ASUS ROG Strix RTX3060 Ti - RGB turns off and stops working

[justanothernoob]

I searched and could find a few posts where other people have been hit with this problem but I couldn't find any fixes other than RMA'ing the card so thought I'd share what's worked for me to fix this.

Like most people, I panicked and thought "sh*te! Don't tell me my card has just died?!"  If you have a similar "moment" - don't worry, all is not lost 🙂

Apologies for the lengthy schpiel but hopefully there's enough information here to help others fix their issue and remove the stress!

Symptoms:

On booting the pc the RGB panel on the GPU would light up and fans would spin up. Fans then stop after a second or two (before Windows 11 has managed to boot). This is normal (or rather, is what the card has always done). I can't remember whether it was on Windows login screen or after I logged in but fans would then restart for about 20 seconds before spinning down. So far, this is just "business as usual" and no different to how it's always behaved.

However, shortly after that the RGB panel would then turn off.

All "appears" to be fine:

• Display output still works from the card.
• There are no POWER LED lights lit up (which shows that all is fine with the card). Windows Device Manager still shows the card with no warning.
• Armoury Crate still runs (not that I've done anything with it beyond installing the app).
• GPU Tweak III still runs, can see the card and reports on GPU temperatures, etc., ...
• Argus Monitor detects the GPU and reports temperature fine.
• FanControl happily sees the GPU and can be used to start / stop the fans no problems.
• If I run Rainbow Six Under Siege then the fans spin up at some point after I start playing.

There's just no RGB display.

This appears to have happened literally overnight and I noticed it when I got up this morning. All was fine when I went to bed last night.

Fix:

I uninstalled EVERYTHING related to the card with regular shutdown and physical finger-poke to restart (rather than reboot) to ensure a clean boot into Windows -

• Windows Device Manager - remove the card. If you're still connected to one of the GPU video ports, Windows will redetect the card, add it into Device Manager and re-apply the drivers. So plug into your pc's native video port.
• Armoury Crate - use the Armoury Crate Uninstall tool. Using Windows Add / Remove Programs made no difference.
• Uninstall GPU Tweak III - in Windows Add / Remove Programs you'll have to manually scroll down the list until you find it. Searching on any combination of "GPU" or "Tweak" did not show any results. Either ASUS software dev team need to take a look at that or it seems ASUS really don't want you to remove that.

• All NVIDIA software via Windows Add / Remove Programs. *** I got error messages when trying to remove the "NVIDIA HD Audio Driver 1.4.0.1" and also "NVIDIA PhysX System Software 9.23.1019" - both said that the software could not be removed and that a system restart was required. System restarts don't seem to make any difference. I'm running an eGlobal minipc with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX so it uses the AMD sound drivers. I did notice that in Windows Device Manager under Sound there was an entry for NVIDIA HD Audio so I uninstalled that device.

After rebooting, all appears to have returned to normal. It's now been running fine for 56 minutes and counting.

I suspect the root cause is an update to a config file somewhere. Last night I installed FanControl. The app was set to start on Windows Login and stay minimised in the tray. I wonder if maybe there was a corrupted entry made to a config file in relation to spinning down the fans when I logged out (i.e. FanControl stops working and maybe turns itself and anything it's monitoring off)? At this stage, I'm simply clutching at straws and speculating as I'm at a loss for what else it could be and am going back to the age-old principle of "what changed?"

PC Config:

• eGlobal minipc with AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX
• GPU mounted on ADT-Link R3G with PCIe 4x16 connector into a 2nd M.2 NVME slot
• GPU powered by Corsair RM850X. The only other device being powered by this PSU is the ADT-Link R3G via the 24 pin cable. This PSU is total over-kill for this but the beauty is that the PSU will never be stressed and because of Corsairs Silent Mode the power drain is so low that the fan never needs to spin up: the whole setup is totally silent 😁
• Using separate Corsair Type 5 PCIe power cables for each of the GPU's power inputs.
• Windows 11 Pro
• Card was only installed circa 30th September 2024 (I can't remember but that's when the drivers were last updated so I'm presuming this was when I did the initial install and driver update. From memory, Windows update didn't detect any new drivers from the 2021 versions and drivers were only updated once I installed Armoury Crate).

Before anyone starts with the "you might as well have / would have been better to build a full desktop pc" ... nope. This whole setup cost me about NZ$2 1/2k. Here in NZ you won't get that spec of pc for that price - not with 64GB ram. Plus it comes down to personal preference: while those fish-bowl pcs with their RGB do look bloody beautiful, I prefer small and discrete. The footprint of my solution is tiny. I literally have the eGPU and minipc on the desk with the psu mounted under the desk.  Plus I can easily unplug this and use it with my GPD Win Max laptop. Worst case scenario, I can always use the components for a fishbowl build later if I need to.

Anyway, this seems to have fixed my problem so hopefully this is useful for others and helps remove any stress that your expensive GPU might have just bitten the bullet 😉

***EDIT: So it turns out this isn't quite fixed...

I use multiple profiles for my pc. I have a separate Admin account and then all other accounts are setup as "user" accounts (i.e. no Admin access) to minimise the potential impact in  the event my pc is hacked / infected with a virus.

When I was doing all of the above work to resolve the RGB light issue, I was using the Admin account. The moment I log in with either of 2 different "user" accounts, the issue recurs. So I'm guessing it's either a profile setting or profile permissions issue.

The odd thing is that this wasn't a problem until this morning. More chin-scratching required ... appreciate any thoughts as to how to check what's being triggered / permissions issues required.