Black screens

[auronx62]

I just recently built a custom computer. the stats are :

SAPPHIRE 100129FB Radeon X800GTO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 FireBlade Edition Video Card

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA3800BVBOX

Rosewill 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model RW400/1024

Maxtor 120 GB HD

CD Rom

DVD R/ CD R combo drive.

ABIT KN8 SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

This is running on a 480 Watt PSU. It was running fine for around 2 weeks, until i started getting black screens. During these black screens, i i can see the lights on my power still on, still hear the tower whirring, but nothing on the screen. all the wires for the monitor are tightly plugged in. while in this black screen mode, i cannot reset the computer via pressing the reset button. I would have to manually shut down the comp, and turn it back on. At times, windows wont load up, and i woul dhave to wait like 5 minutes before windows would load up. Now my comp will turn on and is operational for about 5 minutes and the black screen comes up. What can the problem be?

 

[slvr_phoenix]

It could be a number of things. It could be a bad video card. It could be bad RAM. It could be an overheating processor. It could be a bad power supply. I think I'm most strongly leaning towards the last two. If you can hop into BIOS, check your temps and voltages, and report back to us that'd help heaps. You could also try downloading and running the memtest86 program. And if you have any temp/voltage logging software that you can run from your OS (I'm assuming a flavor of Windows XP?) right to the point of the black screen, and then post that log, that'd be uber-useful. Hopefully someone can suggest some good software to log that stuff if you don't have any already.

 

[mdd1963]

"still hear the tower whirring, but nothing on the screen."

When the screen goes black, are you also losing sound, or does ther sound continue normally in games, minus the video? (If JUST the video is being lost, but comp continues to play music or game sounds normally, this would likely point to video card probs. (separate molex pwr connected to video card, and not thru a splitter?)

Edit: Hmm, won't reset with reset button when it locks up? I'd guess your sound is prob gone too, and the whole mb/cpu is locked solid....

Jump into the BIOS and examine cpu core temps for a few minutes when the system is cool and POSTing ok....I'd expect 44C typical with stock sink within 10 minutes at idle, and about 55C under load; maybe your heatsink connection with cpu die via thermal paste is marginal?

Oh, and are your mem modules in approved dual channel operation slots? (varies in various NF4 boards)

Got another good PS of sufficient wattage you can slave in temporarily?

 

[auronx62]

okay well i was looking around and checking my comp when i found something peculiar. at the time of te crash, i turned it off and opened up my comp to find my vid card extremely hot.... like almost near burning when touching it. Turned if off, looked around.... then turned it back on like.. 15 minutes later. After it ran for like an hour or so. i decided to turn it back off and open up my comp again. i touched my vid card to find it .... just barely warm....so do all signs point to vid card?? and why would it be like this?