I upgraded my PC from an RTX 3060 to an RTX 5070 12GB, replaced my Ryzen 7 3700X with a Ryzen 9 5950X, and upgraded the power supply from a Corsair RM750x to an RM850x 3.1. The system works normally with the old graphics card, but the RTX 5070 produces no video signal.
The motherboard shows the white VGA debug light. The GPU is fully seated, connected to power, has its LEDs on, and its fans spin, but there is still no display. The motherboard is an ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming with the latest BIOS installed. I have already cleared CMOS, reseated the RAM, manually set PCIe to Gen 4, and tried installing the graphics drivers manually, but none of that helped.
At this point, the only major step I have not tried is testing the RTX 5070 in another computer. Does this sound like a faulty graphics card, or is there anything else I should check first?
2 Answers
You can also try connecting the keyboard and checking whether the system is actually completing the boot process, but the VGA light points strongly toward the card not initializing. Removing the old graphics driver with DDU is worth trying if the system can boot using the integrated video output or another GPU, though a driver issue usually would not prevent the motherboard from detecting the card at startup.
Since the PC works normally when you reinstall the RTX 3060, the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and most of the power setup are probably fine. The best next step is exactly what you identified: test the RTX 5070 in another known-working system. If it also gives no display and triggers a VGA error there, the card is likely defective and should be returned or replaced.
That makes sense. I’m hoping to test it in a friend’s build soon, because it’s getting difficult to narrow down anything else.
I tried the keyboard check and reinstalling things, but it didn’t change anything. The old GPU still works, while the new one never produces an image.