Hello! This is my first build and post so I will try to be as concise as I can! The parts were bought during the days leading up to and including black friday 2016 however I had just kept on to the parts until exams were finished. I'm writing this in hope that this issue would be solved without having to buy new parts, but it does seem unlikely, and if not how others would handle the problem.
Apologies if this is in the wrong thread!
Build..
CPU: Intel i5 6600k
CPU cooler: Cooler Master 412s
GPU: Palit GTX 1070 Super Jetstream
Motherboard: MSI Z170A Krait Gaming
Memory: 2x HyperX Savage 4GB - DDR4 (8GB)
PSU: Rosewill Capstone 750W Gold
Parts bought: November 2016
Build completed: 19/01/17
Build broke: 2/02/17
The system is running on Windows 10 Pro
So the current situation is;
When the Graphics card is installed in the PC the monitor would remain blank however I think it is receiving a signal since the monitor isn't giving the 'no signal' popup. I had also noticed the boot time, if it is running, is longer which i timed using the LEDs on my keyboard. They would flash before a few seconds of being off then have its normal stable light, all while the monitor remains blank. Even the initial MSI popup to enter BIOS at the start won't show.
When I remove the GPU, the startup to my desktop is normal and the monitor is displaying as it was before.
Everything else appears to be working; fans are spinning, LEDs are lit even the GPU LEDs.
The events leading up to this was that I was playing Witcher 3 for the first time, at ultra 1080p capped at 60fps with vsync, however after about 4 hours the game showed artifacts, froze and then the computer crashed. I of course tried to reload the game however crashes occurred within seconds of actual gameplay as in I loaded into my saved file before crashing. Crashes would range from game freezing then crashing to desktop to freezing the whole computer giving me the blue screen of death causing the computer to restart after gathering data. Although most common crash is just the computer freezing and I would be forced to restart using the power button on the PC. Also following some crashes to the desktop, artifacts would show up at the desktop. Attempts were made to fix the game (updating drivers, altering the video quality and framerates, increasing gpu fans) without having to install third party software.
This was during late last night so I had just slept and attempted again this afternoon only to see the monitor won't display anything.
So far my attempts in fixing this have been..
- Making sure all the wires are fitted
- Replacing the power supply wire to the GPU
- Uninstalling Nvidia drivers ( couldn't reinstall without GPU added back)
- Uninstalling softwares made on the day of the game crashes
- Moving the GPU to the second PCIE slot
- Switching monitors and output types (HDMI and DVI-D Dual Link)
- Disabling Intel HD graphics in Device manager
I have a feeling maybe something in the BIOS I can change but I would probably need the GPU installed.
So my thoughts..
At the moment, I am 80% it is the video card that had died, 15% it being the power supply, 5% Motherboard.
The video card is most likely the problem since it is stopping my monitor displaying anything and the artifacts were popping up. I also think it may be causing a mini crash of some sort when the computer is just booting up since it causes my keyboard LED to flicker then it turns off before the normal LED stable light. The motherboard also has an 'EZ LED debug' light for the CPU, RAM and GPU and that when the GPU is installed it causes it to light up on boot up however it does turn off afterwards, even though there is still no display.
The reason I think it may be the power supply is that perhaps it isn't supplying enough power to the GPU which may be causing the artifacts. The wire is tightly fitted, in fact I couldn't even comfortably remove the 6 pin wire from the PSU and had to use another wire to check that wasn't the problem. Also this PSU is my newest part since my old one was making some clicking noise which i just replaced immediately. I don't think the GPU broke by overheating, I kept quite an aggressive fan curve (80% by 50 degrees, 100% at 60 degrees) since I'm paranoid about that and my room is quite cool where the idle temperatures would be around 25-30 degrees for the CPU and GPU. I have not seen my GPU go above 50 degrees however it most likely have during the 4 hour gameplay but I don't think it would have gone to the point where it would break the GPU.
Motherboard may be a problem if the PCIE slots alone are somehow damaged however I tried both slots and still no display but I think it may still be possibility.
CPU and everything else should be okay since it's able to boot up normally and work smoothly without the GPU installed.
What I don't understand is how the PC could at least get to the desktop to not able to show up anything without use overnight. I really hope i'm just being stupid and missing to do something blindingly obvious. It should probably be noted that the graphics card was fine before this however I had not played any demanding games before this either or ran any test benchmarks. I was just playing games like League of Legends, Dota2, Mafia 3 ( free with mobo ), Brothers: A tale of two sons, Magicka, so nothing really to stress the GPU.
In summary;
GPU may be dead after playing graphically demanding game causing artifacts and crashing
PSU supplying power to GPU may be defective
[strike]Motherboard PCIE slots may be defective[/strike]
I would like other people's insights into this since I can't be 100% sure on what the defect is as I don't have anything to install the GPU in or another GPU to test into my build and if it's not the GPU and I end up getting a new one and it still doesn't work I'd have to question the other parts or maybe I was just unlucky or maybe the PSU somehow surged power into the Graphics Card.
As I've said it's my first time building and I was excited to finally be playing games so it really sucks that I've got a problem this early so thanks in advance to those who try to help
EDIT1: PCIE slots not likely broken, just came to realisation that it powers the fans and LED on my graphics card so data transfer part is most likely fine as well. So either the PSU killed my graphics card or the graphics card is just weirdly faulty, breaking down under a somewhat demanding environment.
EDIT 2: GPU LED colour settings are kept so I'm fairly sure the computer is booting up fine and PCIE slots 100% not defective. Really just a lack of display from the graphics card.
Edit 3: GPU does not seem to be quite dead!
I was about to call for an RMA but decided to test the GPU once more and to my surprise it managed to boot up with display on to the monitor?? However the resolution that it booted into was much lower than the native resolution of 1920x1080 and with the wrong aspect ratio.
Just before this, all I did was change a few things in the BIOS such as boot priority and disabling 'windows 7 installation' and a few more things under peripherals. Regardless if I accidentally tweaked something in BIOS to make it boot up with display or not, it at least gave hope that the graphics card still had a bit of life.
Changing the resolution to 1080p caused some artefacts across the desktop which only disappeared under lower resolutions. Initially lead me to think the GPU was faulty but now I think that it really is just not receiving enough power to go for those higher resolutions.
Following this I had decided to download the latest Nvidia Drivers for 1070 Windows 10 64-Bit; Version 378.49 released 2017.1.24. without GeForce Experience and clean installation. However after installation the black screen came back. Which lead me to believe perhaps the latest drivers were causing this. And so after rebooting without GPU and uninstalling I rebooted with GPU and I installed the 376.19 Version released 2016.12.5, without GeForce Experience and Nvidia HD Audio driver and clicked clean installation since I didn't really need it. I rebooted and managed to finally get a display with a driver installed however resolution was low, and no Nvidia control panel. Opening Thundermaster it was clear they couldn't detect my GPU as the values were all 0 for clock and speed and memory etc. I then went into Device Manager and updated Nvidia drivers through that by searching automatically online then I rebooted and here I am now with the latest driver installed. Weirdly booted completely normal with the GPU still installed although i'm scared that this may just be a one off and the black screen returns instantly after restarting.
Not sure if GPU is 100% healthy, perhaps PCIE connection is being interrupted by the GPU sagging. During some previous load ups, the motherboard sometimes takes a while to detect the GPU so maybe there's compatibility issues between the two. EZ debug lights still pops up during boot up but maybe it's just a normal delay in trying to detect the card
Not really sure what these findings confirmed. At least the card isn't fried as I initially though but this only means there are other problems. Hopefully this is all just bad drivers that caused screen tearing, artefacts, no display on monitor at boot up, crashing of games, blue screen of deaths and inability to detect the GPU quickly sometimes.
So now currently this computer is on its first successful boot up. Drivers installed are Nvidia Graphics and 3D Vision Driver 378.49, 3D Vision Controller Driver 369.04 and Nvidia PhysX system software 9.16.0318
Also funnily during this I learnt that more than one display outputs are put into the same screen, the computer would think there are more than 1 monitor available causing a black screen on load up but with just a mouse. Fixed by just blindly typing password to get into desktop and removing one of the display output wires. Hopefully next edit is the last with me saying ' pc has restarted successfully multiple times with display on monitor'
[strike]Edit 4: It's been over 24 hours since this problem initially started and basically spent the whole day reading and trying to figure out what's happened but the computer seems to be running fine again but who knows how long for. Not entirely sure what caused the malfunctions whether it's just the drivers, the GPU or a combination of many things but for now it's okay. If nothing else, this post serves as a log of one of my first breakdowns of owning a PC even though I don't understand why.[/strike]
Apologies if this is in the wrong thread!
Build..
CPU: Intel i5 6600k
CPU cooler: Cooler Master 412s
GPU: Palit GTX 1070 Super Jetstream
Motherboard: MSI Z170A Krait Gaming
Memory: 2x HyperX Savage 4GB - DDR4 (8GB)
PSU: Rosewill Capstone 750W Gold
Parts bought: November 2016
Build completed: 19/01/17
Build broke: 2/02/17
The system is running on Windows 10 Pro
So the current situation is;
When the Graphics card is installed in the PC the monitor would remain blank however I think it is receiving a signal since the monitor isn't giving the 'no signal' popup. I had also noticed the boot time, if it is running, is longer which i timed using the LEDs on my keyboard. They would flash before a few seconds of being off then have its normal stable light, all while the monitor remains blank. Even the initial MSI popup to enter BIOS at the start won't show.
When I remove the GPU, the startup to my desktop is normal and the monitor is displaying as it was before.
Everything else appears to be working; fans are spinning, LEDs are lit even the GPU LEDs.
The events leading up to this was that I was playing Witcher 3 for the first time, at ultra 1080p capped at 60fps with vsync, however after about 4 hours the game showed artifacts, froze and then the computer crashed. I of course tried to reload the game however crashes occurred within seconds of actual gameplay as in I loaded into my saved file before crashing. Crashes would range from game freezing then crashing to desktop to freezing the whole computer giving me the blue screen of death causing the computer to restart after gathering data. Although most common crash is just the computer freezing and I would be forced to restart using the power button on the PC. Also following some crashes to the desktop, artifacts would show up at the desktop. Attempts were made to fix the game (updating drivers, altering the video quality and framerates, increasing gpu fans) without having to install third party software.
This was during late last night so I had just slept and attempted again this afternoon only to see the monitor won't display anything.
So far my attempts in fixing this have been..
- Making sure all the wires are fitted
- Replacing the power supply wire to the GPU
- Uninstalling Nvidia drivers ( couldn't reinstall without GPU added back)
- Uninstalling softwares made on the day of the game crashes
- Moving the GPU to the second PCIE slot
- Switching monitors and output types (HDMI and DVI-D Dual Link)
- Disabling Intel HD graphics in Device manager
I have a feeling maybe something in the BIOS I can change but I would probably need the GPU installed.
So my thoughts..
At the moment, I am 80% it is the video card that had died, 15% it being the power supply, 5% Motherboard.
The video card is most likely the problem since it is stopping my monitor displaying anything and the artifacts were popping up. I also think it may be causing a mini crash of some sort when the computer is just booting up since it causes my keyboard LED to flicker then it turns off before the normal LED stable light. The motherboard also has an 'EZ LED debug' light for the CPU, RAM and GPU and that when the GPU is installed it causes it to light up on boot up however it does turn off afterwards, even though there is still no display.
The reason I think it may be the power supply is that perhaps it isn't supplying enough power to the GPU which may be causing the artifacts. The wire is tightly fitted, in fact I couldn't even comfortably remove the 6 pin wire from the PSU and had to use another wire to check that wasn't the problem. Also this PSU is my newest part since my old one was making some clicking noise which i just replaced immediately. I don't think the GPU broke by overheating, I kept quite an aggressive fan curve (80% by 50 degrees, 100% at 60 degrees) since I'm paranoid about that and my room is quite cool where the idle temperatures would be around 25-30 degrees for the CPU and GPU. I have not seen my GPU go above 50 degrees however it most likely have during the 4 hour gameplay but I don't think it would have gone to the point where it would break the GPU.
Motherboard may be a problem if the PCIE slots alone are somehow damaged however I tried both slots and still no display but I think it may still be possibility.
CPU and everything else should be okay since it's able to boot up normally and work smoothly without the GPU installed.
What I don't understand is how the PC could at least get to the desktop to not able to show up anything without use overnight. I really hope i'm just being stupid and missing to do something blindingly obvious. It should probably be noted that the graphics card was fine before this however I had not played any demanding games before this either or ran any test benchmarks. I was just playing games like League of Legends, Dota2, Mafia 3 ( free with mobo ), Brothers: A tale of two sons, Magicka, so nothing really to stress the GPU.
In summary;
GPU may be dead after playing graphically demanding game causing artifacts and crashing
PSU supplying power to GPU may be defective
[strike]Motherboard PCIE slots may be defective[/strike]
I would like other people's insights into this since I can't be 100% sure on what the defect is as I don't have anything to install the GPU in or another GPU to test into my build and if it's not the GPU and I end up getting a new one and it still doesn't work I'd have to question the other parts or maybe I was just unlucky or maybe the PSU somehow surged power into the Graphics Card.
As I've said it's my first time building and I was excited to finally be playing games so it really sucks that I've got a problem this early so thanks in advance to those who try to help
EDIT1: PCIE slots not likely broken, just came to realisation that it powers the fans and LED on my graphics card so data transfer part is most likely fine as well. So either the PSU killed my graphics card or the graphics card is just weirdly faulty, breaking down under a somewhat demanding environment.
EDIT 2: GPU LED colour settings are kept so I'm fairly sure the computer is booting up fine and PCIE slots 100% not defective. Really just a lack of display from the graphics card.
Edit 3: GPU does not seem to be quite dead!
I was about to call for an RMA but decided to test the GPU once more and to my surprise it managed to boot up with display on to the monitor?? However the resolution that it booted into was much lower than the native resolution of 1920x1080 and with the wrong aspect ratio.
Just before this, all I did was change a few things in the BIOS such as boot priority and disabling 'windows 7 installation' and a few more things under peripherals. Regardless if I accidentally tweaked something in BIOS to make it boot up with display or not, it at least gave hope that the graphics card still had a bit of life.
Changing the resolution to 1080p caused some artefacts across the desktop which only disappeared under lower resolutions. Initially lead me to think the GPU was faulty but now I think that it really is just not receiving enough power to go for those higher resolutions.
Following this I had decided to download the latest Nvidia Drivers for 1070 Windows 10 64-Bit; Version 378.49 released 2017.1.24. without GeForce Experience and clean installation. However after installation the black screen came back. Which lead me to believe perhaps the latest drivers were causing this. And so after rebooting without GPU and uninstalling I rebooted with GPU and I installed the 376.19 Version released 2016.12.5, without GeForce Experience and Nvidia HD Audio driver and clicked clean installation since I didn't really need it. I rebooted and managed to finally get a display with a driver installed however resolution was low, and no Nvidia control panel. Opening Thundermaster it was clear they couldn't detect my GPU as the values were all 0 for clock and speed and memory etc. I then went into Device Manager and updated Nvidia drivers through that by searching automatically online then I rebooted and here I am now with the latest driver installed. Weirdly booted completely normal with the GPU still installed although i'm scared that this may just be a one off and the black screen returns instantly after restarting.
Not sure if GPU is 100% healthy, perhaps PCIE connection is being interrupted by the GPU sagging. During some previous load ups, the motherboard sometimes takes a while to detect the GPU so maybe there's compatibility issues between the two. EZ debug lights still pops up during boot up but maybe it's just a normal delay in trying to detect the card
Not really sure what these findings confirmed. At least the card isn't fried as I initially though but this only means there are other problems. Hopefully this is all just bad drivers that caused screen tearing, artefacts, no display on monitor at boot up, crashing of games, blue screen of deaths and inability to detect the GPU quickly sometimes.
So now currently this computer is on its first successful boot up. Drivers installed are Nvidia Graphics and 3D Vision Driver 378.49, 3D Vision Controller Driver 369.04 and Nvidia PhysX system software 9.16.0318
Also funnily during this I learnt that more than one display outputs are put into the same screen, the computer would think there are more than 1 monitor available causing a black screen on load up but with just a mouse. Fixed by just blindly typing password to get into desktop and removing one of the display output wires. Hopefully next edit is the last with me saying ' pc has restarted successfully multiple times with display on monitor'
[strike]Edit 4: It's been over 24 hours since this problem initially started and basically spent the whole day reading and trying to figure out what's happened but the computer seems to be running fine again but who knows how long for. Not entirely sure what caused the malfunctions whether it's just the drivers, the GPU or a combination of many things but for now it's okay. If nothing else, this post serves as a log of one of my first breakdowns of owning a PC even though I don't understand why.[/strike]