Question GTX 970 suddenly crashing five minutes into games, was working fine until I replaced PSU

[Dylan1LTJ]

tl;dr basically the title lol

I’ve had my computer in storage for a bit now but I decided to get it back out after getting an old gtx 970 from a friend. I was enjoying it fine for a day or so till my system started fully crashing in games. My PSU was about 5 years old and making a loud sound any point it was on so I figured it was just time to replace.

I got the Seasonic Focus Gold 550w one after seeing it recommended a lot, and ever since i switched out my PSU, i get about 5 minutes into a game and my monitor turns off. I believe that means that the video card crashes because the system is still on, I just can’t reconnect the monitor or do anything until a reset.

I’ve tried removing and reinstalling new graphics drivers and updating windows but no difference. My BIOS have a single update I could install but it’s a beta one and says it’s only something small for the CPU.

And besides it worked before with all these things supposedly out of date! The only thing different is my PSU, it’s supposed to be brand new, and 50w more than the recommended amount for the 970 (and the last one i had), so I have no idea what’s wrong. Did I get a faulty power supply by chance? My PCI-E cable bad? Why would it work fine before but struggle to stay on for five minutes now?

If anyone has any ideas that’d be great, i’m losing all hope lol

 

[dstln]

Hi,

What have you tried testing so far from your power supply? Have you tested all the different PSU PCI-E outputs, and make sure everything is connected securely, both the card in the slot and power cords? If the 970 is 8-pin, are you making sure to use all 8 pins?

I have never had an issue with any SeaSonic power supplies, but that doesn't mean it's impossible either.

 

[Ketchup79]

Sounds like it was crashing before you bought the new power supply. Possibly a bad card from a friend, possibly overheating. Get some thermal paste if you don't already have some and reapply the video card cooler. If you haven't yet, give everything in the computer a good dusting. If it still crashes in games after all that, look in event viewer and tell us what the errors are.

 

[Dylan1LTJ]

There’s only one PCI-E connection on the power supply, and only one cable they provided for connecting to a graphics card. All 8 pins are connected and it seems to be plugged in all the way on both.

Temperatures seem to be fine, it crashes too soon for it to even get hot, and when I ran it before the highest it ever got was 70c. I already completely dusted it too when getting it back out. I guess it could be a faulty card, plugging in the 760 everything works fine in games. But I still don’t know why it would work for me before. If my power supply hadn’t been old and crashing I would have just kept using the 970 fine it feels like

 

[FALC0N]

Sounds like it was crashing before you bought the new power supply......

A agree that this doesn't sound like a psu issue.

 

[Dylan1LTJ]

so why would it have worked fine before?

 

[Ketchup79]

Unless your first post is incorrect, it never worked "correctly" with this GTX 970.

 

[Dylan1LTJ]

okay well the post is correct, so i guess that’s not it!

 

[FALC0N]

okay well the post is correct, so i guess that’s not it!

Tell the specs of your system before the PSU swap. Let's start there.

 

[Ketchup79]

okay well the post is correct, so i guess that’s not it!

If your first post is correct, then the video card is the most likely problem at this point.

 

[Dylan1LTJ]

specs:
Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P
Corsair CX500M / Seasonic Focus Gold 550w
EVGA Geforce Gtx 760 / ASUS Strix Gtx 970
FX 6300
and 8gb of Dell RAM lol

I know the video card seems to be the problem, it makes sense that it’s the one crashing and turning off the monitor while the system stays on, I just can’t figure out why. Wasn’t sure if there are situations like this where a new PSU can be under powering instead of the total wattage it’s supposed to give or if cables might be doing similar for some reason. I tried many things to figure out if the 970 is suddenly acting up but none of the recommended things like full driver update wipes/reinstalls help, and I kinda figured they wouldn’t because I had already played 6-7 hours in a game just fine on it without updates.

 

[Memme_gamer]

Can be the ram or the cpu im not 100% if it is the ram thats because its probebly bad quality or if it is the cpu its probebly because it cant handle the card but i dont think its the cpu but not sure tho its worked fine whith the gtx 760 did it?

 

[rickypicky5]

"I’ve had my computer in storage for a bit now but I decided to get it back out after getting an old gtx 970 from a friend. I was enjoying it fine for a day or so till my system started fully crashing in games. My PSU was about 5 years old and making a loud sound any point it was on so I figured it was just time to replace. "

Is it possible this original PSU, when you had these issues, damaged your motherboard as well?

 

[Ketchup79]

If you are still unsure about the video card, should be easy enough to test - put your old card back in (if possible). If it runs fine on the old card, you know it's the new(er) card.

 

[Dylan1LTJ]

The motherboard seems to be the same as always, not sure how to check if it’s faulty. The CPU and RAM were working with the 970 before, 6300 gets a bit of bottleneck I’ve heard but it wouldn’t cause this problem.

Already compared with the 760, it works in games. But that doesn’t tell me anything other than the problem is the 970, which I already know. My question is why it would suddenly decide to stop working (but only in games) from the 48 hour period when I was replacing my psu, unless it’s something else connected to it causing it to not work. It doesn’t seem like anyone has any ideas though. That’s fine, just wanted to see if there was anything i hadn’t thought of. Might try picking up another psu to test on, see if it makes any difference by chance. Otherwise I might just call it.

 

[Ketchup79]

Either you aren't saying what you mean, or I'm not understanding what you are saying. From what what you have posted, the power supplies have nothing to do with this situation. The 970 was the problem in both instances.

 

[Dylan1LTJ]

Lmao not sure how I can be more clear, we’re just going in circles.

One more time: my old psu was crashing my system. I know it wasn’t the 970 doing this because it would crash when I tried the 760 too. I also know the 970 was working before because I was playing on it just fine before the PSU began crashing.

I then bought a new psu. Full system crashing has stopped and is replaced by my 970 crashing. The only difference two days later is the psu. Im trying to find out what went wrong that the 970 is no longer working. That’s all the info I can think to provide. This seems to have been a waste of time though lol

 

[Ketchup79]

One more time, you said
1.

I decided to get it back out after getting an old gtx 970

2.

My PSU was about 5 years old and making a loud sound any point it was on so I figured it was just time to replace.

3.

I got the Seasonic Focus Gold 550w one after seeing it recommended a lot, and ever since i switched out my PSU, i get about 5 minutes into a game and my monitor turns off.

Oh but wait, now you are saying:

I know it wasn’t the 970 doing this because it would crash when I tried the 760 too. I also know the 970 was working before because I was playing on it just fine before the PSU began crashing.

that's probably doesn't sound right because earlier up (post #4) you stated:

plugging in the 760 everything works fine in games.

So don't worry, I am done here, I just wanted to let you know why the guy wasting your time is the only one still posting here.