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monitor goes black after a short of period of playing games

nathan ellis

nathan ellis

nathan ellis

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Joined
18 Dec 2012
Posts
37
Hello, I recently put together a new gaming system for the first time, and this morning tried out some games to see how it would run. (Far Cry 3, Planetside 2, Skyrim and FTL)

The games seemed to run fine with decent graphics, but every time, after roughly 5-10 minutes, the system would crash. The monitor would either display the 'no signal' display or go black (which would be accompanied by a buzzing sound). On one occasion the monitor actually had a stripey black/grey screen (accompanied with a buzzing sound), and when I tried FTL, the monitor went white instead of black. (Dunno whether this is remotely significant but just trying to add detail)

I should add, when I was putting the system together, the cpu stock cooler fell onto the gpu whilst both were in the case- lack of awareness on my part as well the fact that the cooler locks were faulty (honest).

Anyway, am I right to assume that the gpu is screwed and the only way to remedy this is to get a new one? Or are there other possibilities here?

cpu-i5 3750k
mobo-Z77 D3H
gpu-HD 7850

(previous thread regarding embarrassing stock cooler incident: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18471617)
 
What are your temps at whilst gaming. Run AfterBurner to see. Temps maybe getting too hot.

If you have no problems while web browsing/desktop, I feel the card is fine. Also, it could just be drivers not working that great with your system. It may pay to try several different drivers (a chore) to make sure.
 
seemslike pc memory issue to me,esp if it freezes and buzzes

try to enable x.m.p for your memory if it doesnt support it manually set the timings/speed/voltages,around 1.55v dram and see if its any better,manually set the bclk/pcie clock to 100 aswell
 
ave a look at afterburner but I think the temps are relatively low. The case came with four fans, and when idling the temps lie around the low 20s.

I tried to enable bios but it was greyed out and unselectable. I'm not too familiar with the bios so I'm not too sure by what you meant by 'manually set the timings/speed/voltages around 1.55v dram', but I did see an option labelled dram that was set to 1.500v.

I saw the pcie clock also, but that was already set to 100.

I'll try out different drivers to see if that helps.
 
ok for dram set it to 1.55v,this is your memory voltage

for ram speed look for spd system memory multiplier and choose your rams speed from the list it will probably be 1600mhz

dram will be too low if its running 1600mhz at 1.5v imo
 
PSU <---- This my bet because I had the same issue. On my Modular PSU if I use two cables I will get this back screen crash, but since switching to another set of cables I never had it happen again.

@op if you have a modular PSU or your PSU has more than two pci power cables can you try another two?
 
My system had a similar issue and it was actually down to the slot the card was in. I dropped it to the bottom slot and had no issues. Worth a shot...
 
I tried to set it to 1.55v and it kept automatically setting to 1.56v. I don't suppose it would have made a difference but I'm in a cautious mood so I set it at 1.54 in case going over would somehow muck things up. Would it make a difference if I set it to 1.56v?

The RAM speed seems to already be 1600.

I'm going to try running a game and if it doesn't work out, I'll try out shankly and mikey's suggestions.

I'll post back soon, thanks for your help and suggestions so far!
 
Okay so I swapped the gpu slot, swapped psu cables, changed dram to 1.56v and it's still not going so well.

I do seem to be able to play older games fine, though. I played Killing floor for about an hour last night, and I could play FTL fine as well. (when I first tried it on this pc it crashed the system after about five-ten minutes.)

It could be my imagination but I seem to be able to play the games that crash slightly longer than I could before I changed anything in the bios. Not sure though.

So yeah, I'm still at a loss, does anyone have any other ideas?
 
What PSU are you using?

The symptoms you mention sounds to be the graphic driver crashed and fail to recover (or hard crash). What it could mean is the graphic card is not stable at its clock speed, which can be to do with not getting enough or stable enough power from the PSU. Other than that, you would try a different driver may be?
 
nathan ellis said:
Hi, I'm using the PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III Series 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply.

(http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-013-PP)

I was under the impression 500W would be enough. Do you think the PSU could be faulty? Everything else seems to be fine.

I'll try some different drivers right now, completely forgot to try that.
Click to expand...
That should be a quality unit, so I agree you should give other versions driver a try. AMD drivers do have a tendency to leave crap behind...so if you still have problem after trying other drivers, you need to use some 3rd party tools like atiman to cleanse the mess that previous AMD drivers made. In fact, I think if you are planning on overclocking with MSI Afterburner, I would suggest you follow the instruction for overclock "the official way" from this thread:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18431335
 
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Check temperatures of your graphics card, as I've had issues with my GTX 680 not changing speed of the fans automatically. It hit 100'c in FarCry 3 the other day before I had even noticed.
 
YarwoodUK said:
Check temperatures of your graphics card, as I've had issues with my GTX 680 not changing speed of the fans automatically. It hit 100'c in FarCry 3 the other day before I had even noticed.
Click to expand...

MSI Afterburner has a habit of doing that sometimes.

Last week i was playing BF3, was having a great game until i spotted someone had typed something to me in the text window, when i looked (With MSI OSD being right on the text window) the first thing that hit me was the GPU temp was @ 78c and the fan @ 23% :eek: i had been playing the game for more than an hour.

MSI AB fan profile was active but it had just got stuck at the idle speed, it was not the first time it did this.

Now i find myself watching the temps more than the game.
 
nathan ellis said:
Hi, I'm using the PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III Series 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply.

(http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-013-PP)

I was under the impression 500W would be enough. Do you think the PSU could be faulty? Everything else seems to be fine.

I'll try some different drivers right now, completely forgot to try that.
Click to expand...

Like I said I had same issue and it was my PSU / It still is but because I using different Cables and slots I dont get the black screen crash.
My PSU has two cables that can't be removed its theses two that give me the black screen crash.

Now am not saying go and buy an new PSU because to be fair it could also be other issues. If you can get a hold of a PSU for testing or put the card into another system to test.
edit
But to be fair and not being horrible that PSU you have isn't the best either sadly :( You should never go cheap on the PSU, So after seeing that am 100% its the PSU mate.
The card isn't getting enough power and is cutting out under load giving you the Black screen.
 
shankly1985 said:
But to be fair and not being horrible that PSU you have isn't the best either sadly :( You should never go cheap on the PSU, So after seeing that am 100% its the PSU mate.
The card isn't getting enough power and is cutting out under load giving you the Black screen.
Click to expand...
PC Power and Cooling is not a "cheap and nasty" brand. It's just that it is not well-known here in the UK as they operate mainly in the US...it is in fact part of OCZ. Here's the PSU review from jonnyGURU:
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=318
 
Alright so I installed afterburner and had a look at the temp and the fan speed.

The temperature didn't seem to get higher than 40, mainly kept down in the late 30's, and the fan speed never changed from 40%, though I imagine that was because it didn't need to?

It still crashed, though.


Like I said, I switched the cable to the gpu earlier. I was told in another thread that the psu I had picked would be more than good enough for my build but I'll see if I can swap it for the psu in an old pc we've got to see if that's the problem. (the wattage is 550, and I don't think the brand is a particularly well known one)
 
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I have had this fault three times over the years on different PC's. it was down to a cheap PSU, overheating GPU and on one I had to up the voltage being delivered to the card slightly even with the card running at stock speeds.
 
Alright, tried a few different drivers and used atiman, didn't seem to work unfortunately.

I'm going to try swapping out the PSU, I'll let you know how it goes.

I've never upped the voltage being delivered to a card before, could you tell me exactly how to go about doing this?
 
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