I've got a RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra, and I've been experiencing reboots at high loads. At first I thought it was just Cyberpunk 2077, so I'd tried the usual: DDU, reinstall driver/install older driver, but that didn't help. So, I thought maybe it was just that one game, as I'd been playing several other games before it released, including the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes, RE7, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Wolfenstein Youngblood. No issues with those. And I didn't have any problems with my previous RTX 2080, which I had sold about a month and a half after I'd got my 3080. My temperatures are at max load: ~60C on the CPU and GPU. I have pretty good airflow in this case, with plenty of fans, and I keep it cleaned regularly.
I have also disabled Windows' Startup and Recovery/System Failure/Automatic Restart, to see if I could see any BSODs. When my PC reboots like this, however, I don't receive any BSODs--just a reboot, like the reset button had been pressed. In the Windows Event Viewer, it only displays an Event ID 41 Kernel-Power, with no timestamps or bugcheck codes.
So I downloaded OCCT to stress test my components. The CPU, Linpack, RAM, VRAM, and PSU tests all passed, but as soon as I ran the 3D (GPU) test, my PC would reboot. Other benchmarks and stress tests wouldn't cause a reboot, such as the ones included with 3DMark. I also used memtest86 to check my RAM, and it also passed the full length test. And of course I also set my CPU and RAM overclock to all stock/default/auto settings in my motherboard BIOS. This also didn't help.
Also ran sfc /scannow and DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth and found no system file integrity errors.
I tried using lower power settings, but that didn't help, either. I tried reseating my GPU, plugging and replugging the power connectors. No luck. So then I wondered it my PSU was faulty, even though I'd installed it at the same time as my RTX 3080. I'd bought this Seasonic Prime TX-1000 specifically for this RTX 3080, in case my previous Seasonic Prime Titanium 750W PSU was underpowered. But I went ahead and swapped the older PSU back into my PC, along with all the power cables. Oh and I'm using separate cables for each of the video card's power connectors---in fact, both of these PSUs only use single cables; no daisy chained cables here. Well, that didn't work, either. I'd still get PC reboots with OCCT 3D stress test.
Then, I put my 1000W PSU back in, and decided to bypass my uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and just plug my PC directly into the wall. That seemed to fix the problem, as I was able to pass the OCCT 3D stress test then. I'd also bought that UPS, a Cyberpower 1500VA/1000W UPS, just recently. I had been using a 600W Cyberpower UPS before that. But I had the idea to use both of my UPS's, and plug everything but my PC into the smaller one, and just my PC into the larger one. That also seemed to work, as I was able to pass the stress test and play Cyberpunk 2077 without issue for at least a week. But then I got another reboot while playing Cyberpunk, along with reboots while running the OCCT 3D stress test, so I unplugged my PC from the UPS and went with plugging directly into the wall again.
That also seemed to work, for a while...until I eventually started to get reboots in both Cyberpunk and OCCT's 3D stress test once again. So...I don't think it's any of my PSUs or UPSs.
I came across this thread, and tried lowering my power limit even further than I had, down to 65% as someone else had tried. I got more reboots while trying OCCT's 3D test again. I also tried an undervolting method mentioned in this thread, and it didn't work, either. Actually, before I ran the stress test, I tried the Unigen Heaven benchmark, which hadn't crashed before, while all this has been happening...but my PC rebooted while running it. So it doesn't look like undervolting has helped me, either. So I reset the GPU back to stock settings again.
Strangely, I've been able to play Battlefront II without any issue, and played a round of StarCraft II earlier today without any problems. And while I had been able to play Heroes of the Storm without crashing or rebooting, as it's a fairly lightweight game, I did get a reboot while trying to load a map today. So, it seems like the problem is getting worse. But, I'm not getting any red lights on the video card.
I've already started the RMA process for the RTX 3080 and I'm just waiting for approval. Hopefully this fixes the issue. But I wonder if it could be my motherboard, or my motherboard's PCIe slot. I haven't tried the 3080 in the lower slot, yet. But I figured that if the PCIe slot is faulty, I'd have other issues, such as artifacting, or black screening, losing connection to the monitor, etc. I'm not getting any of those problems. I also haven't tried replacing my CMOS battery. But in the case of the battery, I think I'd be experiencing other issues (such as losing time and date, BIOS settings, etc.). I've experienced faulty motherboards in general, and I know the usual symptoms of that: reboots at idle, freezing, no signal to monitor, corrupt Windows file integrity, etc.--I'm not getting any of that here.
I'm really at my wits' end here. I hope the replacement GPU solves these issues, but if not, then I'll know it's my motherboard (or something else, I guess..). I'm just really not looking forward to replacing it, since the stock on any that would fit my CPU is very low, and prices are higher than they would normally be. And this isn't the best time to build a new PC (the core components anyway, the CPU and motherboard and maybe also RAM), since there's new stuff coming out and scalping is still rampant. I was hoping to keep my core setup for at least another few years.
Just to round this off, here are my full specs:
CPU: Intel i7 8700K @4.7 GHz
Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus X Hero (Wi-Fi AC) - Z370 chipset
RAM: 32GB (4 x 8 GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 CL16
GPU: EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB FTW3 ULTRA GAMING
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
PSU: SeaSonic PRIME TX 1000 W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully Modular ATX
Case: Corsair Air 740 ATX Full Tower Case
UPS: CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD
***just a quick edit to add some info on the Cyberpunk 2077 reboots: So when this first started happening, it wasn't happening all the time. In fact, at first I thought it was just a fluke. Anyway, it was only happening in Cyberpunk 2077 when I hit the Esc key to pause the game. It wouldn't happen in normal gameplay. It normally runs very smoothly with mostly high settings and the top level ray tracing settings, with DLSS on Balanced. It would just reboot whenever I hit pause, but not all the time. Sometimes I could be playing for a few hours and it would happen, sometimes when I first loaded into the game, and sometimes not at all. It wasn't happening on any other screens that would effectively pause the game, such as the inventory, character, or map screens (I had heard some people were getting this same issue in those other screens). But at one point it did crash/reboot when I had used a fast travel station, which is basically the map screen. More recently, I got a reboot before I got into the main menu; I hadn't even loaded a save. But it still wasn't happening in any other game or benchmark, until just recently, when I had a crash/reboot while running Unigen Heaven, and today when it rebooted while loading into a Heroes of the Storm game. But that is why I was interested in this thread, because with Cyberpunk, which is very graphics-intensive, I can see the wattage (using HWInfo and RTSS) drop from ~380W to ~140W, and the talk about low power states made me think of this. I'm not sure if that's in the same vein of the discussion or not, though.
***edit 2: I know I could still try a few more things to rule out my motherboard (and I can always do that later, I guess), but the posts below mine make me feel better about starting the RMA process for this 3080 now.
***waiting for my replacement 3080 to get here. Thought I'd try to play Europa Universalis IV (EU4) before I take my current 3080 out to ship back on Monday, since it wouldn't go anywhere right now on the weekend. EU4 is an very lightweight game, essentially just a map. My PC rebooted right as the main menu was about to load. So yeah, whatever the problem is, it's definitely worse than it was.
***Update, 3/3/2021: I got my replacement in today. Black accents (not the red lips this time), serial number first 4 digits 2114, packaged in USA. Just for reference, my previous card was: serial number 2014, made in Taiwan. Everything seems to be okay; no reboots yet with OCCT 3D stress test--tested on shader complexity levels 3, 5, and then 8. I'll be fairly satisfied that the rebooting issue is fixed if I continue to pass gaming/benchmarks/stress tests over the next week or so.
Initially, I had a loud clicking noise coming from one of the fans, but I updated the firmware to the latest and it went away, although the standard fans ramping to 100% during the firmware update scared me...the clicking was very, very loud. But then I rebooted my PC myself, and the fans always spin up during reboots, just as they do during power on, and they didn't make any noises then. I ran the stress test and a few benchmarks and sometimes I'll hear a faint clicking/rattling when the fans ramp up, but it stops. I've checked that I don't have anything up in the fan shroud/heatsink, but I could check again I suppose. I've checked to make sure all fans are running at roughly the same RPM, and they are, so I don't think any of them were damaged.
***
post edited by Pwnstix - 2021/03/03 18:16:06