Power Surge leads to weird issues. GPU or something else?

hans030390

Diamond Member
Feb 3, 2005
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I recently sold my GTX 480 to a friend. He installed it and said it worked just fine, although he did not try gaming on it. Shortly after, he was hit with a power surge. It took out his PSU, and he has just recently started testing his other components.

The issue he has now is that within 5-30 seconds of logging into Windows, the display corrupts and turns into one color. He's tried different PCI-E slots, various drivers, cleaned out old drivers (AMD and Nvidia), etc. His old HD6850 does not exhibit this issue when put into the computer.

He tested his GTX 480 in another friend's computer. That guy was also running a GTX 480, so they simply swapped them out without changing drivers. Apparently the display did not crash like it did in the other machine, but they have not yet stress tested it on the machine it works in. That's their next step. However, when they did swap the original GTX 480 back in (the one already in the other friend's computer...not the one I sold), it wasn't recognized. I'm thinking this is because it's a slightly different GTX 480 and not related to the potentially problematic GTX 480.

So, it works in one computer, but not the one hit with the power surge. They have not yet stress tested it on the machine it works in, so we'll see what that reveals. Until then, however, what do you think is the root cause of the issue? I'm thinking it might NOT be the GPU, since it works OK so far in another computer. On the other hand, his old GPU does not exhibit the same crash...thoughts?
 

GaiaHunter

Diamond Member
Jul 13, 2008
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Well, if the GPU works in the other computer, the GPU is less likely to be the damaged component.

The 6850 working fine might also indicate the rest of the computer works fine.

What is left is the PSU since the 6850 will consume significantly less power than the GTX480 and so it might be less stressed.

Of course if the GTX480 starts crashing on the other computer in games, it becomes the suspect again.

Windows corruption might also be the problem.
 

hans030390

Diamond Member
Feb 3, 2005
7,326
2
76
OK. Got some clarification on the issue. When the 480 I sold is used in my 2nd friend's computer, the pre-installed drivers and clean install drivers do not detect the 480. He also tried swapping his personal 480 back in without uninstalling Nvidia drivers, and they no longer worked for that card as well (when they did previously). Thinking it's probably the GPU.