I recently shipped my PC and noticed that my AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT is having stability issues. When it arrived, the GPU was not fully seated in the PCIe slot; some of the gold contacts were partially out, and a few seemed almost disconnected. It looks like the card shifted during transport, and the PCIe retention clip on my motherboard broke, which was supposed to hold the GPU in place.
I've checked both the GPU and the motherboard slot, and thankfully, there doesn't seem to be any visible damage to the connectors or the slot itself. The card is now securely positioned, but the system is still unstable. I'm experiencing screen flickering followed by sudden shutdowns, which feel more like power cuts than a regular crash. Sometimes, it tries to reboot but won't power back on until I manually press the power button.
This issue isn't limited to when the system is under heavy load; it can occur during regular use too, usually starting with display flickering. Oddly enough, my system runs completely stable in Windows Safe Mode. I've already cleaned the drivers using DDU and reinstalled a stable version, but the instability persists in normal mode.
Given the GPU's better performance in Safe Mode, I'm left wondering if my problems are due to possible hardware damage from shipping or if there are other diagnostics I should check before considering an RMA. Any advice would be appreciated!
1 Answer
Have you tried moving your GPU to a different PCIe slot on your motherboard? If your motherboard has more than one full-length slot, it might be worth plugging the GPU into another one. Sometimes the original slot can get damaged, and this could help you determine if that's the issue.
Unfortunately, the cables on the right side prevent the GPU from fitting into the other slot. Thanks for the suggestion, though!