My GPU crashed with a loud repeating beeping noise presumably coming from MSI Afterburner (thru speakers) yesterday, with the monitor losing signal (but system seemed to continue working according to LED lights etc.). I quickly shut it down via held power button.
Today, my computer only starts occasionally (and sometimes BIOS reports system instability, although when I then restart with CTRL+ALT+DEL, the system will boot normally.
However, whenever I start a game, it crashes within seconds (again monitor signal lost, system seems to continue operating otherwise but without video output).
The GPU, a Zotac RTX 3080, only has partial RGB lights or sometimes no RGB lights.
I removed all the RGB software, tried a "cold reboot", installed latest graphics drivers, but to no avail. Sometimes the system even drops video signal while in idle / watching videos on YouTube (sound continues despite video signal drop).
I just noticed the PCIe PEX Errors Recovery counter in HWmonitor is rising continuously - it currently stands at 953 Errors after about 15-20 minutes since last boot. No other PCIE errors are reported though.
I made sure the card is inserted properly, and the power connectors are fully inserted.
You can find my full specs in my profile.
Should I assume the GPU is dead, or could this be the mainboard (which is clearly aging), or the cheap PSU I bought a couple of months ago? (I faced a similar situation back then - my old PSU died, and I didn't want to buy an expensive PSU only to realize it's in fact the mainboard or GPU that's dead, so I got the cheapest one to see if the system still works. I didn't intend to use it for much longer, but it would seem odd for it to go bad THIS quickly even if it's rubbish - time to buy a better one anyway I guess).
I had issues where the card wouldn't be recognized/start until I fiddled around with it a bit (pushing it inside the slot harder, needing to disconnect/reconnect power repeatedly, etc.) when reinserting the card ever since I attempted to run it via a riser cable, so I guess some contacts could be bad. Any ideas? Should I take it apart? It was always running at 83-87° under load...
Thanks in advance for any advice