New RTX 2070 - 1440p Monitor goes black every two minutes

[swifthaven]

As mentioned above, I have a curious issue that arose last night. I have recently just picked up a ZOTAC 2070 AMP EXTREME to replace my GTX 1070 FE. I have it paired with a Viotek GN27C monitor (displayport cable).

I had installed the new card, clean install of nvidia drivers, unistalled msi afterburner and installed firestorm (ZOTAC's software). Excited to see how it goes, I launched a bioshock game and noticed right away that the screen was going on and off (not a full power off, as the 'black' was still backlit, I was playing in the dark).

Curious, I put a timer on and made use of the lap function. The screen would go black every 2 minutes for 2-3 seconds like clockwork over the course of an hour.

I had shut off cpu, unplugged all cables, reconnected everything and tried again. This issue kept happening, but I also noticed that it occured even if I had nothing open and was just staring at the desktop.

I had uninstalled and reinstalled gpu drivers and the firestorm software (kept firestorm uninstalled and it kept occuring as well), factory reset the monitor via monitor menu, pulled out GPU and reconnected it to the motherboard.

I ran out of ideas last night but I hope to continue trying. I plan to reconnect the 1070 and see if it still occurs (I should note this has never occured since I've had the setup for a few years). I will also try replacing the displayport cable.

Any idea's or advice would be appreciated!

I should also mention its windows 10, I can get full specs if asked but I don't think it's required.

 

[Darkbreeze]

First, update your motherboard bios to the latest version.

Second, do a clean install of Windows.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-3567655/clean-installation-windows.html

Then download and install the whatever drivers are the latest release on the Nvidia website. Don't use drivers from yesterday or two days ago. This is a new architecture that will have a constantly evolving driver package until a lot of bugs get worked out. Use whatever drivers are up as of the day you do the installation.

 

[swifthaven]

First, update your motherboard bios to the latest version.

Second, do a clean install of Windows.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-3567655/clean-installation-windows.html

Then download and install the whatever drivers are the latest release on the Nvidia website. Don't use drivers from yesterday or two days ago. This is a new architecture that will have a constantly evolving driver package until a lot of bugs get worked out. Use whatever drivers are up as of the day you do the installation.

This seems like an excessive fix for this problem. Do you have any other reasoning besides its a new and evolving GPU? If I was to say have bought a 1080Ti and this problem occurred, would you still suggest the same solution?

 

[Darkbreeze]

BIOS update, yes. Clean install of the GPU card drivers, yes. Clean install, maybe, depends on how long it had been since one was done and whether or not other solutions were successful. Obviously, if they were, there would be no need. Try the bios update first, always do that when installing new hardware on an existing platform, then do the clean install of the GPU card drivers.

No solution is excessive if it has a solid track record of producing results, which doing a clean install does.

If the bios and Nvidia driver clean install don't work, then I'd do the clean install of Windows and go from there. Might not fix the problem. Could be a bad card, but I've had several 2000 series card threads this week that required a clean install of the latest Windows release to be done and problems were resolved.

If you installed a new motherboard that was a different chipset than your old one, you wouldn't want to use the current windows installation because of differences in the CPU chipset, storage controller, audio, lan and other drivers and this is not terribly different.

 

[swifthaven]

BIOS update, yes. Clean install of the GPU card drivers, yes. Clean install, maybe, depends on how long it had been since one was done and whether or not other solutions were successful. Obviously, if they were, there would be no need. Try the bios update first, always do that when installing new hardware on an existing platform, then do the clean install of the GPU card drivers.

No solution is excessive if it has a solid track record of producing results, which doing a clean install does.

If the bios and Nvidia driver clean install don't work, then I'd do the clean install of Windows and go from there. Might not fix the problem. Could be a bad card, but I've had several 2000 series card threads this week that required a clean install of the latest Windows release to be done and problems were resolved.

If you installed a new motherboard that was a different chipset than your old one, you wouldn't want to use the current windows installation because of differences in the CPU chipset, storage controller, audio, lan and other drivers and this is not terribly different.

Fair enough mate, I will try your suggestions and report back. Thanks!

 

[swifthaven]

Thanks to Darkbreeze, my issue seems to have been resolved. A BIOS update from firmware 604 to 1301 was availiable, this solved the black flashes. Thank!

 

[Darkbreeze]

For sure. Glad it worked out for you.

 

[swifthaven]

For sure. Glad it worked out for you.

Soooo, I may have spoke to soon. After I updates the bios, installed the drivers and rebooted, I had a great 4 hour sessions of no issues. I thought the problem was solved. This included both heavy graphics usage and mindless browsing.

This morning, as soon as I booted up my cpu, it started doing it again, it also seemed more spontanaic then before, compared to when it was like clockwork.

I have begun a clean install of windows since it was first installed on Oct 2016. Will give an update soon.

 

[Darkbreeze]

What is the EXACT model number of your power supply unit?

 

[swifthaven]

Once I completed a clean reinstall of Windows 10, everything worked fine and havn't had any problems since the install (~1 week of daily usage). It's a lot of work, especially when your download speeds are 300kb/s (farm), but it's working like a dream now.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Cool man. Glad it worked out.

 

[swifthaven]

What is the EXACT model number of your power supply unit?

EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G1, 80+ GOLD 650W, Fully Modular

The issue has been occuring again over last few months. Sometimes it won't go black for a whole night, sometimes it does its periodic black screen consistantly all night - including some artifacts sometimes as well now (almost like a flicker).

I have retried all of the above previously discussed solutions, again, but it did not fix the issue. The card is not overclocked, were you thinking the power supply was not sufficient for the 2070?

Thanks,