Black screen on boot up, out of ideas.

[Firewhisper]

Hi all, I recently bought a computer back in early August and have been having a few issues with it. I picked up a 3750K, Sabertooth Z77 and GTX 670, the 670 seems to be the problem.

First of all a week or so after I bought the PC, it would crash when it needed to render any game with decent settings i.e. Alan Wake and Skyrim. The fans would go to 100% as well as just having a black screen and I would have to restart. Eventually that happened each time I booted. I reseated the GPU and it now seemed to work fine, but I would still have these occasional crashes where the screen would go black but the audio was still ok, these even happened in the desktop.

At one point I couldn't get a screen output on boot and for an entire week I had this issue. I bought this from ********** who were being slow on the RMA, and eventually a week later it managed to work again.

I still kept having the same issues but it was down to once a day or so and never on boot. However yesterday I had a crash in the desktop, which then went into me not having a screen output on boot again. I managed to get it working once by some miracle, where I had turned the computer on, and when it didn't turn off by hitting the power button again, I quickly hit restart and it would then ask to launch repair mode or launch normally. I haven't been able to do this since.

I used this chance to reinstall the GPU drivers and do any other fix I could find relating to boot issues (possibly thought it was Windows 7 and the GPU drivers that are having a spat). But then as a test to see if it could render something high spec, it crashed again and I can't get on anymore.

I've tried mashing the F8 key to get to BIOS, but if it does register it then I can't see it. I've put the Windows 7 disc in hoping to boot from it, no such luck again. The only other thing to mention is that when the screen output crashes on the desktop there is a sound of a message coming up just as the screen goes, so I can't read that at all.

I've honestly no idea what else I can do to fix the problem, I'm hoping some genius here can suggest something that would be able to at least get it back into Windows properly. I hope you can help.

Thanks.

 

[DigitalPrime]

Have you tried removing the 670 and tried to boot up using the on-board GPU? This would help determine if the 670 is at fault.

 

[Firewhisper]

Unfortunately I have a monitor which doesn't support any of the other ports, it only has VGA/DVI and the onboard can only make use of HDMI and Display Port. I might be able to use the HDMI with the television perhaps. I'll post the results in a bit.

EDIT: Just plugged the HDMI from my TV into the 670 and it worked twice, I have two theories: A - although I'm running 1680x1050 so no need for the extra bandwidth of a DVI-D, the 670 doesn't always work with the single-link and crashes. Or B - the DVI port I'm using is faulty and the HDMI is ok.

 

[Stanith]

I can't see how a dodgy cable or DVI port could cause crashes, simply a lack of display at worst I would have thought!

Perhaps you have a dodgy power supply? Or as you've already suggested, the card itself could be faulty.

 

[tommybhoy]

Afaik, there is a problem of sorts using certain dvi cables, if there is another dvi output on the card you could try it, but since you are using hdmi, there's no need now.

P.s you better remove the competitors name from your op, it's against forum rules.

 

[Durzel]

Tried a different PCI-E slot?