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Strange problems with gtx280

iguanoid

iguanoid

iguanoid

Associate
Joined
24 Nov 2008
Posts
367
So i recently relocated from 1 side of the world the the other, and moved my rig with me. Have gone from 220v to 110v mains, which shouldnt be an issue for the psu - corsair TX 750w, and my video card has become incredibly unstable.

System is:-

OS Vista Home 64 bit
mobo Asus rampage formula
Xeon 3350 @ 3.48ghz - temps all fine
point of view GTX280 1gb - temps all fine
4gig Corsair 8500 2x2gb sticks

No drivers have been changed since i moved but my system has gone from being rock solid to random BSOD, sometimes while gaming, sometimes just from the desktop.

I dont have any temp issues with cpu or the gfx card, have tried reseating the gfx card, changed over the power connectors, updated the drivers and nothing. I have also put a voltage regulator infront of the psu to try and clean the mains as much as possible but this has also not helped.

While the machine is running it seems perfectly fine, but the crashes are all too frequent and rather than being nice bsod with an error message the screen either goes grey or black, and the whole system requires a hard reset. :confused:

All of the components are under a year old. I am pretty much stumped as to what the issue is, but it is always related to the video drivers it seems....
 
I think the powersupply units have a red switch at the back, that tells it what voltage to use and the key word in that sentese was *think*
 
i gues if you've allready checked reseating everything and cleaning up drivers etc your best bet is to rip the whole system apart and run it with bare minimum of components to try and isolate a hardware issue - maybe something got damaged in the move? have you got an old cheap gfx card lying around to try? if anything is overclocked put it back to stock, maybe if you have overclocked and had to increase cpu voltage to obtain the overclock maybe the change in the psu voltage stuffed something up?
 
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While its possible its not getting enough juice - sounds to me like something got damaged in the move, possibly exposure to x-rays even.
 
AMG - The psu is auto ranging, dont need to change anything. That aside it is doing the same with 110 and 220 going in...

Rroff - Laptops get xray'd everytime you go to an airport, usually more than once, so im not buying that as a cause. Beside, they dont x-ray stuff in mexico they open boxes by hand ;)

Jamie - i will try moving the gfx card to the second pci-e slot and see if that solves issues. Otherwise its back to default clock speeds - cpu not card as the card was never overclocked - and see if that helps.
 
I have a spotcool over north and south bridge, and these temps are also pretty good. Last night i moved the gfx card into the second pci-e slot and so far havent had a problem. The next 48 hours will tell i guess, but perhaps there is some damage to the mobo where the original pci-e slot attaches. A big bump bounced the card and this fractured a connection between slot and pcb....not sure.
 
I've had a spate of GTX280 problems this last 2-3 weeks. I have been using mine for folding (so they have been running pretty much flat out their whole lives) and about 2 weeks ago I started getting solid colour black/blue/green/red screens followed by a machine restart immediately after logging into Windows. This was diagnosed as a bad video card and that's currently with BFG being RMA'd. When I pulled that one from the machine, and plugged the video into the second card, it was giving repeating blocks of garbage across the screen and I'm RMAing that one next. The final card will run windows fine but it falls over if stressed in 3D mode at all. So probably a 3rd RMA.

All the cards are BFG GTX280OCs and I doubt I'll have much trouble getting them replaced, but it did seem odd that three cards should all fall over in such a short space of time and I had a bit of a search about on Google and there does seem to be an issue with GTX280's suddenly working until they are stressed, at which point the symptoms seem to be solid screens and machine restarts.
 
Swapping the pci-e slots has resolved my issue, although i now have to face the fact that the original pci-e slot was damaged beyond repair in the shipping, so no sli upgrades for me on this board i guess :(
 
If it was damaged in transit, can you not take it up with the shippers? I know it's probably less than £100 for a motherboard, but they have insurance and if it's all you're claiming for ie. you don't want a new PC out of it, they'll probably pay out.
 
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