Graphics card blew up, possibly took motherboard or CPU with it how do I determine which one?

Question

Alright, so a few months ago, I was playing GTA V with my friend, and all of a sudden, my pc black screened, and all the lights went off. (As if someone had pulled the cord on it) A few seconds later, the PC rebooted by itself, and I noticed a crap ton of smoke coming out of the top of it. So I quickly pulled the plug, and determined it was the graphics card that blew (An EVGA GTX 1080 FTW if anyone needed to know) b I sent it into EVGA and they replaced it free of charge because it was still under warranty, but meanwhile, I tested my computer to make sure it was ok, and it booted just fine, everything was working well, but when I tried a different GPU in the motherboard, I found out that the top PCIE slot (the one that the 1080 was in when it exploded) no longer works, but the bottom two work still.

TL;DR: GPU exploded and possibly took MOBO or CPU with it (As evident by the non-working top PCIE slot).

So here's my question(s):
Is there any way I can tell if it is the CPU that was fried (maybe something that's just causing the top pcie slot to not work) or if it's the motherboard that is fried without trying a different CPU or motherboard, because I don't have access to either of them.

When I figure out which component is fried, who can I contact to get it replaced? Would I contact EVGA, because their card is what killed the motherboard, or do I contact GIGABYTE because it's their board that failed.

Answer 1

This is a known issue with the FTW GTX 1080 and 1070 because they didn't use thermal pads on the VRM and VRAM, like the rest of the world does. EVGA took a shortcut here and paid the price. These faulty cards were manufactured from June of 2016 to around November when the problem was discovered. AT least EVGA did own up to the issue and they offered replacement cards or a thermal pad kit to the people who had bought the defective cards.



In these situation where a piece of hardware like an AIO cooler leaks and kills off components, the manufacturer of that piece of hardware is the one you would want to turn to. You will want to contact EVGA first because they might pay for a new board or send you an EVGA board to replace your Gigabyte board. IMO, if they send you an EVGA board, then they are doing you a favor. I have washed my hands with Gigabyte and their lousy products.



Gigabyte has horrendous customer service. You can try to contact them if your efforts with EVGA fail. EVGA is a reliable company and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they replaced your board. The reason they wont work with you is Warranty service is invoked when there is a 'Defect' in their Workmanship. There was no defect here because your EVGA card did the damage.



Things you can do.

Your question has too much filler information and you're not being straight to the point here.

If it boots fine and passes stability tests then the processor should be good. The only other thing you could possibly do is pop the CPU out of the socket and check to see if there are any burnt pins or LANDS/Pads. A pin that is responsible for the PCI-E lanes may have been damaged.



If you plug the new card into the second slots and it works, then great. However, it's should be commonly known that the 2nd PCI-E x16 slot runs at x8. This won't really diminish performance either, and when it does it would be a 1% hit. The bottom line is, the first slot should be working in order to have a fully functional board.



The cost to replace the board varies. Used z170 and z270 are still cheap on ebay. The Gigabyte z170 Gaming 7 board can be found on ebay for less than $100, whereas the Gigabyte z97 Gaming 7 version costs $180. Right now, used z97 boards cost a lot more than z170 boards, but this is a normal occurrence with Legacy products.

Answer 2

I can't even begin to tell you who to call but I do know that you ought call an attorney and ask about a product lawsuit it's something I actually caught on fire to the point that it started smoking that's classified as dangerous and defective product you got to ask your lawyer and see what he says you might get a lot more then a new computer you can always claim that you were exposed to poisonous smoke from a dangerous and defective product sometimes these lawsuits can yield a million dollars instead of $1,000 for a new computer ask a lawyer. Graphics boards are not supposed to catch on fire and go to smoking or blow out motherboards or release smoke into your home!

Answer 3

It is possible the mobo is still OK, sans that one slot. The CPU is probably still ok, but without knowing what exactly happened to the graphics card, it's hard to say.



If the mobo has its own graphics chip, you can try booting the computer with that and see what happens. (the BIOS will automatically switch over.) For best results, boot into safe mode (hold down F4 while booting, I think?).



Otherwise, I'd try a spare graphics card in one of the other slots - just to be safe. (no sense in destroying a 2nd GTX 1080.)



If the computer seems to boot up OK, try looking for a test utility that will exercise the CPU, RAM and GPU. There are plenty of free ones (the Mobo may even have one) Let this run overnight. If there are no errors, then your remaining hardware is OK. Go ahead and swap in the new GTX 1080.



If the computer doesn't boot then it's you're going to have to do a lot more troubleshooting, starting with a new motherboard. Try plugging your old RAM and CPU into the new motherboard, again use the motherboard's built-in GPU or an older graphics card. Don't bother connecting the HDD or anything else. You just want to see if the system will POST properly and drop you into the BIOS. Make sure everything seems OK in the BIOS (proper CPU, all RAM is recognized, etc.) before moving forward by booting up Windows and again, run that system tester.