Asus Rog Strix rx480 AMD driver issue

[antonio18181]

Hello everyone!

3 days ago I started seeing small lag spikes in my most played games: Rocket League; Aion; Assetto Corsa(on medium-high settings 1920x1080); CS2, so I thought that the thermal paste needed to be changed for my CPU & GPU.
I went ahead and performed a deep cleaning process (gpu taken apart into 3 pieces: heat plate>back plate>fans) on all of my PC components. I change my thermal paste every 6-8 months as I use my computer daily for gaming and my room gets pretty hot sometimes.
I removed and cleaned the old layer of thermal paste on both components and applied another one (just enough amount) and mounted everything back as it was.
I booted up my computer with 0 problems, until I get into desktop and I see that the AMD driver is not launched and my monitor is stuck at 50hz. I thought that maybe it somehow crashed and needed a reinstall.
I went on AMD website, selected my GPU and downloaded the recommended version of the driver. I installed it and restarted my computer: same issue, didn't boot up with GPU driver.
I have went around the internet and came across some posts from this forum regarding flashing the GPU bios and I did that. It all went flawless with no issues. I've found the same GPU bios(stock), installed it(forced through Command Prompt due to the SSID mismatch error) and at the end I restart my PC as it's normal. Afterwards I install the AMD drivers and restart my PC one more time for the installation to be completed. I boot up into desktop and AMD drivers is installed and working, but just until I open a game, for example Rocket League, within 15-20 seconds since the game has opened, the PC either freezes, either it shuts down.
Currently I am able to boot due to my CPU integrated graphics.
In device manager I get : Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)

I have installed multiple GPU bios flashes, same issue.
I have checked all the cables and have booted my PC from bios A/B buttons on the motherboard, same issue.
I have switched the cables that power up the GPU. same issue.
I have changed the slot that the GPU is mounted in, same issue.
I have tried to install AMD drivers PRO version and older versions, same issue.
Since I have this GPU and I have changed the thermal paster, I've never had this issue.

GPU fans work, LED works and it looks fine, but it's not the same

Any help is very much appreciated and I will answer very fast(if I am not sleeping) to replies.

Thank you!

 

[VuurVOS]

Hello everyone!

3 days ago I started seeing small lag spikes in my most played games: Rocket League; Aion; Assetto Corsa(on medium-high settings 1920x1080); CS2, so I thought that the thermal paste needed to be changed for my CPU & GPU.
I went ahead and performed a deep cleaning process (gpu taken apart into 3 pieces: heat plate>back plate>fans) on all of my PC components. I change my thermal paste every 6-8 months as I use my computer daily for gaming and my room gets pretty hot sometimes.
I removed and cleaned the old layer of thermal paste on both components and applied another one (just enough amount) and mounted everything back as it was.
I booted up my computer with 0 problems, until I get into desktop and I see that the AMD driver is not launched and my monitor is stuck at 50hz. I thought that maybe it somehow crashed and needed a reinstall.
I went on AMD website, selected my GPU and downloaded the recommended version of the driver. I installed it and restarted my computer: same issue, didn't boot up with GPU driver.
I have went around the internet and came across some posts from this forum regarding flashing the GPU bios and I did that. It all went flawless with no issues. I've found the same GPU bios(stock), installed it(forced through Command Prompt due to the SSID mismatch error) and at the end I restart my PC as it's normal. Afterwards I install the AMD drivers and restart my PC one more time for the installation to be completed. I boot up into desktop and AMD drivers is installed and working, but just until I open a game, for example Rocket League, within 15-20 seconds since the game has opened, the PC either freezes, either it shuts down.
Currently I am able to boot due to my CPU integrated graphics.
In device manager I get : Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)

I have installed multiple GPU bios flashes, same issue.
I have checked all the cables and have booted my PC from bios A/B buttons on the motherboard, same issue.
I have switched the cables that power up the GPU. same issue.
I have changed the slot that the GPU is mounted in, same issue.
I have tried to install AMD drivers PRO version and older versions, same issue.
Since I have this GPU and I have changed the thermal paster, I've never had this issue.

GPU fans work, LED works and it looks fine, but it's not the same

Any help is very much appreciated and I will answer very fast(if I am not sleeping) to replies.

Thank you!

I think you card was about to die when you started. Can you make a picture of your card disassembled?
Did you try to clean and repaste the card again?

 

[antonio18181]

I think you card was about to die when you started. Can you make a picture of your card disassembled?
Did you try to clean and repaste the card again?

I tried, same result. I will take it apart and I will make some photos of it.

 

[Macro Device]

Repasting twice a year is too extreme. Check the temperatures before doing so. If it doesn't overheat then you don't need to do anything.

One of the likely scenarios is you somehow damaged GPU in the process, might be static electricity, who knows. Another one is your GPU was doomed anyway. Get ready to buy a new GPU as soon as possible even if you successfully resuscitate this one.

 

[antonio18181]

Temperatures were high while gaming to almost 90c. While gaming it was a path like: 80-83-85-87-88c while playing games like Assetto Corsa and sometimes rocket league too.

I think you card was about to die when you started. Can you make a picture of your card disassembled?
Did you try to clean and repaste the card again?

Here are the photos:

I have managed to make it work somehow, but only after i shut it off and turn it on a couple of times.
First thing that I see happens is that it's freezing at black screen with small loading circle above the text "ASUS" and my motherboard ASRock z170 z4 extreme is not showing any code. Prior to this the motherboard shows the normal behavior of numbers going from low numbers increasing to high number 1>99 and then doesn't show anything when the small circle is on the screen.
Now when I get into desktop everything is fine. Drivers for GPU are showing, better fps in games, no lags or stutter. One thing I did and didn't mention is that I changed the slots of the ram sticks and it didn't want to boot up, it was saying code E4, 16 and 00. Looked it up and it could be a RAM failure, but for both of my sticks?
Now I am really out of ideas as this could be the GPU or the RAM being defective...
Is it normal that the GPU is working better than before and now the RAM seems to be at fault?

 

[VuurVOS]

One thing I did and didn't mention is that I changed the slots of the ram sticks and it didn't want to boot up, it was saying code E4, 16 and 00. Looked it up and it could be a RAM failure, but for both of my sticks?
Now I am really out of ideas as this could be the GPU or the RAM being defective...

Did you ran stress tools like occt to confirm your processor and memory is error free?
Socket 1151 is LGA. Reseating the processor can fix memory problems.

About the graphics card, did you make a backup of the orginal bios?

 

[antonio18181]

I did make a backup of the original.

This ram issue I think I've had for a while because I've moved the position of the ram sticks between the slots because the pc wouldn't boot in windows before all of this. I've restarted the PC and now the GPU is fine, but the RAM starts to show it's defective as my PC booted and as soon as it shows my wallpaper i received a blue screen saying MEMORY_management error.
As soon as I switch positions between my two sticks of ram, it doesn't boot correctly anymore. I also can't use both of my RAM now
Tomorrow I will go ahead and buy Kingston Fury Beast 16GB(x2 8gb) ddr4 3600MHz CL17 brand new and see if the error still appears.

 

[mechtech]

I did make a backup of the original.

This ram issue I think I've had for a while because I've moved the position of the ram sticks between the slots because the pc wouldn't boot in windows before all of this. I've restarted the PC and now the GPU is fine, but the RAM starts to show it's defective as my PC booted and as soon as it shows my wallpaper i received a blue screen saying MEMORY_management error.
As soon as I switch positions between my two sticks of ram, it doesn't boot correctly anymore. I also can't use both of my RAM now
Tomorrow I will go ahead and buy Kingston Fury Beast 16GB(x2 8gb) ddr4 3600MHz CL17 brand new and see if the error still appears.

Maybe try running at 3200 and use an older vga driver?

 

[antonio18181]

So this is very weird for me and maybe it will be for everyone that reads this...
I just got the new ram(managed to find the store open) and it works perfect. How is it possible that due to the RAM my GPU drivers stopped working? What kind of witchcraft is this...
Thank you all for helping out! I will flash back my GPU back to it's original bios.

 

[Imperator]

Hello.
Unfortunately, ASUS made some errors when they designed those cards.
I am talking about memory cooling solutions.
As i said in many posts i own some ASUS Polaris cards, and some of them are defective (memory chips fried) because of that design flaw.
Actually the cooler does not cover all memory chips so some of them are actually uncovered.