PC won't turn on with 970 GTX installed at all

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Builder001

n00b
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Jul 7, 2021
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Long story short I had a sound card come loose in my case last night so I tried to adjust it back into the slot.
Well it didn't go as planned to fix my missing sound card issue in windows 10.

After I readjusted the sound card back into the slot where it had come loose.
The PC reset itself, then it would only stay on for a little during boot, then it would reset again. It did this probably about 10 times.
During this process the fan speed seemed to increase by alot, until finally the pc shut itsself off one final time and wouldn't power back on.

After alot of troubleshooting
I discovered that if I removed the video card and powered it on it had no problems.
So then I tried PCIe slot 2 and got nothing. The PC will not turn on with my 970 GTX inserted at all.
I went back PCIe slot 1 and tried it again nothing. Its dead as a doornail.
If I pull the 970 GTX it will fire right up.

I have never before heard of a video card stopping a system from even turning on at all.
What would cause this? The card will not even allow the system to power on at all whatsoever if the video card is inserted in PCIe 16x slot 1 or 2.
The motherboard is a ASUS Z-170K. The CPU is a i7 6700K.


I replaced the power supply completely with a brand new one this morning.
Re-seated the video and reconnected the two PCIe connectors.
Tried powering on the PC and nothing. It won't even come on at all with 970 GTX inserted even with a new power supply.

I can run my intel 530 integrated graphics, but I'd really like to get 970 GTX back up and running if possible.
What steps do you recommend to fix this?

Thanks
 
Check the capasitors on the motherboard and see if one of them are loose, broken off or blown.
 
This is most likely the result of a hardware failure on the graphics card that has created a short circuit to ground. This is a pretty common mode of failure for graphics cards, particularly of that vintage.

What's happening is that the system actually is turning on for just a brief moment, but because of the short, the power supply has to produce a very large current in order to sustain 12 volts on its 12V outputs. This current exceeds the power supply's limits, and then the overcurrent protection (a safety feature of modern power supplies) kicks in and shuts the power supply down in order to prevent damage to the power supply and prevent a fire.

Your solution here is to replace or repair the graphics card. Repairing it is probably possible, but requires some special tools and knowledge. I could probably talk you through the diagnostic portion if you have a digital multimeter, but to actually repair it, you would need to access to a hot air rework station and a good adjustable temperature soldering iron. Do not attempt to repair this card by baking it - that will make the problem worse.

Can you remove the heatsink from the card and post some photos of the board? The clearer, the better.
 
since it started with your sound card shorting out, have you removed that?!
 
I did reseat it while it was running. It just very slightly got knocked out of its normal position making windows 10 not detect my sound blaster z, so I just adjusted it and re-seated it.

The sound card is working fine now, but without the video card installed.
I just want to know how it damaged my video card considering all I did was push the sound card back into the slot.

Did reseating the card cause this or was the video card already on its way out. I think I bought it back in 2011. I'm not sure its a gen 9.
I noticed when I came home the other day my pc had reset and reported a surge stopping the pc from booting past the bios until I got home from work. I had to go into the bios and reset
it all to optimized defaults before I could get into windows again.

This whole issue arised from windows 10 doing a update yesterday.
After that update my sound blaster z was not being seen no matter how many times I re-seated it. I had no sound whatsoever either from the onboard sound or my sound blaster z.

I took it back to windows 10 by removing all windows updates and feature updates to see what was happening.
Nothing. As I was adjusting the card back into the slot my 970 GTX started to make its fans very high. Then it just kept randomly resetting and got to the point where it would not power the pc back on.
Once I took the video card out and powered it back up the sound blaster z was immediately detected, but when the card was installed before this issue the sound card vanished from even being detected.

If I need to replace the video card which card do you recommend for someone on a budget?
I only do 1080P gaming and some Oculus rift Virtual Reality Gaming. I turn v-sync off for best frames.

What is the equivalent of a 970 GTX in current gen?
 
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Uh yeah. No. Don't do that. Ever. You don't reseat PCIE devices while the system is running. NOOOOOOO. Lots of weird shorts that could have happened there - I've not looked at a wiring diagram for whatever board you have, but ... no. Try swapping slots for the video card. See if it comes up in a different slot.
 
Hot plugging another PCI-E device probably didn't help, but I would guess that the card was already on its way out. As I said before, this is a pretty common type of failure that seems to be related to age. In particular, there is a set of transistors that control power to the GPU that tend to fail after prolonged exposure to heat, and they generally don't get the same level of cooling as the GPU and memory.

Edit: And when those transistors fail, they usually seem to fail closed, causing these exact symptoms. Good news is, it's pretty easy to diagnose and repair, particularly on older cards that use old school transistors or dual N-FET packages.

lopoetve said:
Uh yeah. No. Don't do that. Ever. You don't reseat PCIE devices while the system is running. NOOOOOOO. Lots of weird shorts that could have happened there - I've not looked at a wiring diagram for whatever board you have, but ... no. Try swapping slots for the video card. See if it comes up in a different slot.
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Didn't he say he tried that?

Hot plug support is theoretically part of the PCI-E specification. If the motherboard is properly designed, it should be able to handle cards that support it. Whether or not the sound card or graphics card does is another matter - support for this is optional on the client device end.
 
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RazorWind said:
Hot plugging another PCI-E device probably didn't help, but I would guess that the card was already on its way out. As I said before, this is a pretty common type of failure that seems to be related to age. In particular, there is a set of transistors that control power to the GPU that tend to fail after prolonged exposure to heat, and they generally don't get the same level of cooling as the GPU and memory.


Didn't he say he tried that?

Hot plug support is theoretically part of the PCI-E specification. If the motherboard is properly designed, it should be able to handle cards that support it. Whether or not the sound card or graphics card does is another matter - support for this is optional on the client device end.
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And on the motherboard end, I suspect. Something like an NVMe drive, sure - but not a wired PCIE slot. Of course, we're JUST getting hot-swap NVMe bays in consumer-ish level systems.
 
Sounds like you blew a capacitor on your motherboard or graphics card. More likely your graphics card since it’s so old. Electrolytic capacitors are fluid filled (generally an electrolyte gel) as they age the gel dries out and the electrodes deteriorate. What likely happened was re-seating your sound card sent a transient power spike through the pci-express bus and was absorbed by one of your graphics cards aging capacitors that was in line with the power spike and the electrodes finally bit the dust.
 
Capacitors on the motherboard are all in good shape. I noticed that the video card has a burnt smell to it.
I also swapped the PSU back to the original and without the video card installed the system runs normally.

I guess I need a new video card so what do you recommend for someone who does gaming at 1080P, does some video editing, and does some oculus rift virtual reality gaming off and on?
 
Keep in mind that even though most videocards have external 12v power connectors now, they can still pull up to 75w (sometimes more, even though they shouldn't) from the slot itself. That's a non-trivial amount of power, and could have been affected by messing with an adjacent PCIe card. It's pretty crazy that you were actually messing with stuff in your computer while it was turned on. That's like something you would see on Page #1 of a "how to fix your own computer" book, right next to where it says not to put the power cord in your mouth.
 
Builder001 said:
Capacitors on the motherboard are all in good shape. I noticed that the video card has a burnt smell to it.
I also swapped the PSU back to the original and without the video card installed the system runs normally.

I guess I need a new video card so what do you recommend for someone who does gaming at 1080P, does some video editing, and does some oculus rift virtual reality gaming off and on?
Click to expand...
Just because the capacitor looks good doesn’t mean the electrodes inside are still intact. The only thing you can tell by looking at a capacitor is if it is leaking or burst. I’ve put way too much voltage through a capacitor before and it looked just fine but smelled like burnt plastic (out gassing of overheated electrolyte)
 
lol yeah I know rice. I normally wouldn't have done that, but I figured since I was just pushing it back down into the slot a bit it wouldn't matter. I didn't take it totally back out and then try to reseat it. I just slightly pushed it back down into the slot.
I will check the mb more. Thanks guys!

Now I just got to find a new video card without price gougers eating me alive. You wouldn't believe how much the want for a video card that used to cost $159.99
 
Tell me a little bit more about what you want out of the graphics card. Do you want ray tracing support, dlss support? If not then a 1660 Ti is a great 1080p card on a budget and the AMD 6600 series promises to be very good for the money if you are willing to wait. Of course unfortunately graphics card prices are crazy right now so none are worth their money
 
Okay I used to have a 970. I mean if you just want a straight replacement then the nvidia 1650 is slightly more powerful and same amount of ram (it’s the lowest tier graphics card worth anything today) but I would suggest upgrading to something more like the 1660 Ti or better, or move to AMD with their 6600 xt or better so you won’t run into vram or frame rate issues with newer or future games.
 
The 6600 XT is coming soon, probably a better chance to snag one at launch (whenever that is announced).
 
Builder001 said:
I noticed that the video card has a burnt smell to it.
Click to expand...
ah, the ole burnt smell coming from the video card situation :barefoot:

saw an ASUS Strix GTX 970 on ebay today for $200 Make An Offer w/free ship. Prices on 970's have dropped about $30 now. I went with the Strix 970 about 2 months ago. Another excellent 970 is the MSI Gaming 4G
 
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Not a solution for fixing it, but if you can't find a solution you can sell it for Parts/Not Working on ebay. Can't really get scammed out of it as the item being defective/not working isn't a valid return reason for it.
 
Flogger23m said:
Not a solution for fixing it, but if you can't find a solution you can sell it for Parts/Not Working on ebay. Can't really get scammed out of it as the item being defective/not working isn't a valid return reason for it.
Click to expand...

Don't underestimate the eBay Buyer bias. The buyer could simply claim that there was a brick in the package, or it was the wrong card, and they would get a refund no questions asked, no proof required.
 
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