Zotac - The Graphic Card of The Death

[topgear]

1. I've one Zotac GTX 1050 Ti mini 4GB on a little pc ( i5 2400 + H61 motherboard ) which is used to play FiFa and some other games like Days gone etc. at 1080p . So the card died on with no display issue and submitted it to Kaizen on 8th of this month for RMA. RMA went smoothly and received replacement unit on 25th.

2. Reached home with the replacement unit as this looked new and it was already early evening I was bother not to test the card at service center.
Anyway, installed this on my main pc ( i7 4770 + B85 motherbaord + Asus GTX 960 Strix ) and as usual got no display but at the time of booting I got one long and two short beeps which generally indicates a video card error.

3. So I thought I got a DOA card and installed the gtx 960 back .. this time also no display and same one short and two long beeps but nonetheless the OS was loading ( I can tell by activity LED of the HDD / cabinet ) even though there's no display on the monitor. I use a DVI cable to connect monitor with graphic card and motherboard also has dvi port. So hooked the monitor with the motherboard and removed graphic card and Voila ! I got display.

4. I thought somehow the pci-e slot of the motherboard has gone and As this is my work PC I've another B85 motherboard lying around for backup purpose. So hooked it up and first installed the gtx 960 and got display with normal beep sound ( no other devices like HDD fan etc. were attached ) and once I got display powered down the pc and installed the RMAEd Zotac GTX 1050 Ti mini 4GB and boom no display - nothing. Then again mounted GTX 960 on the backup motherboard and no display on the discrete card as well. Hooked it up with onboard DVI port and I'm writing this.

5. So two motherboards pci-e slot went south after installing the GTX 1050 Ti immediately and I've no courage or desire left to test it out on more motherboard. I'm sure the graphic card is creating some sort of short circuit which is making the pci-e slot to go bad.

6. Please suggest how shall I proceed with this I mean the card still has warranty left upto Aug 2022. Who shall be responsible for the damage done to the motherboards ? Zotac. right. I'm kind of clueless right now on how to proceed with this.

7. If they just had test the card before sending then all oif these mess can be avoided and it's oblivious they they did not test the card before sending

BTW, If anyone is curious about the PSU it's Corsair RM 650 and I'm running 2x SSD and 1x Seagate Firecuda and 1x WD blue and 2x sticks of Kingston 8GB ddr3 ram on the Gigabyte B85 motherboard.

PS : Not defaming Zotac or anything like that and your experience may be good with Zotac. Zotac's brand image is important to them as my time and efforts to myself. Hope this shall be enough to understand why I named this thread like this. It's not about bad RMA but sheer irresponsible behavior about how Zotac sends out untested grpahic cards as RMA units.

Reference : One guy on TPU faced this same thing but it was EVGA so EVGA accepted their fault and paid for both the motherboard and graphic card :

Dead PCIe x16 slot... wtf

Ok, so it's my turn to b**ch and moan a bit, but I'm b**ching and moaning with a purpose at least. My goal here is not really to fix this issue as I'm pretty sure I'm ****ed, but rather to determine what the hell just happened. So, I got a new GTX 980 today in prep for a new monitor to be...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[rdst_1]

This being India, I don't think Zotac will own up and pay for the damages. Bigger companies have done worse to customers spending upto 15L on their vehicles. Our consumer laws are very weak and it will take lot of your energy and time and money to get the desired outcome. If your boards are in warranty, then best option right now is to RMA them instead of pursuing this issue with Zotac. You should give it a shot, but be prepared to them being complete asshats about this.

 

[rsaeon]

I know this pain, unfortunately there's nothing that can expected except for us to learn and be more vigilant with hardware that isn't factory sealed. It's possible they mixed up cards and gave you someone else's defective card. You probably would be able to get another replacement graphics card but your motherboards you'll have to replace on your own. Kaizen here allows you to test and see if the product is working before signing for it so your branch should be able to do that for you as well.

A long time ago I bought a Z87 motherboard from a reseller on OLX, put in an pricey i7 4790K but it didn't POST. During the course of troubleshooting, I swapped the processor with an i3 from another build, but that didn't post either. Except now that i3 doesn't work in it's own motherboard. And neither does the i3's motherboard work with a known good Pentium. The two motherboards were lost, as was the i7 and the i3. In a single night, I lost 30k in hardware. I still have nightmarish flashbacks of this every now and then.

I came to the conclusion that the motherboard was a repaired unit (by finally noticing that the VRM heatsinks were missing) that burned out the processor, which then proceeded to burn out another motherboard.

So now, I ask for testing either in person or video before accepting anything that isn't a sealed box.

 

[nRiTeCh]

it was already early evening I was bother not to test the card at service center.

This thought cost you everything and will bother you always... A
Always I mean always forget everything else and ensure you thoroughly test it all in service center itself.
Decade ago we walked in CM service center to pickup my friends psu and he was in a hurry as it was already past 6pm but I insisted him to get it tested and when the psu ran properly in first run and in second run the fan spun and stopped. They tried once again and no response. Conclusion: The new psu even though was new, died within 3 mins!
You can also redirect zotac to this link to make them believe that such incidents are indeed possible...

 

[edept]

6. Please suggest how shall I proceed with this I mean the card still has warranty left upto Aug 2022. Who shall be responsible for the damage done to the motherboards ? Zotac. right. I'm kind of clueless right now on how to proceed with this.

I can suggest sharing the complete case details in a private message to the Zotac India Rep on reddit and requesting him for his help and advice: https://www.reddit.com/user/diehard_max

 

[topgear]

I can suggest sharing the complete case details in a private message to the Zotac India Rep on reddit and requesting him for his help and advice: https://www.reddit.com/user/diehard_max

no reply from zotac india rep.

This thought cost you everything and will bother you always... A
Always I mean always forget everything else and ensure you thoroughly test it all in service center itself.
Decade ago we walked in CM service center to pickup my friends psu and he was in a hurry as it was already past 6pm but I insisted him to get it tested and when the psu ran properly in first run and in second run the fan spun and stopped. They tried once again and no response. Conclusion: The new psu even though was new, died within 3 mins!
You can also redirect zotac to this link to make them believe that such incidents are indeed possible...

got another replacement last week. This time I went to kaizen around 11 am and insisted kazien to check the graphic card but they said they don't test rmaed products. So I'm in a dilemma should I really test the gpu on another pc. Since both of my work pc motherboards gpu slot has gone due to the previous bad graphic card I'm hesitant about testing it but sooner than later I have to test it anyway so wish me luck

 

[eTernity2021]

I had similar problem, with different cards, it depends on what ports are you using, Is it DisplayPort OR HDMI? based on your input i will discuss further the solution!!

 

[jinvidia]

1. I've one Zotac GTX 1050 Ti mini 4GB on a little pc ( i5 2400 + H61 motherboard ) which is used to play FiFa and some other games like Days gone etc. at 1080p . So the card died on with no display issue and submitted it to Kaizen on 8th of this month for RMA. RMA went smoothly and received replacement unit on 25th.

2. Reached home with the replacement unit as this looked new and it was already early evening I was bother not to test the card at service center.
Anyway, installed this on my main pc ( i7 4770 + B85 motherbaord + Asus GTX 960 Strix ) and as usual got no display but at the time of booting I got one long and two short beeps which generally indicates a video card error.

3. So I thought I got a DOA card and installed the gtx 960 back .. this time also no display and same one short and two long beeps but nonetheless the OS was loading ( I can tell by activity LED of the HDD / cabinet ) even though there's no display on the monitor. I use a DVI cable to connect monitor with graphic card and motherboard also has dvi port. So hooked the monitor with the motherboard and removed graphic card and Voila ! I got display.

4. I thought somehow the pci-e slot of the motherboard has gone and As this is my work PC I've another B85 motherboard lying around for backup purpose. So hooked it up and first installed the gtx 960 and got display with normal beep sound ( no other devices like HDD fan etc. were attached ) and once I got display powered down the pc and installed the RMAEd Zotac GTX 1050 Ti mini 4GB and boom no display - nothing. Then again mounted GTX 960 on the backup motherboard and no display on the discrete card as well. Hooked it up with onboard DVI port and I'm writing this.

5. So two motherboards pci-e slot went south after installing the GTX 1050 Ti immediately and I've no courage or desire left to test it out on more motherboard. I'm sure the graphic card is creating some sort of short circuit which is making the pci-e slot to go bad.

6. Please suggest how shall I proceed with this I mean the card still has warranty left upto Aug 2022. Who shall be responsible for the damage done to the motherboards ? Zotac. right. I'm kind of clueless right now on how to proceed with this.

7. If they just had test the card before sending then all oif these mess can be avoided and it's oblivious they they did not test the card before sending

BTW, If anyone is curious about the PSU it's Corsair RM 650 and I'm running 2x SSD and 1x Seagate Firecuda and 1x WD blue and 2x sticks of Kingston 8GB ddr3 ram on the Gigabyte B85 motherboard.

PS : Not defaming Zotac or anything like that and your experience may be good with Zotac. Zotac's brand image is important to them as my time and efforts to myself. Hope this shall be enough to understand why I named this thread like this. It's not about bad RMA but sheer irresponsible behavior about how Zotac sends out untested grpahic cards as RMA units.

Reference : One guy on TPU faced this same thing but it was EVGA so EVGA accepted their fault and paid for both the motherboard and graphic card :

Dead PCIe x16 slot... wtf

Ok, so it's my turn to b**ch and moan a bit, but I'm b**ching and moaning with a purpose at least. My goal here is not really to fix this issue as I'm pretty sure I'm ****ed, but rather to determine what the hell just happened. So, I got a new GTX 980 today in prep for a new monitor to be...

www.techpowerup.com

Did you check resetting your mobo bios and if that doesn't work just remove the CMOS battery for 10 minutes and checked it ? I shared just what I know. Let me know if it works.

 

[shadowfax90]

I faced a similar issue with a Zotac 1660 which fried my primary PCI x16 slot on a Aorus B550 Elite AX v2 mobo.
I tried plugging in 2 more working GPUs in the slot and they dont even get detected. I can get the system working with display by having 1 GPU in the 2nd slot on the mobo but anything plugged into the primary PCI slot just won't POST.
Now I am worried whether Gigabyte will honour warranty for the motherboard considering a faulty graphics card spoiled the PCI slot.
Has anyone tried RMA for such affected boards? Also, will lose out on using my rig for a couple of weeks because of this situation, which sucks!

 

[nRiTeCh]

no reply from zotac india rep.


got another replacement last week. This time I went to kaizen around 11 am and insisted kazien to check the graphic card but they said they don't test rmaed products. So I'm in a dilemma should I really test the gpu on another pc. Since both of my work pc motherboards gpu slot has gone due to the previous bad graphic card I'm hesitant about testing it but sooner than later I have to test it anyway so wish me luck

Insist them that last rma damaged your mobo and you cannot risk it anymore.

 

[rockyo27]

Insist them that last rma damaged your mobo and you cannot risk it anymore.

Why not buy a riser and test on that....it will cost 300-500 afaik in local mrkt or check amazon for it.....i think they are best for such work.....i took one from my cousin 2 yrs back.

 

[neoshreya]

Why not buy a riser and test on that....it will cost 300-500 afaik in local mrkt or check amazon for it.....i think they are best for such work.....i took one from my cousin 2 yrs back.

I think the electrical resistance of a riser is too low to prevent an electrical damage to the motherboard. I guess the card is shorted in a way that it might be sending voltages(possibly +12 volts) on thr PCIE data pins of the x16 slot.

 

[kiran6680]

It is worth buying a riser cable - PCIe - 1x, or 4x or 8x (whichever one you have as extra PCIe slots) to PCIe 16x.

Something vaguely like this : https://www.amazon.in/WorldCare®-Riser-Flexible-Ribbon-Extension/dp/B09NKRFTH3 , I don't know enough to confirm if this is what I'm talking about.

But the idea is to fry your secondary PCIe slots in case something goes wrong, which most people don't use. And PCIe is quite good at compatibility between 1x, 4x, 16x.

 

[ashoka1]

Go to court ask where is consumer court.Read consumer act.Take a white blank paper and write down all financial damage you have suffered.write name of respodents and file a suit.You don't need a lawyer in consumer court or any fee for filing a case.Most probably other party will settle it out of court upon receiving notice or court will get it done for you within 6,7 months and impose a fine plus your loss on company.There is everything in India you just don't know.People gets a faulty car and gets it replaced trough courts with new one.damage comes under civil suit and criminal case both.Problem is most people don't go to courts in India and abroad people waits for companies to commit a error so they can sue them in court.

 

[topgear]

I had similar problem, with different cards, it depends on what ports are you using, Is it DisplayPort OR HDMI? based on your input i will discuss further the solution!!

Using DVI port

Insist them that last rma damaged your mobo and you cannot risk it anymore.

argued and they were too cold to response .. the only excuse kaizen had is they only physically check the card for RMA. Anything other than that the customer need to deal directly with Zotac. The only way left was to physically confront them

I faced a similar issue with a Zotac 1660 which fried my primary PCI x16 slot on a Aorus B550 Elite AX v2 mobo.
I tried plugging in 2 more working GPUs in the slot and they dont even get detected. I can get the system working with display by having 1 GPU in the 2nd slot on the mobo but anything plugged into the primary PCI slot just won't POST.
Now I am worried whether Gigabyte will honour warranty for the motherboard considering a faulty graphics card spoiled the PCI slot.
Has anyone tried RMA for such affected boards? Also, will lose out on using my rig for a couple of weeks because of this situation, which sucks!

As this is one of the kind issue I think your RMA with gigabyte will go flawlessly. But lately what zotac has been upto even I don't know.

 

[eTernity2021]

Using DVI port


argued and they were too cold to response .. the only excuse kaizen had is they only physically check the card for RMA. Anything other than that the customer need to deal directly with Zotac. The only way left was to physically confront them


As this is one of the kind issue I think your RMA with gigabyte will go flawlessly. But lately what zotac has been upto even I don't know.

As your using DVI PORT, it's fine and it should work, In BIOS, Hv u made any changes for the Priority of which GPU should be approached first for display, like GPU or iGPU. i hv come across such a problem with a 3RD gen INTEL BOARD.

I used both HDMI and DP port, it boots in the HDMI and switches the display to DP with a GTX 660 for Windows 10. I did not notice such a problem initially coz the monitor was blank, i was cursing the components, but when i had 2 monitors, the magic came to light, u could say a bug it is.. so try more than one port and c if it works, it may not be a HW problem at all....

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

Using DVI port


argued and they were too cold to response .. the only excuse kaizen had is they only physically check the card for RMA. Anything other than that the customer need to deal directly with Zotac. The only way left was to physically confront them


As this is one of the kind issue I think your RMA with gigabyte will go flawlessly. But lately what zotac has been upto even I don't know.

PCIE slots are designed to provide power upto 75 Watts. If the graphics card is shorted to ground, the +12V and +3.3V provided by PCIE slot will short to ground essentially burning the PCIE slot. It is very easy to check if the graphics card is safe to plug in a PCIE slot or not. First 3 pins from the left are 12VDC and 4th Pin from the right is 3.3VDC. If there is no short to ground then the graphics card is safe to plug in. If you do not have a multimeter, take it to a local repair shop and ask him to measure resistance or continuity on these pins

 

[topgear]

As your using DVI PORT, it's fine and it should work, In BIOS, Hv u made any changes for the Priority of which GPU should be approached first for display, like GPU or iGPU. i hv come across such a problem with a 3RD gen INTEL BOARD.

I used both HDMI and DP port, it boots in the HDMI and switches the display to DP with a GTX 660 for Windows 10. I did not notice such a problem initially coz the monitor was blank, i was cursing the components, but when i had 2 monitors, the magic came to light, u could say a bug it is.. so try more than one port and c if it works, it may not be a HW problem at all....

tried every possible setting and combination in bios and I'm 100 percent certain the previous gpu has fried the pci-e slot.

PCIE slots are designed to provide power upto 75 Watts. If the graphics card is shorted to ground, the +12V and +3.3V provided by PCIE slot will short to ground essentially burning the PCIE slot. It is very easy to check if the graphics card is safe to plug in a PCIE slot or not. First 3 pins from the left are 12VDC and 4th Pin from the right is 3.3VDC. If there is no short to ground then the graphics card is safe to plug in. If you do not have a multimeter, take it to a local repair shop and ask him to measure resistance or continuity on these pins

I do have have multimeter .. can you please be a little more specific about what to look for suing the multimeter.

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

tried every possible setting and combination in bios and I'm 100 percent certain the previous gpu has fried the pci-e slot.


I do have have multimeter .. can you please be a little more specific about what to look for suing the multimeter.

We are looking for a short on 12V and 3.3V voltage rails. if any of these rails are short on the graphics card, the power from motherboard will be directed to ground, essentially drawing infinite current from the PCIE slot and burning the slot.

Put multimeter in continuity or resistance mode, connect one lead of multimeter to GPU bracket and one lead on 12V pin and then on 3.3V pin. If the multimeters measures 0 resistance or beeps indicating continuity, then the graphics card is unsafe to plug in the motherboard. I have indicated the pins on the GPU.

 

[nRiTeCh]

This is simply great! However the thing is how will one convince the brand service center on such faults? What will they think that the customer went into deep into circuitry to verify xyz things where he should had simply plugged in to his mobo and enjoy!
On most or 95% occasions they will keep pressing stating that its a tested rma product and how come you can doubt etc. on it.
They might even put on you saying its your mobo fault hence the gpu got damaged and been a physical damage no more replacements offered.
And many more reasons to deny or reject even if the new/rma item is actually faulty.

The only sense here is to directly write to zotac etc. brand and then getting a replacement request email which can be shown to the service center to actually not get a repaired rmaed card but a brand new replacement which wont come with such issues.