Gtx 970 black screen crash (no signal)

[Emjay86]

Hey guys,

I've had a GTX 970 for almost 2 years and I'm experiencing black screen crashes that I suspect are actually blue screens as when they happen my pc becomes unresponsive and the only way to get the pc working again is to hard restart/reboot.

The crash itself happens only when gaming and it happens only on certain games. At that point I'd understand if it was suspected to be a driver issue. Unfortunately I don't think this is the case as I have rolled back to previous drivers, used DDU to clean install them, I've even done a clean install of my entire system and I'm still getting the issue. I've changed PCI slots and I've even gone back to usibg my old GPU which stopped the crashing.

I feel at this stage it's a dodgy card that needs RMAing but before I did I just wanted to check if I've covered everything and I havnt missed something obvious.

If all in doubt however I bought the card from OCUK, it's one of the Galax infinity cards and I'm unsure who or how I would go about setting up an RMA.

Any help would be massively appreciated.

Thanks in advance!


P.S. Ive just checked windows event log after having a crash last night and its got an error stating that my hard disks have been removed, any ideas what this could be?

Ill add this to the general hardware just in case this is an issue with another hardware item (like my mobo!)

Thanks again.

 

[jbh110tdi]

what is your complete spec?

 

[Doomedspeed]

What power supply do you have?

What are your temps looking like at idle and load?

 

[Emjay86]

Specs with temps are:

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz 38 °C
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 668MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. Z68X-UD7-B3 (Socket 1155) 34 °C
Graphics
BenQ XL2410T (1920x1080@120Hz)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (NVIDIA) 41 °C
Storage
119GB M4-CT128M4SSD2 ATA Device (SSD)
465GB Western Digital WDC WD5000AZRX-00A8LB0 ATA Device (SATA) 30 °C
931GB Seagate ST310005 24AS SCSI Disk Device (SATA) 35 °C
Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS70 ATA Device
Audio
Corsair Vengeance 2100 Headset

Forgot to mention my PSU is an OCZ Gold 1250W

 

[jbh110tdi]

as above what psu do you have? any ideas on age of it?

did you use speccy to get this info?

if you click on storage youll see info for each drive can you go to the S.M.A.R.T section for each drive.
under there you will see status make sure they all say good. just with you saying the event log stated a drive had been removed this should hopefully rule out a bad drive.

 

[Emjay86]

Apologies my entire PC is about 5 years old except for my GPU which is 2 years old and my Western Digital HDD which is about 2-3 years.

I did indeed use Speccy and it states good on everything in the HDD sections.

 

[Doomedspeed]

It seems to be pointing to a power issue, in my eyes. Any idea what PSU you have; wattage, make? model? ect.

 

[Emjay86]

Thanks for the feedback so far guys, im using a OCZ ZX Series 1250W PSU. About 5 years old.

 

[jbh110tdi]

yea when I first read it I was thinking PSU as well its just when you said about the drive I thought possibly a bad drive.

but yea I would be looking at a new PSU you dont need anything as big as you have in there.

 

[Emjay86]

Yea it's an old PSU that was initially bought for the same system with two 580GTX cards. Obviously with new tech they have less power requirements and then there's one less.

Could this simply be a PSU issue though? Would the whole machine not shut off rather than hang in a BSOD?

I'll make another thread in the PSU section for suggestions.

 

[ScottiB]

I first thought, when reading the OP, was also PSU. The age and brand of the PSU just reinforced by suspicions.

It only takes a dip on one PSU rail to cause issues like this. A small dip on the 12V rail could cause the MB and/or VGA to become unstable enough to cause this issue.

The PSU is getting on a bit by any measurement so it might be worth getting a new one either way.

I'm not saying that the graphics card is not to blame, but it's not the only potential suspect so it's worth testing other possibilities if you can.

 

[jbh110tdi]

what would your budget be on a PSU?

Im using the XFX XTR 750W its a great PSU based on the seasonic g750 but its not cheap at just shy of £100

 

[Emjay86]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm hoping obviously this indeed is just a PSU issue. I DO get some coil whine/crackle from the PSU when gaming so I figure it does make sense, along with as you say the age and such.

Honestly in regards to a new PSU the sky is the limit. Im happy to pay a bit for quality rather than suffer a bad PSU for skimping out. Obviously I need less power now I don't have the two 580's plugged in but I will at some point in the future -potentially near- be upgrading my mobo, RAM and CPU.

With all that in mind I imagine I wont need any higher than a 1000W? Even that would be too much?

I really have no idea in truth!

Thanks for the feedback so far guys youve been amazing (as always!).

 

[Bluntwrapped]

The problem may be your onboard sound (Realtek) interfering with the Nvidia HD Audio driver and/or the driver you have installed for your headset. Unfortunately the Realtek driver doesn't play nice with other audio drivers and can cause GPU black screen crashes as you have described. Go to your device manager, find the Realtek audio device, right click on it and disable. Try gaming with it disabled and see how you get on.

If you're only using your headset for audio and you're not using a HDMI cable to carry audio you can go ahead and remove the Nvidia HD Audio driver completely as well as disabling the Realtek driver as above.

I would try both of these before thinking about your PSU. Could be a simple fix.

 

[Emjay86]

Cheers for the advice I'll be sure to remove them when I get home from work.

Im mainly using my headset at the moment but I will be using speakers at some stage. I have a xonar sound card, which drivers will I need for that to function? I presume just the xonar and corsair drivers for the card and headset respectively?

Cheers again.

 

[Bluntwrapped]

No problem at all man. Yep for the Xonar card you'll be fine using the latest driver, same for your headset but with it being USB you'll prob not need to install anything manually.

interested to hear how you get on

 

[Emjay86]

Iv'e just recovered from another crash in CoH2. I uninstalled the two sound drivers and its still going, thanks for the suggestion though.

When I did crash my sound didn't loop, not straight away anyway. The audio carried on for about 10 seconds after the initial black screen crash and then it just cut out. What would that suggest?

Thanks in advance.

 

[analog]

Try reseating the card and if the card is sagging support it with something.

I've been having almost identical problems with my 970 on a very similar system with an even older Seasonic PSU so it is possible our ageing power supplies are the issue. But after having about 4-5 black screens earlier today I propped my GPU up and haven't black screened since...touch wood.

 

[Bluntwrapped]

If you haven't done already, disable the Realtek Audio. If you right click on it in device manager you should have the option to disable it. If you don't Windows will keep reinstalling the driver for it.

 

[Emjay86]

I've disabled all sound other than those associated with my corsair headset and xonar sound card and managed to play a full match of CoH2 followed by a DOTA2 match. Both games caused the crash so whilst I'm still feeling it's coincidence it could be something.

I'll let you know how it goes!