Problem! Monitor goes black, PC stays on.

Azure101 · 18 Jan 2010 at 20:10

Hey there,

I came home from uni today, turned my pc on and launched mass effect and after about 20 minutes of playing my screen went black and the fan on the graphics card stopped, however the PC remains switched on. My first impressions were that my graphics card has died but i thought i'd come here first.

Any Suggestions?

EDIT: I have checked the GPU temps and they are completely fine. So i've eliminated overheating.

R088ieS86 · 18 Jan 2010 at 20:15

Normally if you Graphics card has died your monitor will say "no input signal" is this the case? Or has your screen powered off?

Azure101 · 18 Jan 2010 at 20:16

R088ieS86 said:
Normally if you Graphics card has died your monitor will say "no input signal" is this the case? Or has your screen powered off?

"No input signal" is exactly what the monitor reads =)

R088ieS86 · 18 Jan 2010 at 20:24

When you power it back on do you get any output?
If not
You might want to check all the power connectors are attached to the motherboard. basic but this would allow your PC to run and not your graphics card.
If they are fine then either your graphics card has gone, or the slot (AGP/PCIe) on the motherboard has blown.

Do you have another card you can test with?

Azure101 · 18 Jan 2010 at 20:26

R088ieS86 said:
When you power it back on do you get any output?
If not
You might want to check all the power connectors are attached to the motherboard. basic but this would allow your PC to run and not your graphics card.
If they are fine then either your graphics card has gone, or the slot (AGP/PCIe) on the motherboard has blown.

Do you have another card you can test with?

Well, what happens usually is that the monitor goes off and since i can't do anything i push the power button and it turns off instantly. When i try to turn it back on usually i dont get a display until i wait about 2 mins before turning it back on again.

I'll check all the connections and report back.

And yes i do have an 8800GT laying around so i suppose i could try that xD

Azure101 · 18 Jan 2010 at 21:22

Apologies for the double post but i changed the card into the 2nd PCIe slot and re-installed the latest drivers and it seems to be running much more stable.

*fingers crossed*

Thanks for the help!

Azure101 · 22 Jan 2010 at 23:02

Again sorry for triple posting but the problem has developed....

Really not sure about it now... It turns out that it's the CPU fan actually speeding up rather than the fan on my graphics card... I'm not sure whether it could be a motherboard problem... Or whether i should consider updating my bios?