So let me give you a brief idea of what started this whole thing. About a week ago I was on my computer and launched Autodesk Fusion 360 to do some modeling. (I would love to say it's been running great up till then but to be honest It hasn't been plugged in and has been sitting in a corner of my office for over 6 months while I've been doing some remodeling.) Regardless I finally got my desk setup, and everything plugged in, and she fired right up. worked fine for about 3 days until I tried to run Fusion. Got a BSOD with the so very vague IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL which to be honest I haven't seen in a while but thought to myself you know. I have a lot of crap on this computer I don't need, and it wouldn't hurt to just do a fresh install of windows. so that's what I did.
I installed Windows 11 and randomly rebooted in the middle of the install two times or so. and thought that's odd, but finally was able to get to a desktop. Started installing drivers as any normal person would do. it would literally reboot anytime you would try to install any type of driver. Went into troubleshooting mode and started unplugging everything except monitor mouse and keyboard. and started a fresh install. same thing. checked the drive, memory reset factory defaults on motherboard and even flashed it with the latest firmware. same thing. This went on for about a week and finally last night I thought let me pull the video card out and see if it works. Pulled the card and voila a worked like a charm. Re-installed it, same thing. Pulled the card out and put it in another PCIe slot. Same thing. Installed the video card drivers from AMD's website and installed the card. it's been working fine. While that being said I haven't put it under a load but so far so good. I did leave out that I tried Windows 10 and 11 about 5 times each.
Which brings me to my actual question. Why on earth would I have to remove this mammoth beast of a video card out of my computer to install the drivers? Is this something anyone else is having to do or is it possible there is something wrong with this card. I know that installing drivers before you plug-in a usb device is usually recommended but with a video card? What if I had a motherboard that didn't have onboard graphics? Am I just supposed to have a spare video card just laying around? I do but that's not the point.
Anyway. Just wanted to know if anyone else was having to deal with this and if you are you might try that and see if it helps you out. And wanted to see if you think I should contact AMD Support?