PC Specs:
Built in 2015
Windows 10 64-bit OS
I7-6700k Skylake CPU
GEFORCE NVIDIA GTX 960 SSC
12gb Corsair Vengeance RAM
Corsair CX600m PSU
1 Samsung NVME 200gb SSD (runs my OS)
1 HDD (don't know name or brand) 1 TB (stores all games/files)
So my issue started about a week ago when I was playing World of Warcraft, not an intense game on the graphics card by any means and I run the graphics at a 7/10 on the game, I barely ever saw the card hit over 70c and the load was always about 70-80% when playing, mind you I've played WoW on this PC on and off since 2015 with no issues.
My display went blank - really shocked me at first but I thought maybe it was the game, no biggie, but I noticed my monitor switching from analog/digital and finding no connection then going blank and starts flashing the power icon, meaning it has no signal.
I restarted my PC and decided to take it easy and start diagnosing the problem, made sure I was tracking everything important via MSI Afterburner and proceeded to watch Youtube videos, it happened again, this time everything died at once, display, keyboard, mouse, internet card, everything except for my speakers, which I heard the disconnect/connect sound of my USB ports but my display stayed blank, alright time to freak out a little bit.
I opened my case and checked my graphics card - still running, every fan is good, LED's still flashing, I unplugged and replugged my DVI cable from my graphics card and still nothing, shut the PC off and during boot got huge artifacting on screen and a loud buzzing in the speaker (like the interference noise you get from a cellphone) shut the PC off and started it back up and ran it on desktop with no issues for about an hour, I decided to turn the PC off again and switch to an old graphics card I have laying around - a GT 610, I played WoW with this graphics card for about 3-4 hours with no issues, later in the night I decided to test my GTX 960 again and played for another hour or two with no issues, this continued for about a day or two with zero issues using the GTX 960 under the same conditions as usual.
But today while playing WoW I experienced the same issue again - display died and the USB ports disconnected and reconnected again, I thought what the hell man and decided to try my luck again but this time watch my graphics cards temp, load, fan speed, and fan RPM as well as my FPS, at no time did any of these numbers indicate any issues but the display died and the USB ports disconnected/reconnected again, I'm currently using the GT 610 and will play for probably about a night or two and see if any issues occur, but if not I'm mainly just wondering if this would be a graphics card issue, or if there's something more to this, I'm no expert in how PC's are connected together, but as far as I knew the graphics card and USB ports should be completely independent so for both of them to fail at the same time makes me think this is more than just a graphics card issue.
If it comes down to me having to buy another graphics card because the GTX 960 is shot - not a big deal as it's been almost 6 years with it now and I got every penny I spent out of it in those 6 years, now I just have an excuse to upgrade, haha.
Also, note I have taken the GTX 960 out and let it cool down, blew all the dust out of it and checked the fan/connections and everything seems fine as far as the eye can see, I'd have to fully take it apart to find any deep issues with it.
If you need any more information just let me know.
EDIT:
I've also heard that GPU's degrade over time (obviously) and I'm wondering if potentially the overclocking that comes factory on the card is too much for the card to handle now, and if I lower the boost/core clock maybe it will stop failing, not sure to be honest.
Built in 2015
Windows 10 64-bit OS
I7-6700k Skylake CPU
GEFORCE NVIDIA GTX 960 SSC
12gb Corsair Vengeance RAM
Corsair CX600m PSU
1 Samsung NVME 200gb SSD (runs my OS)
1 HDD (don't know name or brand) 1 TB (stores all games/files)
So my issue started about a week ago when I was playing World of Warcraft, not an intense game on the graphics card by any means and I run the graphics at a 7/10 on the game, I barely ever saw the card hit over 70c and the load was always about 70-80% when playing, mind you I've played WoW on this PC on and off since 2015 with no issues.
My display went blank - really shocked me at first but I thought maybe it was the game, no biggie, but I noticed my monitor switching from analog/digital and finding no connection then going blank and starts flashing the power icon, meaning it has no signal.
I restarted my PC and decided to take it easy and start diagnosing the problem, made sure I was tracking everything important via MSI Afterburner and proceeded to watch Youtube videos, it happened again, this time everything died at once, display, keyboard, mouse, internet card, everything except for my speakers, which I heard the disconnect/connect sound of my USB ports but my display stayed blank, alright time to freak out a little bit.
I opened my case and checked my graphics card - still running, every fan is good, LED's still flashing, I unplugged and replugged my DVI cable from my graphics card and still nothing, shut the PC off and during boot got huge artifacting on screen and a loud buzzing in the speaker (like the interference noise you get from a cellphone) shut the PC off and started it back up and ran it on desktop with no issues for about an hour, I decided to turn the PC off again and switch to an old graphics card I have laying around - a GT 610, I played WoW with this graphics card for about 3-4 hours with no issues, later in the night I decided to test my GTX 960 again and played for another hour or two with no issues, this continued for about a day or two with zero issues using the GTX 960 under the same conditions as usual.
But today while playing WoW I experienced the same issue again - display died and the USB ports disconnected and reconnected again, I thought what the hell man and decided to try my luck again but this time watch my graphics cards temp, load, fan speed, and fan RPM as well as my FPS, at no time did any of these numbers indicate any issues but the display died and the USB ports disconnected/reconnected again, I'm currently using the GT 610 and will play for probably about a night or two and see if any issues occur, but if not I'm mainly just wondering if this would be a graphics card issue, or if there's something more to this, I'm no expert in how PC's are connected together, but as far as I knew the graphics card and USB ports should be completely independent so for both of them to fail at the same time makes me think this is more than just a graphics card issue.
If it comes down to me having to buy another graphics card because the GTX 960 is shot - not a big deal as it's been almost 6 years with it now and I got every penny I spent out of it in those 6 years, now I just have an excuse to upgrade, haha.
Also, note I have taken the GTX 960 out and let it cool down, blew all the dust out of it and checked the fan/connections and everything seems fine as far as the eye can see, I'd have to fully take it apart to find any deep issues with it.
If you need any more information just let me know.
EDIT:
I've also heard that GPU's degrade over time (obviously) and I'm wondering if potentially the overclocking that comes factory on the card is too much for the card to handle now, and if I lower the boost/core clock maybe it will stop failing, not sure to be honest.