Elusive GPU problem.

[theforce]

I built a computer for a friend almost two years ago. He wanted a workstation PC for Adobe Premiere so he got a socket 1366 i7 and a GTX285 to enable the Mercury Rending Engine.

Everything was working fine until a few weeks ago when he started experiencing issues (black squares on the screen) and a few seconds later a BSOD pointing to a Nvidia file. I told him to update his drivers but that didn't resolve the issue. I experienced the issue in Windows while the card wasn't running anything except Aero l guess!

While testing the card using unigine heaven it runs through it with no problems and l find it hard to believe that Premiere would stress the card more than unigine heaven. The temps are high under load but that is to be expected with the GTX285. The case is Coolmaster HAF932 and the PSU a Corsair 750W.

Should l format his PC and hope for the best?

 

[straxusii]

Clear out dust from all of the fans, GPU, CPU, north bridge etc

 

[theforce]

Clear out dust from all of the fans, GPU, CPU, north bridge etc

Mewww l am actually afraid of opening the case. Do you have any idea how much dust a Coolmaster HAF 932 will collect in almost two years in Cyprus?

 

[Devrij]

I believe that's why you should do it

 

[Rusty0611]

Mewww l am actually afraid of opening the case. Do you have any idea how much dust a Coolmaster HAF 932 will collect in almost two years in Cyprus?

Why? Just open it up and remove the dust with canned air. Easy peasy - don't have to even touch anything. It's likely a fair amount of dust has accumulated in 2 years.

 

[theforce]

Cleaning the case is something l will do but l can't see how dust can cause a system to BSOD while the system is not running anything demanding. If the GPU was overheating due to dust it would BSOD when l was running something demanding like Unigine, right?