Dual Monitors(xb271hk) on startup display no signal

[wtjwillis]

Alright so I am officially stumped.

I like to consider myself IT smart, its my hobby and also what I do in the Army.
However this issue has me stumped. I need yall's help!

So, I recently bought two Acer Predator XB271HK to run a dual monitor setup on my custom built rig. On the first boot-up of the day, both monitors display NO SIGNAL. The computer powers on normal, keyboard lights up, its just both monitors say NO SIGNAL.

Now if I hold the power button on the computer down to force shutdown, then press it again to start it back up, both monitors come on and I can continue to log in and all that(Grant you it flickers and has a couple resolutions sizing issues after I log in, but they correct on their own with a matter of 10 seconds or so) That leads me to believe this is a possible driver/GPU issue/setting issue, but I cannot say for certain.

My specs:
2 Acer Predator XB271HK running both on displayport with aftermarket cables(not the ones it came with)
I7-6850k (oc'd to 4.4) using H80iv2 watercooler
MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon Motherboard
2 Gigabyte GTX 1080 Waterforce cards, SLI'd
2 sticks of RIPJAWS DDR4 RAM (running standard 2400)
Samsung 850 Evo SSD and 960 Evo M.2 SSD
1 crappy HDD @ 7200rpm
Corsair hx1200i PSU

Here's what I've tried:

Uninstalling/Reinstalling current drivers for GPU
turning OC off on my RAM
booting with just one monitor
Extend setting on windows
I've also messed a little with nvidia surround but currently, it is off and plan on it staying that way most likely.


I want to game @ 4k and with displayport on this setup, you can, at 60hz albeit, but still. So switching to HDMI or any other connection is a no-go for me.
I've looked at several forums online to try to find an answer, but haven't had any luck.

Hopefully someone here can help!

Thanks in advance guys and gals!

 

[rhysiam]

I had a similar, and very strange issue to you... Here's my anecdotal experience of a cheap (aftermarket) displayport cable for what it's worth:

A had a mini DP to DP cable which worked just fine on my Surface Pro 3. But, when I used it for my AMD GPU to my Dell 2412M, none of my 3 monitors would come on about 2/3rds of the time. I would power the system off, then back on again, and eventually everything would come up and then be rock solid until restart or power off again. After loads of mucking around I *finally* isolated the issue to the specific DP cable, and could pretty consistently get the PC to boot (100% of the time), by disconnecting that specific cable until Windows was up, then connecting it again... all detected... 3 monitors... no problem until restart.

I consider myself reasonably informed about displays and display connectivity, but I have absolutely NO explanation for this issue. I got a new cable (another cheap aftermarket one because who wants to pay stupid money for a "proper" one), and it's been absolutely fine since.

I can verify that the issue really is repeatable on my desktop because I went back to using it on my SP3 (without issues) for a while. Then after some cable swaps maybe a year later, I completely forgot about the issue and tried to use that suspect cable back in the desktop again and what-do-you-know, the problem was back.

I have no idea whether you might be running into a similarly bizarre issue. But it's worth trying. Remove the DP cable and boot. Then plug it in. Does that work?
If so, try another cable!

 

[wtjwillis]

Yeah that's odd indeed. I mean, I can certainly try that as I still have the 2 cables that Acer sent with the monitors. I didn't really want to use them as I figured they'd probably be garbage, so I had two aftermarket, good quality ones sent to me to rectify that. Who knows though. I will try tomorrow morning when I boot it up, as thats the only way so far that I've been able to replicate the issue so far.

I'm still open to any ideas from other people too. It could be a whole host of things causing this.

 

[rhysiam]

Whether your issue is the same as mine or not, if you've got other DP cables sitting there, then absolutely try them! A cable issue is as likely as anything else and by far the easiest to eliminate if you've got spare cables sitting there.