Question 3070 black screen with audio still playing

Jul 2, 2024
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Hello! I'm reposting this from a reddit post I made with no responses.

I'm posting here after months of trial and error as a kind of last resort. I'm not a massive gamer anymore in the sense that I really only play a couple games a few hours a week. Those games are WoW, OW, and FN. I really enjoy these games casually and would like to continue playing them. That being said, I also like to play at 1440p 120 FPS if possible so I run a 3070 with 32GB RAM and a Ryzen 5 3600.

Issue: Within the last year or so, every now and again, my screen will just go black while gaming. If I'm on a discord call, it will remain going and I can tell people what happened, so I know the whole thing isn't shutting down. There's a key combination I found that is supposed to restart the graphics driver to no avail.

Power Supply?: I put up with this for a while because it was infrequent enough to not bother me. Like I said, I don't play much these days so it hasn't been a big deal. As time went on, it started happening more and more frequently. Then one day, pop, my computer won't power on at all. Aha! It must have been a power supply issue! Replaced my 650W with a 1000W PSU, replaced all the cables, got it all working again and it still happened.

VBIOS/Drivers?: Another thing I should note here is that the 3070 was bought used off of ebay about a year and a half ago. My boss recommended that I try updating the VBIOS (something I had never heard of up until this point.) Nada. Still happens. Drivers have been up to date as well over the course of the past year.

Heat?: I tested the temps and got all normal for extended play sessions.

Logs?: I tried going through Windows Event Viewer post crash and didn't really find anything. (I could be missing something here)

Motherboard?: Just this week, I bought a new motherboard as I was running an Micro ITX board for some time. Same issue

RAM?: Passed using MemTest86+

OS?: I since wiped my entire windows installation and wanted to give Linux a try. I'm on Linux mint now, issue still occurs.

VRAM?: Turned down settings down to high on OW and VRAM has yet to go above 4.5 Gigs (out of 8). Still crashes from time to time.


TLDR: Screen randomly goes black while gaming. Got a new PSU, MB, had normal temps, latest drivers over the whole year. GPU is used so could be the culprit, but priciest fix so want to rule that out if possible.

Important Note: Another reason why I'm hesitant to buy a new GPU is that it seems to happen pretty much exclusively while playing Blizzard games. It started happening in OW first, and WoW seemed immune until about last week. I don't believe it has happened while I've played FN or any other titles. (Palworld, Hell Divers 2, and God of War for example). I thought this might be an issue with Battle.net, but I installed OW on Steam and it still happens. I found 1 or 2 threads about this for OW, but no solutions or any kind of consistent theme which leads me to think it might be unrelated. I don't have these issues playing either game on my geforce 1660 laptop on Windows 11.

I found this similar post but it didn't seem to answer my question https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...reen-issues-with-audio-still-playing.3816486/

EDIT:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz
CPU cooler: NZXT Kraken X53 240mm
Motherboard: Gigabyte AMD B550 UD AC (replaced 1 month ago)
Ram: 32 GB (can't find exact brand)
SSD/HDD: SAMSUNG 970 EVO Plus SSD 2TB
GPU: GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3070 GAMING OC 8GB
PSU: GAMEMAX 1050W ATX 3.0 & PCIE 5.0 Power Supply, 80+ Gold Certified (4 months old)
Chassis: NZXT H10
OS: Linux Mint
Monitor: Asus and a Dell (unsure of exact models at the moment)
 
Last edited:

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model. BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time.

^ Please mention all parts that you've used to swap or replace over the course of your troubleshooting.
 

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