3 980's, 1 GT 740, crashing randomly while gaming

[Garrett Dryden]

Thanks for reading, Having a problem while gaming, sometimes i can game for hours, no issues, other times, it will crash after only a few seconds. The PC is about a year old, and I've only had this problem the last 2-4 months. When it crashes the screens all go black, and whatever bit of audio that was being played at that instant begins repeating, and i mean only a milisecond of audio, just quickly repeating. I have to manually power down, and power back up. it isnt overclock settings, have tried stock, and OC same problem. Also not a matter or games(I.E. graphic intensity) It will crash playing intensive games like Arma 3, or while playing SimCity 2013, or even starcraft. Cannot find any error messages, also should point out that I have this problem regardless of what OS I use. Tried 8.1, still did it, did a total wipe and reinstall of 10 and still...same problem. thanks for any help in advance!
Mobo - Gigabyte Sniper 5 G1
CPU - I7-4790K (stock speeds currently)
RAM- 32 GB Vengeance Rip Jaw
GPUS - 2 MSI GTX 980. 1 EVGA GTX 980. 1 GT 740(for Physx)
PSU - Azza 1000 Watt PSU
Case - HAF 945 Stacker
All Custom watercooled, with EKWB blocks, 4 swiftech rads, two primochill reservoirs,and pumps.

 

[COLGeek]

First, I would remove the GT740 altogether. It may actually slow down your Physx performance. The 3 980s are more than enough to handle your needs and you are just adding to the power needs of your rig with it installed.

Also, have you tested your memory with a tool like memtest (www.memtest.org)?

 

[king3pj]

Yep it could be a power supply issue. I'm not sure whether a 1000W PSU is enough for 4 GPUs. I agree with COLGeek's idea of removing the GT740.

Even 3 980s is pretty out of the norm without the 4th Phsyx card. Are you playing at 4K? If not you could probably even drop down to 2 980s and not have any problems staying above 60 FPS. If the system runs well after pulling the 740 there is no real need to pull one the 980s but it would significantly cut your power usage without a noticeable hit to performance unless you are playing at 4K.

 

[Garrett Dryden]

Thanks for input guys! First thing I did was run memtest, it found no issues, then i tried doing stress tests on the GPUs. nothing would make it crash. Then tried stress testing the CPU just for the hell of it, still no crashing. so popped in arma this morning, played for about an hour, no issues. went about my day, came back and pulled the GT 740 (though when i added it i did gain about 5 FPS on average) Fired up Arma, and it crashed the system within about 30 seconds. I also notice that in arma in particular, when i go to look in the zoomed scope, this is when its most likely to crash, which is making me lean towards GPU issue, any other thoughts?

 

[COLGeek]

Try Arma with but a single 980 installed. Stress it hard and check the system out.

 

[Garrett Dryden]

as a quick update, ive decided to pull one of the 980s, this involves me making new pipes for the watercooling, so it may take a few, but will update as soon as its ready

 

[COLGeek]

Understood. We'll be here when you are ready. Good luck.

 

[Garrett Dryden]

Hey again, I just want to first say thank you again for the help, love that good forums do still exist! On to the report, I removed the EVGA GTX 980, it is only 6 months old, and the MSI's are about 14 months old, but i feel that maybe having to diffrent brands was not a great idea. I also put back in the GT740, as i said before when I first added it, i did see a slight benefit, maybe not 120 dollars worth, but some. So first thing i noticed was when i turned on Nvidia Control Panel, it would not recognize my SLI cable, it was one i was using before. I switched it with another i was using, and it recognized it, and activated SLI no problem. I am going to run a few more stress tests then do some gaming after football today and will report on any crashing. One strange instance after i removed the third card, was i went to open MSI afterburner, and it attempted to freeze like it has been, the audio froze, screen didn't go black though, then it slowly recovered. Basically at this point I'm wondering if maybe a bad SLI connector was the problem? any thoughts on that? I was using 3 separate SLI cables because of the different sizes of the cards I Couldn't use a 3-way SLI bridge. again thanks for the input!

 

[COLGeek]

That is certainly a possibility. Keep us posted.

 

[jonny_4]

so im having the same problem of random freezes and crashes however i only have one 740 (sorry im not that rich 😛 )(with 3 monitors though) in general i noticed 3 different types of crashes 1 it crashes instantly and restarts 2 everything turns black and then thats it you have to manually crash/restart ur pc 3. 2of my 3 monitors (not the main one ) go black with everything freezing and it crashes after a few seconds i feel this might be the same issue (tell me if you found the definitive problem) btw im not sure if the 740 is ok with supporting 3 monitors with 2 times 1920*1080 and once 1024*768 ? (the rest of my pc isnt that bad either i only bought it a while ago )

 

[COLGeek]

so im having the same problem of random freezes and crashes however i only have one 740 (sorry im not that rich 😛 )(with 3 monitors though) in general i noticed 3 different types of crashes 1 it crashes instantly and restarts 2 everything turns black and then thats it you have to manually crash/restart ur pc 3. 2of my 3 monitors (not the main one ) go black with everything freezing and it crashes after a few seconds i feel this might be the same issue (tell me if you found the definitive problem) btw im not sure if the 740 is ok with supporting 3 monitors with 2 times 1920*1080 and once 1024*768 ? (the rest of my pc isnt that bad either i only bought it a while ago )

This is a completely different problem. You should really start a new thread. Hijacking another's thread is not allowed and this one is several months old as well.