pc hardware question:
so i was playing katana zero today when my pc died. since there was no signal on boot and speaker cried about gpu problems, i went ahead and got my old 8600gt instead of gtx770. now when i inserted that into old pci-express slot that didnt work, but my mb has 2 slotss and in the other one it booted.
my guess is that pci-express slot is now toast, but i still dont know if my gtx770 is also toast and i am kinda afraid that it will toast my last working pci-express slot too if i try it now.
so what do i do? is it possible for my gpu to kill pci-express slot or it waas just motherboard failure? should i take the risk? i really dont know
edit: went on to try 770gtx into another slot. it was trying to boot a few times and then gives up with the same beeping error. replaced with my 8600gt and after a few self-checks it worked.
i am assuming it can be either dead gpu or psu issues and card isnt getting enough voltage to fire up. imma try to load it up at work and see if it works at all. first pci-express slot on motherboard is dead for sure i guess since even 8600gt isnt working in it.
if anyone has any idea what can be wrong with the card i'll appreciate any advice
motherboard is p8p67 asus
Without trace multimeter, it's not possible to know for sure, but there are a lot of possibilities here.
Considering the evidence that :
1- The first slot is now dead
2- 770 doesn't work in either slot
3- 8600 worked in 2nd slot
I'm guessing GTX770 died, and it resulted in rogue current going to pins on the PCIe connection in excess of safe levels. PCIe connections have two main types of pins : pins that can carry a nominal amount of power (for supplemental on higher TDP GPUs, or moderate power for less demanding GPUs/NICs/etc, up to 75 watts).
GTX770 uses ~190+W at load, so definitely more power going through the PCB than would be safe if it shorted and went down any of the pins on the connector itself.
The type of failure I'm describing is more catastrophic than usual, but not unknown. Have a friend who just had slot one die on a Ryzen 1200 box, and my son's Lenovo Thinkstation has a dead first slot as well. Luckily in both of these cases the second slot is both physically and wired up as 16x. I had a P8P67 Pro, IIRC I think you have a fully featured second slot as well, though of course it runs in reduced mode if both slots are in use. Depending on how the damage is, it may or may not let you use the second slot in full 16x mode. You can use the program Speccy to find out what mode the GPU and slot are running in.
At a minimum, you will want to do the following :
1- RMA the PSU if any warranty remains. Otherwise, trash it. The vast majority of the time that a GPU fails like this, it's because the PSU surged it. It's just not worth the risk in re-using it, particularly if it is of the same vintage as a P67 Mobo (circa 2011).
2- You will need a new GPU. I'm seeing a lot of great options now both used and new for not a ton of money. Used 770 on Craigslist for $40. Used 1060 3GB on a trusted forum I've been on for 15 years for $90. Or, look at the sales on the RX570/580 cards, or if you can swing it : a GTX1660, which would be a gigantic upgrade. Even waiting for the 1650 (no PCIe power plug required, $129 I believe) would be a nice move up, and very quiet with modern Turing cores (reportedly 1050ti perf).
Hopefully that's enough to get you by. It's definitely time to start thinking about a newer Mobo/CPU though. Going all new here would be pretty expensive, because you need new everything basically. That's why I advise going with a really robust used workstation for budget users. For about $200, I see S30s come through fairly steadily. Usually 6C/12T 2011v2 Xeons with 15MB cache and 40 PCIe lanes, 16GB of DDR3 quad channel (upgradable very cheaply with ECC RDIMMs to 32/64GB, 8 slots!), 610W PSU of extremely robust quality, I have a 1080ti Strix running in one! Extremely overbuilt Mobo with excellent solid state caps. Great networking ICs, USB 3.0, etc. They're just really nice for the price, you just add a GPU, use the W7 Pro key to install 10 Pro legally, and boom, instant very competent system, utterly unbeatable for the price. Obviously a new Ryzen 5/7 or Coffee Lake i7 would be even better, but look for the price on :
Mobo, PSU, 16GB DDR4, windows license, case, DVDRW, etc, you can barely get a reasonable Mobo and PSU alone for $200, let alone a CPU, Ram, windows license, etc. And Quad Channel DDR3 1600 performs basically identical to dual channel DDR4 3200, even a shade better in some respects thanks to lower latency.
Just a thought, in the event you end up needing a box and don't have much of a budget.
Like I said, first steps will be to get a new GPU and PSU to start with, ideally from a vendor where you could return the PSU if you end up not needing it. One thing I wouldn't do is get a nice new GPU and try to run it off the old PSU, risking it, or placing it in the burnt slot 1 on the mobo. The obvious safest route would be not using any of the old PSU/Mobo at all, but I think the risk of the slot 2 is pretty low.
Good luck, definitely not a fun problem to go through.