Trying to help a buddy of mine fix an issue he's having with his computer. He just had to replace his hard drive and is having issues with black screens while playing games. Specifically a racing sim that we run regularly. He had a similar issue last year but can't remember how he fixed it.
Running an XFX HD6770 card in an Asus CG5270.
What happens is he can open it up and run it for a little bit. It varies but sometimes he can run a full race, sometimes just a minute or two. When the black screen happens while in the sim it's just a black screen, sound is still working. But he can't do anything so he has to power down manually.
I had him run 3D Mark and it crashed with a full on frozen sound and everything black screen.
Now I've run through a ton of things with him to try and fix it.
Made sure his drivers were up to date,
Rolled back the drivers completely sweeping out the old version
Updated chipset drivers
Updated VGA drivers
Updated realtek drivers (in case it was conflicting)
Reinstalled the sim
Tried running in windowed mode instead of full screen
Checking temps on CPU and GPU, all looked fine.
Reseated the video card
Swapped the power cable to the card
Turned settings down in game
The card has been dusted out
Fan was manually cranked to almost 90% and it still crashed completely dusted out.
Now the GPU temps looked good and even with this next part should be safe but I have to mention it. When I had him run 3D Mark I had him log the temps from GPU-Z. It was fine until it hit 80 degrees C and that's the last entry in the log, AKA that's where it crashed and locked everything up. Which does point to a temperature issue, as has everything to do with the problem. But with temps like that it shouldn't be crashing or having a black screen.
I'm out of ideas on what to do to fix it. Was working absolutely fine until the hard drive was replaced. That part made it sound like a driver issue. But we rolled them back to what he was running on the old hard drive and that didn't fix it.
One thing a buddy said, and I can't find any information on this, let alone the setting, is that the motherboard can shut down if a GPU hits a certain temperature and that there's a setting in the BIOS. I've never heard of that, only CPU... and CPU temps are fine. The 80 degree threshold seems to be what the issue is given what happened in 3D Mark.
Again it worked fine for a year and only started acting up again after the new hard drive was installed.
Are there any other ideas out there?
Running an XFX HD6770 card in an Asus CG5270.
What happens is he can open it up and run it for a little bit. It varies but sometimes he can run a full race, sometimes just a minute or two. When the black screen happens while in the sim it's just a black screen, sound is still working. But he can't do anything so he has to power down manually.
I had him run 3D Mark and it crashed with a full on frozen sound and everything black screen.
Now I've run through a ton of things with him to try and fix it.
Made sure his drivers were up to date,
Rolled back the drivers completely sweeping out the old version
Updated chipset drivers
Updated VGA drivers
Updated realtek drivers (in case it was conflicting)
Reinstalled the sim
Tried running in windowed mode instead of full screen
Checking temps on CPU and GPU, all looked fine.
Reseated the video card
Swapped the power cable to the card
Turned settings down in game
The card has been dusted out
Fan was manually cranked to almost 90% and it still crashed completely dusted out.
Now the GPU temps looked good and even with this next part should be safe but I have to mention it. When I had him run 3D Mark I had him log the temps from GPU-Z. It was fine until it hit 80 degrees C and that's the last entry in the log, AKA that's where it crashed and locked everything up. Which does point to a temperature issue, as has everything to do with the problem. But with temps like that it shouldn't be crashing or having a black screen.
I'm out of ideas on what to do to fix it. Was working absolutely fine until the hard drive was replaced. That part made it sound like a driver issue. But we rolled them back to what he was running on the old hard drive and that didn't fix it.
One thing a buddy said, and I can't find any information on this, let alone the setting, is that the motherboard can shut down if a GPU hits a certain temperature and that there's a setting in the BIOS. I've never heard of that, only CPU... and CPU temps are fine. The 80 degree threshold seems to be what the issue is given what happened in 3D Mark.
Again it worked fine for a year and only started acting up again after the new hard drive was installed.
Are there any other ideas out there?