Black screen, loud fan. Have to restart

Jonny Chee · 20 Feb 2013 at 08:16

On a few occasions lately, after returning to my PC, I notice there is a really loud fan noise and the screen is black. The monitor light has changed to standby mode.

The only way I can fix this is to cut the power and restart the machine.

At first I thought it was due to my overclock as I got the message relating to this when booting up.

The problem is still occurring even when I have restored BIOS to fail safe defaults.

My build is in my sig. Graphics card, case, PSU and CPU cooler are only a couple of months old and CPU, Ram, MOBO and HDD are less than a year old.

Does anybody have any ideas?

Devrij · 20 Feb 2013 at 08:40

Could be your power supply. If you have a multi-meter then try testing the voltages of the psu. If the PWR_OK line is low then it'll still power everything up with fans at full whack, but the cpu won't get the instruction to boot.

Surveyor · 20 Feb 2013 at 09:10

Check the power cable connections to the Graphics Card (both ends as it's a modular PSU).

If I remember rightly the fan on AMD cards runs at full whack if the card doesn't detect the correct power connections.

Devrij · 20 Feb 2013 at 09:39

Also, have you tried running the rig off the IGP temporarily to see if the issue still crops up? It would rule out the gfx card if it does. If the problem disappears, then that doesn't exonerate the PSU or GFX from fault though as the lower load might hide any issues with it.

Jonny Chee · 20 Feb 2013 at 18:27

Just took the side off when it happened again, it definitely sounds like the fan on the graphics card.

I disconnected and reconnected it and also checked the PSU end. All connected fine it seems.

After putting it back on I watched it and as soon as my monitor display goes off into power saving mode, it happens all over again.

Can't even try with the IGP as my monitor doesn't have a HMDI port. :mad:

Does it sound like my card is dead?

dacads · 20 Feb 2013 at 18:29

Does this happen with the graphics card at stock speeds?

I doubt it's dead otherwise you wouldn't be getting anything on screen in the first place

Jonny Chee · 20 Feb 2013 at 18:36

I am only running the card at stock speeds at the moment.

The strange thing is, it only seems to happen when the PC is idle, when I am using it, it seems fine....

Hodders · 21 Feb 2013 at 01:07

OK, here is my guess. GPU fan is screwed.

PC in idle, all cools down, graphics card slows fan down and the bearings cause fan to go even slower. GPU crashes. Restart causes restart of GPU fan.

Fix - new GPU fan.

linwelin · 21 Feb 2013 at 01:24

Hodders said:
OK, here is my guess. GPU fan is screwed.

PC in idle, all cools down, graphics card slows fan down and the bearings cause fan to go even slower. GPU crashes. Restart causes restart of GPU fan.

Fix - new GPU fan.

cant see that being the cause of it, but what temp does the card get to ?

Jonny Chee · 21 Feb 2013 at 08:21

GPU temps are totally normal. Idling around 28c.

Played BF3 for a while yesterday and hovered around 60c. Again, no problems when gaming, it always seems to happen after the computer is left idle for a while.

Might be able to borrow a different GFX card from a friend and see if the problem occurs with that....

Mrjobby · 21 Feb 2013 at 09:16

What are your power options? Sounds like the computer is going into sleep and getting stuck.

Not sure other than drivers what would cause that however.

Motherboard bios on latest?

Jonny Chee · 21 Feb 2013 at 09:20

Mrjobby said:
What are your power options? Sounds like the computer is going into sleep and getting stuck.

Not sure other than drivers what would cause that however.

Motherboard bios on latest?

I have updated my motherboard to the latest BIOS about a month ago actually.

I haven't really messed with any other power options, other than getting the display to turn off after 10 minutes and computer to sleep after 30 minutes.

yashiro · 21 Feb 2013 at 12:16

Sounds more like turning off the display or going into standby is bugged. Standby being the more likely since suspending to ram depends on all drivers working correctly.

Jonny Chee · 21 Feb 2013 at 14:06

yashiro said:
Sounds more like turning off the display or going into standby is bugged. Standby being the more likely since suspending to ram depends on all drivers working correctly.

Will try disabling standby mode and see if it happens again.

If that rectifies the problem, I might try formatting...

Gibbo3771 · 21 Feb 2013 at 14:06

Honestly tried removing it, cleaning the PCI-E slot with some compressed air, clearing the cmos and battering it back in?

Could honestly just be a weird connection, some sort of bad contact.

Or your windows could be borked and failing to go into sleep properly, before your pc goes in idle low power sleep mode, for some reason beyond me every fan hits 100% for a few seconds lol.

Jonny Chee · 21 Feb 2013 at 14:17

Gibbo3771 said:
Honestly tried removing it, cleaning the PCI-E slot with some compressed air, clearing the cmos and battering it back in?

Could honestly just be a weird connection, some sort of bad contact.

Or your windows could be borked and failing to go into sleep properly, before your pc goes in idle low power sleep mode, for some reason beyond me every fan hits 100% for a few seconds lol.

Didn't clear the CMOS after removing it, and I don't have any compressed air unfortunately.

Might see if I can get hold of some and try this too.

linwelin · 21 Feb 2013 at 16:19

Have you checked the event viewer ? after the computer restarts check the logs, see if anything has been reported so you have some kind of idea what is causing it.

Jonny Chee · 22 Feb 2013 at 08:08

linwelin said:
Have you checked the event viewer ? after the computer restarts check the logs, see if anything has been reported so you have some kind of idea what is causing it.

Never used event viewer so will need to figure out how to use it.

Tried the big clean out with compressed air, resetting CMOS etc, but same problem.

Now going to try disabling any power saving and see if it reoccurs.

Jonny Chee · 22 Feb 2013 at 10:32

Computer has been left unattended for over two hours with power saving mode disabled and no sign of the problem reoccurring.

So, it would seem that it is an issue with the power saving mode. How best to fix this, a fresh install of OS?

linwelin · 22 Feb 2013 at 13:04

Jonny Chee said:
Computer has been left unattended for over two hours with power saving mode disabled and no sign of the problem reoccurring.

So, it would seem that it is an issue with the power saving mode. How best to fix this, a fresh install of OS?

You could try a fresh install, but it sounds more like a hardware fault than software to me, unless you have been getting a Blue Screen, have you set it so it pauses when you get a blue screen ?

Goto: Control Panel\System and Security\System Then goto Advanced tab, then look to the bottom for Startup And Recovery, click settings, untick automatic restart, set your PC to power saveing mode and wait and see if the problem comes back, if it does write down the error codes.