Screen goes black randomly but PC still running and has sound in the background

[Hunter21]

This happened when I went into any games, the screen would almost instantly go black and a few seconds later with the "no signal detected" notice. But apparently it's able to do this even by using the system normally, I have the newest graphics drivers installed and made sure there wasn't any dangling connection between the monitor and my pc.
An interesting thing to note for however is that whenever the black out happens, either 2 or 3 seconds later or immediately, the windows 7 exclamation sound would play hinting something has happened but since the screen is black, there was no way for me to trace that.

Specs:
CPU: i7-4790k
Mobo: msi z97 gaming 5
video: gtx 980 g1 gaming
memory: g.skills 1333mhz 16gb ddr3
psu: coolermaster xtreme 2 725w
storage: intel 120gb ssd and some 2TB HDD

I'm really beginning to speculate that there's something wrong with the psu, I wouldn't care about this too much since I'm going for a new ryzen build soon but in the meantime it would be nice to keep using my pc as it is right now.

 

[SkyNetRising]

windows 7 exclamation sound would play hinting something has happened but since the screen is black, there was no way for me to trace that.

All system events are logged into Event Viewer.
Check that, to find out, what happened.
I'd say - problem most likely is with your graphics card.

 

[john TJ]

most probably this seems like a unstable GPU driver , try going back to any stable drivers .
Also check your GPU temps

 

[Hunter21]

most probably this seems like a unstable GPU driver , try going back to any stable drivers .
Also check your GPU temps

GPU temps are fine, I got the problem when I had my old drivers (like literally from 2015) and the problem persisted even after updating, but yea I will try to get it back on older versions

 

[john TJ]

most probably this seems like a unstable GPU driver , try going back to any stable drivers .
Also check your GPU temps

GPU temps are fine, I got the problem when I had my old drivers (like literally from 2015) and the problem persisted even after updating, but yea I will try to get it back on older versions

just as SkyNetRising mentioned , do check the event veiwer, which will definitely give a clear idea what caused the crash

 

[Hunter21]

most probably this seems like a unstable GPU driver , try going back to any stable drivers .
Also check your GPU temps

GPU temps are fine, I got the problem when I had my old drivers (like literally from 2015) and the problem persisted even after updating, but yea I will try to get it back on older versions

just as SkyNetRising mentioned , do check the event veiwer, which will definitely give a clear idea what caused the crash

Rolled back to old drivers, didn't really work, check event logs again, didn't find anything interesting. I've then pretty much decided to take my 980 out and check on it, so I did just that and blew/wiped some dust away and put it back in, now it SEEMS like its back to normal but I'm still not quite sure, gonna give it a few games to find out.

 

[Hunter21]

most probably this seems like a unstable GPU driver , try going back to any stable drivers .
Also check your GPU temps

GPU temps are fine, I got the problem when I had my old drivers (like literally from 2015) and the problem persisted even after updating, but yea I will try to get it back on older versions

just as SkyNetRising mentioned , do check the event veiwer, which will definitely give a clear idea what caused the crash

Nope didn't work again, I have absolutely no idea at this point

 

[john TJ]

What type port are you sing to connect to the display, check if there is any change if you change the port ,
example go from DVI to HDMI

 

[SgtScream]

What happens if you uninstall your existing driver and try the latest version from gigabyte's support website?
http://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N980G1-GAMING-4GD-rev-10-11#support-dl

 

[Hunter21]

What type port are you sing to connect to the display, check if there is any change if you change the port ,
example go from DVI to HDMI

So here are the results

When the system starts, DVI works, everything is displayed (mobo start up windows start up etc), but when I switch to HDMI during that process, it tells me that there's no cable connected.

When the system is full on running, I switch to HDMI, only the desktop background image is displayed (whatever I have as the BG), no taskbar no apps no nothing, nothing happens when i hit the windows key. When I try to access the task manager through ctrl alt del I get a black screen and I can exit the black screen by Esc, then again only BG is displayed nothing else on the screen.

I've tried the same HDMI cable with my laptop and it works, perfectly fine, HDMI is stable and runs well.

 

[SgtScream]

What type port are you sing to connect to the display, check if there is any change if you change the port ,
example go from DVI to HDMI

So here are the results

When the system starts, DVI works, everything is displayed (mobo start up windows start up etc), but when I switch to HDMI during that process, it tells me that there's no cable connected.

When the system is full on running, I switch to HDMI, only the desktop background image is displayed (whatever I have as the BG), no taskbar no apps no nothing, nothing happens when i hit the windows key. When I try to access the task manager through ctrl alt del I get a black screen and I can exit the black screen by Esc, then again only BG is displayed nothing else on the screen.

I've tried the same HDMI cable with my laptop and it works, perfectly fine, HDMI is stable and runs well.

Did you plug your laptop, using the same hdmi cable into the same display? Also did you try my above suggestion?

 

[Hunter21]

What type port are you sing to connect to the display, check if there is any change if you change the port ,
example go from DVI to HDMI

So here are the results

When the system starts, DVI works, everything is displayed (mobo start up windows start up etc), but when I switch to HDMI during that process, it tells me that there's no cable connected.

When the system is full on running, I switch to HDMI, only the desktop background image is displayed (whatever I have as the BG), no taskbar no apps no nothing, nothing happens when i hit the windows key. When I try to access the task manager through ctrl alt del I get a black screen and I can exit the black screen by Esc, then again only BG is displayed nothing else on the screen.

I've tried the same HDMI cable with my laptop and it works, perfectly fine, HDMI is stable and runs well.

Did you plug your laptop, using the same hdmi cable into the same display? Also did you try my above suggestion?

Yes, the cable was unplugged from my video card straight away and then into my laptop, and I am running the latest gigabyte driver 353.62 and its still not working. I realised when the screen blacks out during gameplay, all sound disappears but when it goes out while I'm at desktop/browsing the internet, the sound stays (can hear friends talking on skype etc)

I'm going to try and give my card a good clean and see what happens

 

[Hunter21]

Is it weird that i can still play counter strike? I mean the very original one

 

[john TJ]

Is it weird that i can still play counter strike? I mean the very original one

Try the card in a different machine ,

 

[Hunter21]

Is it weird that i can still play counter strike? I mean the very original one

Try the card in a different machine ,

I only have one machine, none of my friends have a pc that runs my 980, but there's no point now, even on start up the 980 doesn't work so I just assumed its done. I'm running on intel graphics at the moment, shame that I can't test any games right now. I guess it's ok since I was going for a 1080 ti anyway.

 

[Man Child]

Possible solution.

I read this off of a similar thread trying to find a solution.

If you increase your CPU core voltage, even just slightly, this seems to mostly fix the issue.

For me I had one of these crashes every day or so but after bumping up the core voltage by 0.02 I only encounter this once a week at most.

I'm not entirely sure why this made any difference since I presumed that it was a GPU issue. But recently I upgraded to SLI 1070's, so I tried using the newer 1070 instead and the problem still persisted leading me to ponder some doubt that it is the GPU that is at fault here.

I'm going to mess around more in the bios and see if I can fix this.

System specs:
Rampage 4 extreme
I7 4930K @4.4GHz
32GB Dual quad channel 1600 MHz ram
2 x GTX 1070 SC Graphics cards.
RM 750w psu