Screen tearing and artifacts

[Nimbaloo]

Hi all,

First post, so please be gentle...

My dad has asked me to look at his pc. His stated problem was that he would have intermittently have blocky artefacts on the screen that would make it unusable, or alternately the monitor was display no signal. He has dual boot windows 10 and ubuntu on there.

I booked it up into windows. No issues at all. Restarted into Ubuntu - no issues. Restarted it, and got no signal on monitor....

Restarted several times since and it’s now loading with horizontal lines across the screen. These are normally green or violet, depending on the background. They are fleeting and in different places on the display, and not static or fixed.

Actions so far:

I have swapped the gfx card.
I have swapped the cables (dp / dvi / hdmi.
I’ve whipped the psu out and checked the connections.
I’ve reverted the bios to “safe” settings.
I’ve swapped the display.
I’ve unseated and reseated the memory and ran a full memory test.
I’ve swapped the PCI-e slot being used on the mobo.

None of these have made the blindest bit of difference.

There are no beeps from the post, and the led indicators on the MSI motherboard show no problems. The artifacts, then they appear, show even on the pre POST splash screen, and they appear three times out of four.

It’s an intel i5. Main board model shows as a p55-GD65 (MS-7583). can post more detailed if useful??

Any other ideas what I can try???

Thanks in advance!!

 

[Quartz]

These problems are usually down to the GPU or monitor. But you've swapped both. I'm wondering if there's an electrical short somewhere making the case live. Can you try taking the system out of the case? Maybe there's a dead insect. You should take the opportunity to examine the motherboard for burst or damaged capacitors.

 

[pp111]

My guess here is the motherboard. Sounds like the PCIe controller in the chipset is on the way out. Your best bet here is to get a P55 motherboard on the bay. Should be able to get one for about £40.

 

[Nimbaloo]

Thanks both. Will try a full dismantle and check for anything obvious.

pp111, assume there is no way to test the motherboard short of replacing it?

 

[Angelwolf]

Thanks both. Will try a full dismantle and check for anything obvious.

pp111, assume there is no way to test the motherboard short of replacing it?

You can do a visual check whilst it is still mounted - particularly capacitors. They should have a flat top, if they have bubbled or burst then that's a sign.

Quartz mentioned this a couple of posts ago but you might have missed it. I'm not sure if there's any specific software for testing

 

[postmanfw]

Have you tested it with the onboard graphics?