Question GPU Shutting Down Under Heavy Load But Sound Still Playing

[Dolly_Steele]

Hello, I have been having an issue with a GPU I recently. Sometimes when Im playing games with high GPU and CPU utilization like Cities Skylines 2 or Baldurs Gate 3 my screen will go black and the fun / lights will turn off on my GPU but the sound will continue playing through my headset. The only way I can fix the issue is by turning the power off and on at the back of my pc, the power or reset button on the front don't do anything. I had a 500W PSU and the crashes more often but after upgrading it to a 850W PSU the crashes decreased. I tried to throttled my GPU and that helps delay but it happens eventually after a long enough play session or if using spikes. My gpu drivers are up to date too so im not sure how to stop this issue. My PC specs are as fallows.

Motherboard- B450 Aorus Elite
GPU- RTX 3070ti
CPU- Ryzen 7 5800x
OS- Windows 10
RAM- 16gb
PSU- Antec 850W 80+ Gold

Any help with this issue would be greatly apparated. I'm thinking the issue might be overheating or possibly hardware acceleration based on my looking at other posts.

 

[piechockidocent9]

A culprit is hard o pinpoint as it can be either 50% gpu and 50% shared between psu or mb. Either way something is off with one of the three.
Easiest way to limit the search would be replacing gpu and checking if symptoms stay.
Do you happend to have an old gpu in the attic or a friend you could swap/borrow gpu from/with?
There are specialized gpu repairing places that offer free diagnoze/testing, you could send your gpu to them or just rma it if it's still on warranty.
Worst case scenario you'll have to pay a shipping fee and have apc down for couple of days but you'll know if your gpu is at fault or not.

 

[Viking2121]

My buddy with a 4090 was having similar issues, it was his plug that not making good connection on the card.

Idk if that would be your issue, but did you ever change the power cables on your GPU to make sure?

 

[piechockidocent9]

My buddy with a 4090 was having similar issues, it was his plug that not making good connection on the card.

Idk if that would be your issue, but did you ever change the power cables on your GPU to make sure?

Yeah 4th gen, 40xx or whatever you call the current nvidia gpus are notorious for having problems with their psu connection (pcie gen 5 or high power or whatver it's called it's faulty AF) but they're running 3070ti so I very much doubt it's the issue. Wouldn't hurt to double check the cables/connections between psu and gpu to be sure.

 

[Dolly_Steele]

A culprit is hard o pinpoint as it can be either 50% gpu and 50% shared between psu or mb. Either way something is off with one of the three.
Easiest way to limit the search would be replacing gpu and checking if symptoms stay.
Do you happend to have an old gpu in the attic or a friend you could swap/borrow gpu from/with?
There are specialized gpu repairing places that offer free diagnoze/testing, you could send your gpu to them or just rma it if it's still on warranty.
Worst case scenario you'll have to pay a shipping fee and have apc down for couple of days but you'll know if your gpu is at fault or not.

I had a 970 before and there where no issues with crashing. The new 3070ti is second hand so it might just be a bad card unfortunately.

 

[Stefarent008]

Have you found a solution/work around?

I'm having a very similar issue with my RX 7900 XT. Mid game I get black screens with distorted audio, the lower half of my screens will flash green or red and my pc will hard reboot. Mostly it's just the flashing, but I haven't been playing enough games recently to have crashes.

I had an R5 3600, upgraded to a R7 5700x (on the same motherboard ASUS strix x470-f), which made it better, but still not a playable experience. Tried my gpu in another pc and it works 100%. Tried different ram, still get black screens and flashing. I've even gone as far as to use a different psu, my old corsair TX550m instead of my corsair RM850, to see if its a psu problem with no change in the behavior.

After all this testing, my last thaught its that there is some incompatibility issues between pcie gen4 GPU's and pcie gen 3 motherboards that isn't well documented, or well known of as people tend to build new pc's or have motherboards with gen 4 pcie to go with their high end/newer gpu's.

I plan on ordering a new motherboard next week in the hopes that it solves my problem as I'm out of ideas and would like to use my pc for more than 30 minutes before I give up on gaming.