My Dell LCD monitor goes blank suddenly!

[amitkumar0697]

Hi All,
New here and hope to find some solution to my problem.
I had a Dell vostro 200S desktop and installed a Galaxy 9600GT Low power Low profile card. Installed the latest Nvidia Drivers. All was working fine but one day suddenly my monitor went blank as if switched off! Then after some mouse shaking it came back but I could see some horizontal lines on the monitor, again went blank and now it dint come back. My CPU was alive, I could hear the fan, the led was on but the monitor would not come back.
I thought it was because of overheating of the card as Everest was showing temp ranging 50 to 60C and full load upto 70C (but I thought that was fine!).
When I used to play games(NFS shift, Grid, Burnout) it will go blank (not all times though)
I play mkv movies, it will go blank (not all times though)
or sometimes, if the comp is left on for more than 12 hrs, it will go blank (but not always)
And sometimes it will just go blank after working for 1 hr on the comp (just browsing)
Thus reintalled the nvidia drives, fixed the card again on the slot, searched the net, but all in vain. I also knew that the graphics card needed 400w PSU, and dell has only 250W, but it was all fine in the beginning.

So one fine day I took out the Galaxy card and installed in another desktop of mine, this was a assembled one, 650w PSU - coolermaster, Asus P5Q-VM mother board, 3GB ram, Windows Vista Home Basic 32bit, Intel core2 duo 2.8 cpu with 250 GB hardisk with Azuntech low 5.1 PCI soundcard.
All was fine, then again one day the monitor went blank just like in dell. I even tried with another monitor, the same issue. Is the card haeting up? (I ran the Funmark test - temp reach as high as 95C, but the monitor was still on and running)
Last night when the monitor went blank my card temp was 56C to 60C.
I have reinstalled the drivers, OS but no help. I am going NUTS as I am not able to find a root cause, so can somebody help me please!!!! The only option left is to replace the Graphics card, but its a good card and thats the last thing I want to do

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Look at power issues, like power supplies and the guage of the wiring to your pc. I had this issue when gaming a while back, and what turned out was the issue was that I had too low guage wiring running to the pc, so under load it was causing this. Could be the 9600 gt is pulling more juice than your power supply is putting out. Check sleep settings first though.

 

[amitkumar0697]

Hey thanks for the reply!
But my power supply is a coolermaster 650w PSU, also about the sleep settings I am in a 'High Performance' power plan with only the display going off after 20mins.
Also this the second desktop its happening in and the only thing which is common between the both desktop is my Dell LCD monitor, Soundcard and the Galxy card, rest all is different.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Hm. Coolermasters aren't known as great power supplies, but should be enough for the 9600gt. Do you have your monitor and everything plugged into one power strip? If yes, get a new power strip and plug just the computer into that. Like I said, I had the same issue myself and the electrical cord I was using was 18 guage I think, apparently not enough to carry enough voltage for everything at once under a load. If I were gaming, sometimes what happened was the screen would just black out, still sound, pc running, etc, then it would come back after checking connectors etc.

But as soon as I started using a seperate cord for the pc itself and turned sleeep off, the isue vanished. And the research I did suggested weak/bad PSU's could cause similar things. A 650 watt coolermaster should easily power that card unless defective. So I would recheck connections between monitor and pc to be sure they are solid, check the power wiring, and troubleshoot from there. Could be maybe something loose on the connector at the monitor, but check these other things first as they are cheap and an easy place to start.

 

[amitkumar0697]

The issue is that the monitor going blank started with Dell Vostro 220S itself and started after I installed the Galaxy 9600GT (Low power Low profile). Before the installation of the card all was fine.
Now I have shifted the card to a different desktop and face the same issue in this. Thus is power can be only issue?
Also my monitor and cpu are both connected a an HP UPS. Now the only thing I see is that a 650w PSU been connected to a 300W ups but still when the power goes off there are not issues , I do get the required backup time.
Yes all cables are attched to single connector with 6 slots.
May be the UPS is connected to the main power supply with others (in on of the 6 connectors) and my PSU is connected to the UPS. As I said earlier UPS is rated at 300W and PSU at 650 W, thus is my CPU still getting 300W only ?? Could that be an issue??

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Could be. I'm not saying it's only power, but that's where I would look first. Try for the sake of testing just plugging straight into a power strip, or straight into the wall. It could be that your UPS isn't keeping up in that case.