Random black screen/crash

Rikk82

Rikk82

Rikk82

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Joined
14 Oct 2008
Posts
262
Location
Brighton
I am getting black screens during gaming sessions, and it's driving me bonkers.
It seems to happen quite randomly. I can sometimes be playing for hours with no crashes, and other times it happens more frequently. My monitor will just black screen (no signal), sound will be gone, and PC becomes unresponsive, requiring a reset - by holding power button for a few seconds to shutdown.

It's only really started doing this during the last month or so. I self-built this PC around September 2015 and haven't had any problems since. I'm a little perplexed as to why it is doing this.

i5-6600K
Sapphire Radeon R9 Nitro 390
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C15 3000MHz
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming5
250GB Samsung 850 EVO, SSD
Windows 10

Things I've tried:
- Updated GPU drivers to latest
- Swapping out HDMI cable
- Changed over PSU (swapped in another EVGA 650W GQ)
- CPU running at stock

It's looking more like this could be a GPU issue. Anyone got any ideas/suggestions, or have experienced something like this?
 
Sounds like you may be right, try

Reseating gpu.
Monitor cpu / gpu temps.
Remove all overclocks and set gpu to 10% below reference clock speeds.
Make sure nothing is loose as well.

I had a 280x that was fine unless overclocked and then it would stop responding.
 
Could be bad cables or bad cable sockets, anything loose or been disturbed?

Are you just losing signal to the monitor or is the pc actually crashing?
 
Had similar issues with a Radeon 380. Changed DP wires, changed over to HDMI which reduced the occurrence of the issue but didn't eliminate it. Re-seating the GPU solved it for me. Switched back to DP and no problems for a few months now.
 
Re-seating the GPU seems to have fixed it. I did that on Sunday afternoon, and haven't had an issue since. Very strange indeed.
 
Can you remove the dedicated GPU and run on the iGPU if you want to make sure that the dGPU is the culprit? Use a compressed air can to clean the PCI-e slots of your motherboard and try again, maybe even trying the second PCI-e slot on your motherboard. Furthermore, be sure not to overtighten the GPU screws which might cause some problems with some cases.
 
Does the graphics card have additional power input? You're not using cable splitters to connect everything up are you? That could overstress the PSU and cause a voltage drop under load.
 
Everything inside the case is clean. I've re-seated the memory sticks. I've tried a different PCIe slot (x8) and the black screen still happens.

Is my GPU slowly dying?
 
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You could check the windows event viewer to see if there are any clues there.
Run something that shows the temp of the CPU and GFX to see if they're ok or not when it gets stuck - have you got a 2nd monitor to watch those on? If not use a benchmark program to burn the cpu/gfx to see if they make it crash too and watch the temp when it does.
It could be something silly like your cpu thermal paste needs replacing. Idle temps will be high if it is.
 
OK, so I did some reading online, and it seems if I underclock the GPU memory to 1400 MHz then the black screens/ crashes stop, although this means I'm having to lower graphical settings in games to 'unacceptable levels' in order to get the frame rates I want! :)
So, I guess it's time to look for an upgrade.
I've also got my eye on some of the Ultrawide 34" monitors with high refresh rates. Is my 6600K going to be an issue bottlenecking any of the current GPU's in 1440p?
 
Did you check the GPU temp - if you're lowering the power that should also be reducing the temp. If thats the case them maybe the cooler needs cleaning or the thermal compound under the heatsink needs redoing.
 
I had something similar kept getting either a black screen or a "Nvidia Display driver stopped working and has recovered". Either that or a BSOD. Seems to be heat related if the room is freezing cold it rarely happens but once things warm up (including booting from cold)... then it trips out. Tried everything on that page. No joy. Tried reinstalling windows, swapping cables, swapping ram sticks around, different DIMM sockets. Tried just about every gfx driver available. No joy.

I was convinced it was the gpu and about to issue an RMA when I tried swapping the gpu for another... and it was still doing it! Quelle surprise! Ok I thought it started happening about the time I got that second hand cpu from the MM, guy has sold me a dud.. well I still had the old one lying around and blow me its not that either!

Well by this point the only thing I havn't swapped is either the PSU or the motherboard... the psu is less than a year old and an EVGA P2 platinum... so not the most obvious thing the other thing is the mobo its the oldest component and the old PSU that died maybe it knackered more than a few harddrives and did the dirty on the motherboard too... it wouldn't be the first time had something similar happen before so picked up a replacement (used) mobo from fleabay and lo and behold that seems to have fixed it. Faulty mobo it is.

So the lesson here is... don't be to quick to judge or jump to conclusions because it may not be what you think it is.
 
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