Hey everyone! I have a really odd problem which started about a week ago. I purchased the 980 just over a year ago and has been working great however last week i bought rust and played it and it was fine. Then suddenly a few days ago, after like 3 hours into a game my screen turned black and pc instantly rebooted. This had never happened before and i didn't take much notice but it happened again after a few hours so I started to get worried. I looked online and most pointed to a psu issue. Luckily for me my brother also has a gaming pc so I could swap parts to get to the bottom on the issue. Also I downloaded Furmark to stress test the GPU to see if it would reboot and as soon as i press start on the stress test it did.
 
Following tests were done using Furmark btw

• Firstly I underclocked my GPU to reference speeds from nvidia ( I have the SC version) and this still didnt solve the issue.
• I done fresh install of nvidia drivers and it didn't solve the issue
• I used my brothers 650w corsair PSU and it still rebooted on furmark
• I put my GPU itself in my brothers Gaming PC, downloaded furmark and it still rebooted
• I tried a fresh install of Windows and still rebooted

After doing these tests I concluded it was something wrong with the GPU.
I also downloaded MSI Kombustor and use the stress tests on that and this is where things got weird. I ran the Tessellation (lakes of titan), Open CL stress test, Physx stress test and even Furmark GPU memory bruner stress test for like 5 minutes each and they also ran fine, no reboot. But as soon as I ran the Furmark GPU Core burner it rebooted. Also I ran the furmark gpu core burner test again and sometimes it would reboot instantly, sometimes it would reboot after 1 min of running, sometimes it would be fine for a while, I would stop it and run the same test again but in full screen and it would reboot.
 
Also temperature is not an issue, I have an NZXT S340 and im in an air condition room which is really cool and GPU never goes above 70-75 under stress test and stays 60-65 when gaming.
 
I also ran the GTA V benchmark with all the settings maxed out and the GPU was fine, I played BF4 for like 5-10 mins it was fine.
Maybe because these games were only played for a short while it was fine but when I play rust, it crashes sometimes in 1 hour, sometimes after 3-4 hours etc. 
 
My card would still be under the 3 year limited warranty since I have the original receipt from an authorised seller. Im not really sure of what to do at the minute, it seems when I use it for browsing watching video GPU is fine but under certain stress loads it reboots my PC.
 
edit 1 - The 980 caused a reboot during the kombustor Tessellation (lakes of titan) stress test.
 

 

ROCK28

• I put my GPU itself in my brothers Gaming PC, downloaded furmark and it still rebooted

Time to rma the card.