Black screen blues.

[trasyd]

Hi All,

Now where do i start! SO basically i have a 4 year old Alienware that likes to black screen every so often, more than not i will get a single ear piercing beep or maybe i will get looping sound and the monitor will have a flashing power button.

I always have to do a hard reset after this and maybe 1 in 10 of these will give me a long beep followed by 3 short beeps which on the phonenix bios list says its a keyboard error?! (very confusing) then it wont boot at all and i have to hard reboot.

It mainly crashes while playing games(MechwarriorOnline) but sometimes i can be browsing the internet and it will just go black screen. Earlier i was running a mem test and it did it.

I ran the recommended CPU-Z and the GPU-Z monitors and kept them recording just as it crashed to which the GPU reached 79Degrees

The biggest mystery i have come across, well 2 really is that in the bios my PSU is showing a steady 12.01v but in the CPUID screen shot i took you can see it shows 9.200V.......any suggestions? could this be causing my PC to black screen? PLus i also heard that my Motherboard Nvidia 790i ultra, never liked Ram that was under 1.65V but in my bios my ram is running at 1.5v, once again could this cause issues?

I'm looking at upgrading my GPU to a 660GTX ti and maybe my power supply but that depends on what you all think is my issue here.

My PC spec is as follows

Alienware Area51

Intel Q9450
Nvidia 790i Ultra
4 meg DDR3
Nvidia 280GTX
X-FI Fatal1ty sound card
PSU 750watt (no idea what make as Alienware like to strip it all off!)

I hope i have included enough information for you guys and that you can help me with this annoying problem.

Thanks in advance!

 

[popatim]

I dont see a screenshot (work mighta blocked it) but if you're seeing 9v then you definitely need a new PSU. 11.4 is as low as the atx spec allows.

 

[trasyd]

CPUID HWMonitor Report
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Binaries
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

HWMonitor version 1.2.1.0

Monitoring
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mainboard Model alienware (0x000003B8 - 0x043FDF2C)

LPCIO
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

LPCIO Vendor Winbond
LPCIO Model W83627DHG
LPCIO Vendor ID 0x5CA3
LPCIO Chip ID 0xA0
LPCIO Revision ID 0x25
Config Mode I/O address 0x2E
Config Mode LDN 0xB
Config Mode registers
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
00 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 0B FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
10 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
20 A0 25 FF 00 04 00 00 FF 50 00 7E C0 EA 21 00 FF
30 01 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
40 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
50 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
60 02 90 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
70 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
Register space LPC, base address = 0x0290


Hardware Monitors
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hardware monitor Winbond W83627DHG
Voltage 0 1.17 Volts [0x92] (CPU VCORE)
Voltage 1 1.37 Volts [0xAB] (VIN1)
Voltage 2 3.23 Volts [0xCA] (+3.3V)
Voltage 3 4.85 Volts [0xCA] (+5V)
Voltage 4 9.20 Volts [0xA5] (+12V)
Voltage 5 0.13 Volts [0x10] (VIN5)
Voltage 6 1.82 Volts [0xE3] (VIN6)
Temperature 0 96°C (204°F) [0x60] (SYSTIN)
Temperature 1 38°C (99°F) [0x4B] (CPUTIN)
Temperature 2 29°C (83°F) [0x39] (AUXTIN)
Fan 1 1480 RPM [0x72] (CPUFANIN0)
Hardware registers
Register space LPC, base address = 0x0290
bank 0
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
00 A0 FF 84 40 30 00 1E 50 01 02 01 02 3C 3C 0A 0A
10 A0 FF 50 00 00 01 01 3C 43 17 00 00 FF FF FF D1
20 92 AB CA CA A5 10 E3 60 FF 72 FF DA 00 0A 09 81
30 A3 96 C5 12 F3 20 32 4B 00 24 A6 40 C2 3B CA FF
40 03 7E 1F FF FF FF 07 F5 28 00 40 C4 10 95 00 A3
50 FF FF 00 FF FF FF 00 00 C1 73 FF FF 19 A5 04 05
60 A0 02 33 1E 02 02 3C FF 1F FF 1F FF FF FF FF FF
70 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
80 A0 FF 84 40 30 00 1E 50 01 02 01 02 3C 3C 0A 0A
90 A0 FF 50 00 00 01 01 3C 43 17 00 00 FF FF FF D1
A0 92 AB CA CA A5 10 E3 60 FF 72 FF DA 00 0A 09 81
B0 A3 96 C5 12 F3 20 32 4B 00 24 A6 40 C2 3B CA FF
C0 03 00 10 FF FF FF 07 F5 28 00 40 C4 10 95 00 A3
D0 FF FF 00 FF FF FF 00 00 C1 73 FF FF 19 A5 04 05
E0 A0 02 33 1E 02 02 3C FF 1F FF 1F FF FF FF FF FF
F0 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
bank 1
50 25 80 00 4B 00 50 05 DE FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
bank 2
50 1C 80 00 4B 00 50 1A 30 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF
bank 3
50 00 00 07 05 03 02 01 05 01 04 00 C0 2E 03 00 00
bank 4
50 3B 13 FF 00 00 00 00 04 84 5E 1D BB 09 5D 20 7F

Hardware monitor NVIDIA NVAPI
Voltage 0 1.03 Volts [0x406] (VIN0)
Temperature 0 58°C (136°F) [0x3A] (TMPIN0)
Fan PWM 0 40 pc [0x28] (FANPWMIN0)


Processors
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of processors 1
Number of threads 4

APICs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 0
-- Core 0
-- Thread 0 0
-- Core 1
-- Thread 0 1
-- Core 2
-- Thread 0 2
-- Core 3
-- Thread 0 3

Timers
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACPI timer 3.580 MHz
HPET timer 25.000 MHz
Perf timer 2.604 MHz
Sys timer 1.000 KHz


Processors Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 4 (max 4)
Number of threads 4 (max 4)
Name Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
Codename Yorkfield
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9450 @ 2.66GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 775 LGA (0x4)
CPUID 6.7.7
Extended CPUID 6.17
Core Stepping C1
Technology 45 nm
TDP Limit 95 Watts
Core Speed 2666.8 MHz
Multiplier x FSB 8.0 x 333.3 MHz
Rated Bus speed 1333.4 MHz
Stock frequency 2666 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, EM64T, VT-x
L1 Data cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 2 x 6144 KBytes, 24-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control yes
FID range 6.0x - 8.0x
Max VID 1.200 V

 

[trasyd]

Hope this helps! one more thing, this may be a small thing but when i boot up and turn my monitor on i get a screen where it looks like someone has just turned the contrast down but with a strip across the screen which is the normal colours i would normally see, i turn my monitor off then back on again and its all back to normal?!

 

[trasyd]

I dont see a screenshot (work mighta blocked it) but if you're seeing 9v then you definitely need a new PSU. 11.4 is as low as the atx spec allows.

Hi I just copy and pasted, i don't know how to attach shots etc of ym screen! sorry! isn't it weird that my Bios shows 12.01V though and yet the CPUID monitor shows 9.2v ??

I'm confused lol