizontal lines throughout. We took our card out and moved it back to our PC, and the video glitches and freezing now also affect our card in any other machine. If you can get booted into Windows, as soon as you do anything with Directx12 (and sometimes not even doing that) then you immediately get the glitching and freezing / rebooting.
Now we have two machines doing the same thing basically. I know this could be anything from power supply to motherboard or anywhere in between, but I would like some advice on where to start first, or what you think the issue might be.

His PC is an MSI MAG B460M WIFI running an i7-10700 at base speed of 2.9ghz, with 16gb DDR4 RAM. I can get the specs of the RAM and Power Supply if needed, but since it worked before he moved, the system was dropped and has a crack in the top of the plastic faceplate, but everything appears to be connected properly, if you could give me your best guess as to what it could be, or what I should try next?

Except now we have two trash video cards, I'm afraid to try to put anything else in it, except maybe an older junk card which wouldn't be a good test. Anyway, any tips are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Beside the obvious tip of never using such a high end card for testing, as others wrote already, get a new motherboard and psu, build the PC outside the case and see if it work with the igpu (i7 10700 shoud have a working igpu), don't put any other video card till you see the glitches are gone with the integrated igpu. And then if you want try with something like GTX 710/1030 os similar low end.

As for the PSU if you have a PSU tester you can check how things go without using any other component.