Fix. Probably bad solder job on one of the shunts coming loose. Get someone who knows how to solder to fix your shunts and UN-SOLDER THE FUSES!

Any situation that causes the fuses to blow will cause many other things that can't be fixed to blow.

 

So my gigabyte 3090 died on me. Basically it started dropping signal while gaming or under any 3d load and finally it stopped giving a signal on boot. It had been working fine for the past 5-6 months or so and I had it on a water cooling loop with a bykski block and temps maxed out at a little over 60c. I did shunt mod it pretty much right away by stacking I think 10mohm shunts, and the mod was working fine and the card was pulling a bit over 500w at max power. I've read other gigabyte and evga cards can get this issue as well so I'm not 100% sure if its related to anything I've done to the card.

I'm wondering if its worth fixing the card, either myself or if I should try to find a repair shop or just sell it on ebay for parts/repair. I've taken pictures of the pcb in segments to maximize the resolution so its easier to see zoomed in.

Back side.

View attachment 2515576
You can see the pcie power shunt on the left side here.
View attachment 2515575
Front
View attachment 2515577
View attachment 2515581

I know the shunt job is a bit sloppy but I wasn't aware of the edges of the shunts being lower than the resistor itself so it took a couple tries leaving burn marks and some left over flux. I bridged what I thought were the fuses with just blobs of solder to bypass them from being blown.

One of the shunts isn't even positioned correctly. And I have no idea if bridging fuses with solder even works.
I would first douse that entire card in 99% alcohol for one hour, submerged, then clean it. Then remove that completely messed up shunt and see if it boots.
This looks like either a fuse problem or a short from that badly done shunt.

Under better conditions, I would even offer to take a look at the board for you and try to fix those shunts but definitely not in this market or situation.
And I know nothing about fuses.

 

While I agree, I think a pro should take over at this time TBH.

From the "dying slowly" symptoms, I believe one or more of the shunts had bad solder that was giving way, affecting power delivery. I would have a pro fix the solder and hydrostatic clean the card. The $200ish dollars will be less than what you will lose selling it for parts.

 

Ah, I didn't notice that shunt had been dislodged. Although I think the power balancing on these cards are quite good and even if that shunt became disconnected I don't think it should kill the card, but rather just lower the power limit. Anyways I think I will just undo all the shunts and the bridge on the fuses and give it a try again but I don't have much hope.

 

It can do WAY more than affect power delivery.
A shunt shorting to the backplate can cause all sorts of issues. When I had my stacked shunts (GPU Chip Power shunt) touching the backplate because the shunt wasn't fully flush and there was excess solder above the shunt, I noticed various huge stutters and hitches, although the card didn't crash. All those problems went away after I remounted the shunt and then cleaned the excess solder off the top. I then threw some Kapton 3M tape on the backplate behind the stacked shunts and that made sure the problem didn't occur again.

You have absolute mountains of solder all over the place. And I already know that Dante'afk killed his first 3090 FE by solder shorting something next to the PCIE Slot shunt and another short next to the SRC (current sens) shunt. So please take other people's advice and remove all those shunts, remove those solder blobs (except the fuses), repad and repaste the card, and see if the card boots.
I also have no idea if solder was touching the backplate or not as I haven't seen a Gigabyte card's spacing up close.

Where are you located anyway? Are you anywhere close to California? Because I actually want to practice my soldering skills. I think I got pretty good at it after all the work on the FE, once I bought a decent soldering iron.

BTW do NOT sell the card if it fails to work after you remove that mess of solder. Elmor can fix the card for you. Just make sure you offer to pay him very generously. Even Buildzoid can fix it.

Edit you stacked 8 mOhm shunts on top of 5 mOhm. The fuses cannot blow with that afaik. You have 20 amp fuses (240W per 8 pin) on the 8 pins and 10 amp fuses (120W PCIE) on PCIE slot. I don't think you're going to exceed any fuse limit unless you went lower than 8 mOhm on the stack.

 

Like others suggested, remove the shunts and clean up the card and see if it boots.

If anything I would frame it if it does not work after you exhausted all options.

 

Yes. IIRC, the GPU power delivery circuits uses power reading rom the shunts to balance and limit power to the GPU. If there is an issue a shunt, it could cause your power targets to go screwy quickly and can cause the card to not work at all.

 

I wonder if the Gigabyte flat 8-pin connectors are also not to blame, since you're shunted and pushing more watts than stock. Could those have degraded from handling more power than intended?

 

We can provide guidance to repair this mess, but before, we need a clean view of the pcb.
Get some cotton swabs, clean GENTLY and delicately the parts you soldered, to remove all the residues, with ethanol 90%+.
When cleaning, be careful and check that the components are not moving, nor lifting up pads and traces.

Take another high quality picture, under a good light, of the interested parts and also of the whole pcb, please.

Tho, even if we can guide you with the basics of good soldering and troubleshooting, to fix it.
I would rather send the card to someone that repair electronics, as a daily job.
Just clean the mess that we can do a diagnostic, that you don't send the card to someone without an educated guess about the damage and the repairs needed.

 

looks like to me you soldered with flux, and did not clean it up afterwards.

Flux will corrode solder joints over time, you are supposed to clean it up with alcohol or something after soldering.

Good luck

 

I watch this guy on YouTube all the time and he's fixed plenty of 30 series GPU's. His micro soldering skills and knowledge in this field are extremely good. Check out some of his videos. His address is Northridge Fix, 18473 Devonshire St c, Northridge, CA 91325, United States

 

+1 on the message for
"get a pro to look on it , if you don't want / can't fix it yourself"
With any respect to the knowledge you share ~ figure out the point after where "you can or can not fix it" ~ and pay a professional to take a look.
Torturing it more, can have worse effects ~ nothing personal

Also @madness777 , in case you are bored 🤭 EDIT: Nvm it works again

 

Well, I undid the shunts and removed the solder on the fuses and to my surprise the card is working again, even in games at least for now. Its good to be wrong sometimes. I think I am going to order some replacement thermal pads though because the ones I put on there have become dry and flakey, although the temps are fine right now.

 

I bet you're a lot happier than you sound in your message. More like sweating rivers happy.

 

I don't know why you would attempt to work on such an expensive VGA card such as the 3090, unless you have extensive experience in that level of micro electronics work.

 

He simply didn't have proper soldering experience.
My guess is that he either didn't flux properly, didn't flux after each step, or didn't heat the shunts enough for the solder to form a bond, because he was afraid of burning the shunts (this won't happen, the PCB ends up absorbing a great deal of the heat). But my biggest guess is because the GB uses 2 watt shunts, it has the same issue as the FE shunts--the conductive silver edges sit lower than the middle housing. So you have to first create a solder bridge on top of the original shunts on the conductive edges, using flux and heating up the shunt enough for the solder to stick to it, and then flux again, then apply the new shunt and then melt the bridge so the solder flows on the edges of both the old and new shunt. If the bridge isn't thick enough, then no contact will be made. So the bridge has to be above the height of the black housing, on each side. It's essential especially with 2W shunts that you use 3M Polyimide tape to solder mask the PCB to avoid accidents and have some desoldering wick available as well just in case.

It's a lot easier with 1W shunts (e.g. MSI, eVGA, Asus), since then you don't need an initial bridge at all and you can just bond the edges directly.

 

I have a decent amount of soldering experience and have been modding things for years, although yes the contacts of the shunts being lower made it tricky, which I wasn't prepared for. I did use kapton tape to protect the rest of the pcb and of course flux where needed, although at first I was trying solder paste which did not work well . It was working for months so I still think there is something that just could not handle the extra watts over time.

 

Just an update the card died on me again the same way as before. Although before it died I was looking at hwinfo and it was showing 12v on pcie pin 1 and only 10v on pin 2 not sure if that is normal for desktop use though. Temps stayed in mid 60s in game and was doing fine all day. Edit:
Annnd its booting again, I just let it sit powered off for a little while, so now I'm thinking it might be something overheating like a vrm or maybe the ram? I just replaced the thermal pads but I will have to do some testing now to make sure everything has proper contact.

 

I was able to run 3dmark and taking a look at hwinfo while the test was running gpu 8 pin 1 voltage was 10.6 and 8 pin 2 was 11.6 and port royal score is low.

 

I was able to run 3dmark and taking a look at hwinfo while the test was running gpu 8 pin 1 voltage was 10.6 and 8 pin 2 was 11.6 and port royal score is low.

View attachment 2516307

Something's up with the power readings.
GPU 8 pin 1 + 8 pin 2 + PCIE Slot Power should equal Total Board Power (GPU Power).

 

Sounds like you have a PS issue.

Try testing it with a different GPU.

 

I put back in my good old 1080 ti and both its input pins are reading 12v+ so I don't think its the PSU. The card might just have some resistance lowering the input voltage.

 

I have the card out and sitting on my desk so at least I'm not using it. That would make sense if there is a short somewhere but its also kind of odd it worked for months before it became a problem but maybe something finally failed. HWINFO shows the 2 input pins on my 1080ti at 12v so I don't think the psu cables are bad. I will take one more close look at it to see if I can find any obvious shorts if not then I will send it off for repairs. I will be sure to check out the vids, I did watch one guy on youtube repair a 3090 with a multimeter but his skills were better than mine as he tracked down a missing linear regulator and was able to replace it.

 

You can contact him on instagram but i dont know how you would arrange him looking at the card. Plus he doesn't have parts to fix it.
(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqBEpeQPZTdhCd0nHWIf6g )

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I'm not really confident in either of them but what do I know? lol. This guy seems to know his stuff although maybe not an expert on the 30 series.

I filled out the form on northbridgefix site because he seems to be the easiest to get in contact with and does 30 series repair.

I also emailed this company Blog - Global Priority LLC
it looks like they fixed the 2080ti in the other thread with broken traces.

 

So my gigabyte 3090 died on me. Basically it started dropping signal while gaming or under any 3d load and finally it stopped giving a signal on boot. It had been working fine for the past 5-6 months or so and I had it on a water cooling loop with a bykski block and temps maxed out at a little over 60c. I did shunt mod it pretty much right away by stacking I think 10mohm shunts, and the mod was working fine and the card was pulling a bit over 500w at max power. I've read other gigabyte and evga cards can get this issue as well so I'm not 100% sure if its related to anything I've done to the card.

I'm wondering if its worth fixing the card, either myself or if I should try to find a repair shop or just sell it on ebay for parts/repair. I've taken pictures of the pcb in segments to maximize the resolution so its easier to see zoomed in.

Back side.

View attachment 2515576
You can see the pcie power shunt on the left side here.
View attachment 2515575
Front
View attachment 2515577
View attachment 2515581

I know the shunt job is a bit sloppy but I wasn't aware of the edges of the shunts being lower than the resistor itself so it took a couple tries leaving burn marks and some left over flux. I bridged what I thought were the fuses with just blobs of solder to bypass them from being blown.

It is not under warranty anymore???......Better to fix it they never pay well for damaged gpu's even 3090's

 

I saw broken 3090s going for $800+ on ebay, which is better than nothing. warranty is void, I hear gigabyte warranty service is pretty bad anyways. I sent the card off to global priority so hopefully they can repair it.

 

And we have 12 volts!~ woohooo. I got the card back from global priority and he was able to fix it. Apparently some of the solder paste had got under some of the components shorting one of the 12v 8 pin inputs. Another thing he fixed was the card at some point stopped running at 16x pcie bus speed and was stuck at 4x and he was able to find 2 small resistors and repair them on the card and now its running at 16x again. He also cleaned the card up extremely well it looks brand new. I forgot to take pictures of the pcb because I was excited to plug it in. He also sent me some extra solder, flux and some other things so I don't botch the next shunt mod as bad lol. I probably won't attempt to shunt mod this card again at least until something better than a 3090 comes out anyways.

 

And we have 12 volts!~ woohooo. I got the card back from global priority and he was able to fix it. Apparently some of the solder paste had got under some of the components shorting one of the 12v 8 pin inputs. Another thing he fixed was the card at some point stopped running at 16x pcie bus speed and was stuck at 4x and he was able to find 2 small resistors and repair them on the card and now its running at 16x again. He also cleaned the card up extremely well it looks brand new. I forgot to take pictures of the pcb because I was excited to plug it in. He also sent me some extra solder, flux and some other things so I don't botch the next shunt mod as bad lol. I probably won't attempt to shunt mod this card again at least until something better than a 3090 comes out anyways.

View attachment 2517241 View attachment 2517242 View attachment 2517243

You were only without a card for 5 days? Wow that's lightning speed turnaround. Congratulations.

 

What a pity that the video card broke. It is very expensive and powerful, but there is a new reason to wait for the 40th line of video cards from Nvidia. When I broke my computer, I had terrible stress, it became even stronger when I found out that the computer was beyond repair. I couldn't come to my senses for a long time until I tried CBD gummies canada. I realized that a computer is not the most important thing in life.

 

How did this get bumped? Though no joke, some of these micro soldering parts look scary. I wouldn't even dare dream of attempting it that they're so small.