EVGA GTX 295 Red Error Light

[clee46]

Hi Everyone,

I recently started having a problem with my eVGA GTX 295 where my system will freeze while gaming and the LED on the back of the card (normally green), turns red. I get a message on my monitor saying "Cable Not Connected", indicating that no signal is coming from the card.

Computer Specs:
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 GHz (not OC'd)
- eVGA GTX 295
- ABS Tagan BZ Series 800W PSU
- 2 x Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB (RAID 0), 1 x Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB
- Intel Stock CPU Fan
- Antec 900
- 1 LG DVD Burner
- 4 x 2GB Patriot Viper DDR2 800 RAM

I have owned this card for 3 months without having any problem. The only changes made to the setup recently have been the addition of the 2 Velociraptors. However, I did not think the Velociraptor consumes that much power. I am trying to determine whether this is a power consumption problem, a heat problem or a driver problem. I used to have a Cooler Master V8 CPU Cooler (supposedly used 180W) but removed it for the Stock fan when this problem with the card came up. However, even with the stock fan, the problem has persisted.

Has anyone else seen this Red error light and been able to determine/fix the problem? Thanks!

P.S. - games which have caused this problem: Counter Strike: Source, Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty 5 so far (again, these games ran fine up until last week)

 

[Able-Element]

Well if you OC your CPU to 3.GHz you will get better Performance.i had the Card for a few days and i started getting crashes from Web browsing and in Game errors.I fixed it by going to this link and Downloading the SLI Enhanced Patch.Cause remmember that this Card is put toghether with 2 GPU's in SLI.
Link>> http://www.evga.com/articles/00463/Default.asp
Let me know if it worked for you as it did for me

 

[spathotan]

Have you checked your temps on the card? Also, does the PSU have enough amps on teh 12v?

 

[ZeroRandom]

I also have been having this problem on my GTX 285... during high intensity games like FO3 COD4 FC2 etc etc... or 3-boxing on WoW w/ 2 monitors I will occasionally get red lights, freeze and a crash causing me to hard-restart the system. Originally I thought it was heat building up and eventually causing a crash, but after several temp apps proving my heat never got above around 75c.. and sometimes crashed (and red-lighted) at much lower temps I realized it wasn't the heat.

I have had this problem pretty much right away from building my system... its odd because it doesn't stop me from gaming... and usually only happens in intense situations but not always. Sometimes I will go 2-3 hours, and sometimes only 10-20 minutes before a crash.

One thing about your post intrigues me though... I also have 10k RPM drives. I don't think these drives take up tons of power nessecarily but maybe in raid they can cause a energy drain spike when they spin up affecting the g-card enough to cause a crash? I dunno but I cannot find a solution to this either..

I have tried overclocking both g-card and mobo, changing speeds and power just to shake things up.. everything worked fine on the OC side but no luck with the occasional red-light crashes.

It could be the PSU.. but after reading on another forum someone with the same problem tried different PSUs and Mobos with no luck. Unfortunately for him even a new g-card didnt help, leading him to believe it was the combo of his card (gtx 295) and mobo (xfx 780i). I don't think applies to us, and I hope its not a compatibility problem with certain mobos and the gtx 285/295...

Also I've tried switching things up like putting in-out the pci fan, or running just one monitor. I also updated drivers for all hardware and even tried old drivers for the 285.

Any help, suggestions beyond something I've tried or a gun to shoot XFX with would be appreciated!

These cards are insanely expensive and should not be having problems like this.

My Setup-
Thermaltake Armor+ Case
Evga Intel X58 Mobo
Intel Core i7 920 CPU
XFX GTX 285 Black Ed.
3x2GB 1600mhz Cosair Dominator RAM
ABSLabs Tagan BZ 900W PSU
2x150GB WD Raptors 10k RPM HD
500GB Caviar
Vigor Monsoon CPU Cooler
2-Fan PCI Slot Cooler
2x Samsung T260HD Monitors

 

[NortySparkz]

Red light indicates insufficient power to video card.
Make sure you have both the 6pin
AND 8pin connectors connected

 

[joke_82]

I am also having the same problem with my gtx 285

I have 2 running in sli but its only the master card that I get the red light error with, and again only now ang again.

I have had the card replaced and it went for about 8 weeks untill I got the error again.

But also I have a 10k velociraptor!!!

I do have a 1000w psu which should be enought to power everything

 

[ripfree]

same issue here

EVGA gtx 295 double-decked rev. (not OC , even DC, 2.5-5.2k RMP doesn`t matter)
PSU is Andyson AD-01050AD-83 ( ATX12V 1050W ) - don tell me pls that this is not enought for feeding one gtx
motherboard GA-EX58-UD5 (f7\f9 bios rev)
cpu - core i7 920 c0
ram - Crucial 8-8-8-24 BL3KIT25664TG1608 CL8 GREEN
3 HD - 2 wd 500 gb 7200rpm green in raid0 + 750 barracuda

Actualy Red light comes not only in games sometimes it blows off browser or desctop about 2-3 times per 2 hour. Does anyone heard about model deffect in this nvidia line or something else.

 

[nforce4max]

OK guys is the rear of the card really hot during the red light crashes or the psu seams to be hotter than normal since that could be one of many causes for this problem. This is one reason more why I go over kill on cooling even on low end and vintage cards much less any thing new. Run the rig like you would normally do such as gaming or any thing else then with the back of your hand feel for heat or cold spots since this might help find the problem. If the power stage is piping hot then that could easily be the problem since during hot and cold cycles can fracture solder joints after a few months of use.

 

[joke_82]

I reduced the voltages in the bios about 5 weeks ago and haven't had any problems since.
it must have been a power problem which was causing the main card to shut down.

Maybe you guys coould try reducing the voltyages slightly in bios and see if that helps yous. def done the trick for me.

I had real temp running constantly to check the cards temp and rulled out it was a temp problem