I need some help with a strange issue that started after I shipped my custom-built gaming PC to a friend. Before shipping, everything was running perfectly fine — I stress-tested it for about 30 minutes, installed all necessary drivers, and had zero problems. The specs are a Ryzen 7 5800X and an RTX 3080.
Once it arrived, it booted up without any issues and my friend set everything up and installed a game. After performing an Nvidia update, he tried to run a game, but the screen went black while the PC remained powered on. Since then, we haven't seen anything but a black screen, including the BIOS. We've tried reseating both the GPU and RAM, clearing the CMOS, and using different cables, but nothing seems to change. There was a moment I managed to see the event viewer with an "nvlddmkm event id 153" message, so I attempted to roll back the driver, but the screen went black again. It did briefly show the BIOS afterward, but once Windows began to load, the screen went black once more.
Now we're at a loss and unsure if this is due to driver corruption or if shipping caused some damage to the GPU or another component. Has anyone faced something similar? How can we determine if it's just a driver/BIOS issue or if the GPU is done for? We've already done the common fixes with reseating and CMOS resets, and any advice on what to do next would be a huge help!
1 Answer
It sounds like you might have a GPU issue, especially since the screen goes black but the PC stays powered up. Did you securely fasten the GPU during the shipping? If not, it might have gotten damaged. Black screens upon boot often point to GPU problems.
Yeah, I reseated the GPU and RAM too, and didn't notice any visible damage. After keeping the CMOS battery out for about 10 minutes, I got into the BIOS menu but it blacked out again when trying to load Windows. I even used a GPU riser with Instapak foam around the GPU during shipping.