I built a new PC, but the RTX 3080 Ti produces no display. Its fans spin and the card appears to receive power, but the motherboard's red VGA indicator stays lit. The monitor is connected directly to the GPU. I also tried reseating the card, checking that each PCIe power connector was fully inserted, cleaning the contacts carefully with 90% isopropyl alcohol, testing the lower PCIe slot, checking for bent CPU or motherboard socket pins, and resetting the CMOS. The integrated graphics output works, so I can enter the BIOS, but the BIOS reports the main PCIe x16 slot as N/A. Installing the card in the lower slot did not appear to help either. The card is a used Gigabyte Vision OC RTX 3080 Ti purchased from a store that claimed it had been tested. The system uses a Gigabyte B650 X AX V2 motherboard, Ryzen 5 7600X3D, and an 850W modular power supply. Is there anything else worth testing before returning the GPU?
2 Answers
GPU fans spinning doesn’t prove the card is functioning. The fans can receive power even when the PCIe connection never initializes. You can boot using the integrated graphics and install the appropriate graphics driver as a quick experiment, but because the BIOS itself shows the slot as N/A, this is much more likely to be a hardware, power, or connection problem than a driver issue.
The fact that integrated graphics works while the BIOS reports the PCIe x16 slot as N/A strongly points to the GPU not being detected at the hardware level. Drivers won’t fix a card that never enumerates in BIOS. If possible, test this card in another known-working PC, or test a different GPU in your system. If the card remains invisible in both slots, returning it is probably the right move.
I’ll have a friend test it in his PC. It’s looking increasingly likely that the card is defective, which is unfortunate because I got a good deal on it.