• Happy holidays, folks! Thanks to each and every one of you for being part of the Tom's Hardware community!

Question PC Malfunction - Crashes and Random Pixels

Jul 5, 2019
1
0
10
First off, I apologize if this is not the right forum to go to for help. I looked through all of the categories on this forum and since I suspect that this problem is being caused by the Graphics Card I figured that this was the best place to post it.

A few days ago random pixels started showing up on my display. They were of different colors and often would appear in patterns, either diagonally or in a checkerboard-type shape. I plugged the monitor into another laptop and swapped the HDMI cable to confirm that the problem was being caused by my PC. This problem got worse and worse as time went by, causing videogames to crash or load textures incorrectly and making certain apps unusable due to the random pixels blocking everything. It has now worsened to the point that I can no longer load any game for more than about 2 minutes before it crashes my computer and causes it to restart, and sometimes my computer will fail to boot and instead will be stuck restarting until I force it to power off or just unplug the power supply. Although I can sometimes start the computer and use it to browse the web/play Spotify or other simple tasks, I can now no longer use my computer as my main PC as it is unreliable.
My computer has also had some major difficulties connecting to the internet, either by not being able to connect to any Wifi networks at all or by displaying "No internet" once connected to a network, however, that issue is secondary and may be unrelated, so I would prefer to deal with the visual errors first.
Last night my computer crashed and displayed the attached image (I was unable to take a screenshot, so I had to just take a picture of the screen). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-5agBSkvVLm9YrrmMV1Ak0Y_VVM8QeXb/view?usp=sharing. Unfortunately, the visual malfunction prevented me from seeing the error code which might help in solving this problem.
I've uninstalled and reinstalled the correct drivers for my graphics card and opened my computer case to blow out all the dust with compressed air, but beyond that, I am not sure what to do. My computer does not feel very hot when it crashes so I do not believe that this problem is being caused by overheating but I wouldn't rule that possibility out entirely.

Here are my specifications:
Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00 GHz
AMD Radeon R9 200 Series 4 GB
16 GB DDR3 RAM
1 TB HDD and 128 GB SSD (Windows is installed on the SSD)
MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Motherboard
Windows 10

As you can probably tell, I am not very tech-savvy and I'm not very knowledgable about computers but I believe that I know enough to be able to solve this problem with assistance.
Thank you for any help in advance.
 
Welcome to the forums my friend!

  • Your CPU has integrated graphics, so you can always remove the GPU and test to see if the issue persists when running on integrated graphics alone. This could help identify if it is the GPU at fault.
  • Additionally, I would monitor CPU and GPU temps under load to verify temperatures aren't too high. You can do this with HWInfo for example.
  • What is your PSU make and model?
  • Does this occur only when under load? If it can occur at any stage, I would also attempt to run in safe mode and see if the issue persists.
  • Also being as you encountered a BSOD, if you can post a link to the raw dump file, we may be able to help identify the issue if for example it is third party software.