Nvidia 960 hardware not detecting in windows 8.1 or in BIOS

Pathos_1

Reputable
Jan 23, 2016
2
0
4,510
My build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2m2ppg
The PC is one year old.

As the title says, I can't seem to get my Nvidia geforce960 to be detected in the device manager or in my BIOS anymore. See * at bottom for details when the card stopped working originally.

What I've tried
1. Re-seating device and/or moving to a different motherboard slot multiple times. Checking connections etc. The card didn't' click in but it's definitely in as far as it can go.
3. Putting my 960 card in another PC. It worked.
4. Put an Nvidia 970card from a friend in my PC, and the 970 worked.
5. Checked Device manager for unknown devices, or generic graphics adapters in different areas.
6. Restarting while having the HDMI cord I use plugged into the graphics card only.
7. Restarted with Uninstalled drivers for Nvidia cards.
8. Checked in BIOS to see if it detected the card. It didn't. http://i.imgur.com/paa30u5.png?1
9. Updated BIOS to the latest version on the MSI website.
10. Microsoft Fixit - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/mats/hardware_device_problems/en-us
11. System Restore'd to a point before the card seemed to fail.
11B. This also set my machine back to a point where I had the 960 drivers on again, and that didn't' change anything.
12. Disabled onboard graphics (in device manager) and restarted with HMDI in GPU. I haven't been able to find a way to disable onboard graphics in BIOS.
13. RMA'ed my Nvidia960 and tried most of the above again besides swapping cards/parts around in other people's rigs.

I feel pretty out of luck. I was completely sure after putting a 970 in that my card simply died on me. It could be the motherboard or PSU at this point but, again, those worked with my friend's nvidia970, so what am I missing here?


*Awhile ago, I was playing a game(Spec Ops: The Line) and noticed a lot of frame lag, as well as my second screen, which was not being used for the game, was having a strange darkening affect (think like a white to black gradient with whiter at the top and darker at the bottom) which faded in and out. Tabbing out of the game seemed to help this, but alt+tab would sometimes cause the graphics to outright crash. Eventually the graphics driver stopped working completely and the card was no longer detected.
 

Pathos_1

Reputable
Jan 23, 2016
2
0
4,510
So amusingly this got solved about 3 days after posting this. Here's what it was.

A friend took a look, and after a few basic ideas he actually thought it wasn't fitting into the slot correctly, but we could both clearly see it couldn't go any farther due to the mounting piece on the side. ex: (http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/news/4/6/46700_020_specification-speculations-nvidias-geforce-gtx-950-mount.jpg, http://compeve.com/images/MRCL001_compeve__1.jpg ).

After taking that off, low and behold, it clicked in.

I'm not sure exactly why the card mounted at first but over time it didn't. The card appears to only be off a few milometers with the mount. My best guess is heat warped either the mount or the case over the year I owned my rig. Keep in mind that if you do this fix, your GPU won't be properly mounted in the case, so you can't tip it right side up unless you rig up something else.
 

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