[SOLVED] Can Artifacts be caused by a bad hard drive or version of windows 10?

[Ronedizzle]

A few days ago I was playing a game and got sudden artifacts and my entire pc crashed. After I rebooted it, it immediately gets artifacts the second I load into windows 10. I managed to find my old hard drive and when I booted into windows on my old hard drive, there were no artifacts and the card ran smoothly like it always had. In addition to this, this hard drive has always caused problems for my pc and been problematic. Could it be possible that the artifacts are caused by a bad hard drive? Or do I need to get another gpu regardless? (I have a 1080ti) Thanks for any help!

 

[InvalidError]

If a failing hard drive corrupted something in the OS or drivers, almost any random secondary issue is possible depending on what bits get flipped and when. Though it could also be that a different install consumes VRAM following a different address pattern and simply isn't hitting a specific bad VRAM cell in a way that produces the issues you had on your other drive. You will need to do more testing to find out which is which.

 

[Karadjgne]

Yes, a faulty hdd can cause artifacts, crashes, shutdowns, depending on the nature of the fault. The gpu only passes on what the cpu gives it, so if the cpu is getting bad info from the hdd or the controller board is funked and messing with the psu that can cause gpu issues .

I'd use the old drive, install msi Kombuster and run the gpu through all of the tests. If there's a patch of bad vram as @InvalidError has suggested, it'll find it and you'll get the artifacts. If the gpu checks out fine, I'd continue to use the old hdd until you can replace the newer, since you've stated you've always had issues of one sort or the other with the new drive.