No, you don't necessarily need the 6-pin 12V power cable unless it matches your specific setup requirements.
No, you don't necessarily need the 6-pin 12V power cable unless it matches your specific setup requirements.
I’m encountering unusual GPU error codes (42 and 60) and need to restart my system repeatedly until it enters safe mode. Once in safe mode, I can exit BIOS and boot into Windows normally. There are no problems once inside Windows or during gameplay, so the GPU appears healthy. I only use the 24-pin connector on my board, not the 6-pin adapter next to it. Could this be the cause? My specifications are: CPU – AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, motherboard – ASUS ROG x670E-Crosshair Hero, GPU – Zotac Trinity RTX 3080 12G LHR (water blocked), RAM – Corsair Dominator 32GB DDR5 6000MHz, power supply – EVGA Supernova 1000W Platinum Certified. This has been a problem since day one of the build. I’m using the latest BIOS and all drivers are up to date. I’ve tried updating the GPU BIOS but it didn’t help. Stress testing the GPU shows no issues—temperatures are normal, and there’s no instability during games. The real issue appears only after a 5–10 minute power-off or longer. It’s frustrating because I want to turn off my PC quickly, but it can take hours to recover. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Highly unlikely. The extra 6 pin is for supplemental PCIe power. Problem is that unless you're running 3 GPUs, you're not going to have more than the ~200W the 24 pin is rated for. On a board that can only take 2 GPUs, that second 8 pin is more for decorative purposes than actually necessary in any situation. I'd assume that this is probably a BIOS issue somewhere, in which case you've got to wait for a newer BIOS to come out and try that. The only other thing I can think of is that you're running a Gen 3 riser, the card has issues with that riser at Gen 4 speed (what it will default to with a 3080), and when it goes into safe mode it sets the PCIe slots to Gen 3. Given you didn't say anything about a riser though, I that's probably not what's going on.
I received this board initially and kept updating the BIOS in hopes it would improve performance. I’m using a cable mods pro kit (not the replacement cables) but also experimented with the power cables that came with the card/MB without success. The card is installed directly into the PCIE slot on my board (the top slot). ASUS hasn’t helped; they suggested returning it for repair, which I did once and it didn’t resolve the problem. They only offer to send it back again. Unfortunately, I don’t have another GPU or the budget to buy one even for testing. It’s been a really frustrating process and I’m unsure if this is due to being an early adopter on the AM5 platform or if there’s something fundamentally wrong. The only components I haven’t tried swapping yet are the CPU and GPU. I’ve changed memory, MB, and PSU to address earlier BSOD issues linked to memory. Switching from GSKILL to Corsair fixed the memory problem but the GPU issue persists.
I don’t really have much more to share about it. The most similar problem I encountered on AM5 (B650 Aorus Elite AX) was that the HDMI port on the GPU (7900 XTX) sometimes works at 50/50 between detection and display, but this was resolved by using a different DP port. This isn’t the same as the issues you’re facing with POST codes 42 and 60. The only other possibility I can think of is that the BIOS was set to Legacy mode for an old Windows installation, which seems unusual since a new platform should use UEFI instead.