Question Can a new 4k 240hz monitor damage a GPU? Unique situation is frustrating. Please Help!

[AaronKels]

Can a monitor brick a GPU? I have a unique situation. I recently decided to upgrade my monitor as a first step before building a new system. My current system is:

Asus Rogue Strix Z390-E
Intel 9900kf processor
RTX 3090 Kingpin Hybrid GPU
Corsair hx1200i PSU
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000)

Old monitor was Asus VG27BQ
New Monitor is Asus PG32UCDP at 4k 240hz

So to the details of what happened. I set up the new monitor, figured i would try 240hz at 4k even though my cpu is rated at 4k 60hz. Everything looked excellent, i turned HDR on in windows 10 (my current OS) and then booted up Black ops 6. Everything booted extremely quick and the picture was excellent. I started a multiplayer match and was running around 88fps consistently.

After about 4 rounds, i was just curious so i started looking through the monitor settings. I found the setting on the OSD for the monitor under gaming>variable refresh rate. The slider was set to on position. All i did was click left to see what happened if i turned it ‘off’ and the screen went black, my pc went silent. Then after about 20 seconds i got static on the screen top to bottom. Completely crashed the pc. I manually switched off the pc and rebooted it.

Everything booted fine, and i went and turned that variable refresh setting back to on. I attempted to reboot black ops, and it crashed the game within seconds with an error message. I tried several things, including dropping my refresh rate to 60hz, scanning and repairing the game, uninstalling black ops 6 twice and reinstalling, reinstalling gpu drivers, and even switching back to my old asus monitor and using a different display port cable, and the game still crashes within seconds of booting up.

So my question to the pros, did this one setting change mid game cause a hardware failure? Could it be the GPU or something else? I am fairly tech savvy, I have built about 20 machines in my lifetime. This occasion has me stumped. I have already put in a return for the monitor because I wouldn’t want to risk a new machine with it. Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Can a monitor brick a GPU? I have a unique situation. I recently decided to upgrade my monitor as a first step before building a new system.
Simple answer; no.

You might want to run DDU to remove all GPU drivers(intel, AMD and Nvidia) in Safe Mode, then manually install the latest GPU driver sourced from Nvidia's support site in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

Corsair hx1200i PSU
How old is the PSU in your build?

You forgot to mention the make and model of your case and the temps to the system when these issues cropped up.

 

[AaronKels]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Can a monitor brick a GPU? I have a unique situation. I recently decided to upgrade my monitor as a first step before building a new system.
Simple answer; no.

You might want to run DDU to remove all GPU drivers(intel, AMD and Nvidia) in Safe Mode, then manually install the latest GPU driver sourced from Nvidia's support site in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

Corsair hx1200i PSU
How old is the PSU in your build?

You forgot to mention the make and model of your case and the temps to the system when these issues cropped up.

the case is a fractal design, not sure the model but got it 4 years ago. I tried what you said to do, uninstalled the drivers in safe mode, reinstalled after boot. and the game is still crashing. The temps were cpu core max of 76c, Gpu max temp of 24.7c. the error code was this: 0x00001338 (915194526) N
Signature: 85EFE77C-FAD7FF9F-EDB2BF21-ADF5FD1E
Location: 0x00007FFA9F80B699 (21445694)
Executable: cod.exe

 

[AaronKels]

the case is a fractal design, not sure the model but got it 4 years ago. I tried what you said to do, uninstalled the drivers in safe mode, reinstalled after boot. and the game is still crashing. The temps were cpu core max of 76c, Gpu max temp of 24.7c. the error code was this: 0x00001338 (915194526) N
Signature: 85EFE77C-FAD7FF9F-EDB2BF21-ADF5FD1E
Location: 0x00007FFA9F80B699 (21445694)
Executable: cod.exe

The psu is about 4 years old also. But key point is i never had an issue until this monitor….

 

[Gaidax]

Reset game settings, I understand you reinstalled it, but sometimes games keep settings in a separate profile somewhere else.

See how to reset game settings completely online.

Other than that - 3090 physically can't do 240Hz at 4k, no matter what you do. There is not enough bandwidth for its HDMI/Displayport connector to do that, so don't even bother.

If you try to somehow force that, then you'd simply get an out-of-scope black screen, which might be what have happened with the game when you tried to force that resolution/refresh rate combo.

 

[gamerk316]

Reset game settings, I understand you reinstalled it, but sometimes games keep settings in a separate profile somewhere else.

See how to reset game settings completely online.

Other than that - 3090 physically can't do 240Hz at 4k, no matter what you do. There is not enough bandwidth for its HDMI/Displayport connector to do that, so don't even bother.

If you try to somehow force that, then you'd simply get an out-of-scope black screen, which might be what have happened with the game when you tried to force that resolution/refresh rate combo.

Eh, with DSC you can do 4k240 assuming HDR is off, otherwise the best you can do is 4k144.

Anyways, turning off VRR on the monitor while the game/driver is trying to use it could cause problems. It probably shouldn't cause the GPU itself to lock up, but I doubt it outright damaged everything. Odds are the in-game settings are *really* confused though, and more then likely they're stored either in the system registry or a file somewhere in User/AppData. I know Warzone 2 would offer the option to reset back to default graphic settings after a crash at boot; kind of surprised the latest Block Ops isn't doing the same. Regardless, I think the solution is to get the game to use it's default settings again; the question is *how*. Best option is probably the official forums for Black Ops.

Also might want to drop AMD a line; regardless of anything else, toggling VRR off on the Monitor shouldn't cause what you observed; the driver should be able to deal with it. [I've toggled VRR off in-game for testing on my NVIDIA 4070Ti before with no ill effects, for reference. The driver should be able to handle this.]

 

[AaronKels]

Eh, with DSC you can do 4k240 assuming HDR is off, otherwise the best you can do is 4k144.

Anyways, turning off VRR on the monitor while the game/driver is trying to use it could cause problems. It probably shouldn't cause the GPU itself to lock up, but I doubt it outright damaged everything. Odds are the in-game settings are *really* confused though, and more then likely they're stored either in the system registry or a file somewhere in User/AppData. I know Warzone 2 would offer the option to reset back to default graphic settings after a crash at boot; kind of surprised the latest Block Ops isn't doing the same. Regardless, I think the solution is to get the game to use it's default settings again; the question is *how*. Best option is probably the official forums for Black Ops.

Also might want to drop AMD a line; regardless of anything else, toggling VRR off on the Monitor shouldn't cause what you observed; the driver should be able to deal with it. [I've toggled VRR off in-game for testing on my NVIDIA 4070Ti before with no ill effects, for reference. The driver should be able to handle this.]

Thanks for all the info. Yes the monitor is Asus, I was shocked that the movement of that one setting crashed everything. the game had been running fine with the hdr on and 240hz at 4k, had been running for a solid 45 minutes and temps were all fine. So i am certain it was the setting that did it, rather than a coincidence just as i switched it off.

I already have the monitor set to return. I ordered parts to just expedite my new pc build but for now i am just unable to game, the only game i have loaded is b06. Would it work to test the theory if i logged into a different battle net account and tried it with warzone? Just curious. Or would fully uninstalling battle net and reinstalling do it? Like i said i am just going to build my new pc and probably start from scratch as i had it planned to do soon anyway, but the ocd in me still demands i figure this out! Thanks for all info and any additional