[SOLVED] Screen goes black "No Signal" during PC games

[Spitfire7]

I seem to be having a new issue that I have seen very sporadically over the last few months.

In a heavy game CPU temps are 45c and GPU gets up to 75c tops. These temps never go over that. Randomly the screen will just cut out and then I see no signal. I can hear things still going on through the speakers. This is most often the case. However, the last time the screen went out to no signal, the computer also froze. I can only get the screen back by restarting the computer. So far this is only happening at heavy usage, but not so much just normal internet or work desktop use.

I did some research and most are saying its power related and the issue is power to the GPU speculating that the PSU might be going out not giving enough power to the GPU and as a fail safe it cuts the GPU off. Others have been curious if its a GPU related issue, but no 100% proof of this yet in the forums.

Here are my specs.

PC Specs:
ASUS Z790E ROG STRIX Gaming WiFi
13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700K 3.4GHz
32GB Corsair Dominator 6400MHz
Gigabyte RTX 3070 GeForce Nvidia 8GB
Corsair RM850x 850 watt PSU
Samsung 980 PRO SSD 2 TB
1 TB HHD backup
Windows 11 64-Bit
65" TCL TV Monitor 4k resolution

Here is what tried to troubleshoot:

• I got a new hdmi cable and plugged into all different inputs and still nothing.
• I even used a different tv monitor and still happening.
• I have updated my graphics drivers to the latest NVidia 576.88.
• I don't have anything overclocked.
• I have fans set to maximum while playing and temps are CPU temps 45c and GPU gets up to 75c tops.
• I re-seated that graphics card, blew out dust which there wasn't any and same with the PSU.
• I made sure all cable from PSU to GPU were tight and even used a different connector on my last try.
• I have also done several GPU max stress tests and they all passed perfectly.

The main game I am playing while this cuts out is Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 and MSFS2020. It takes a lot of memory and GPU usage. Maybe as soon as 4 months ago I was able to play this game for 3 hours straight with no issues. Now within 30 min, screen cuts to black and then "No Signal" shows on screen.

Have you heard of this issue and any ideas what could be happening? I definitely have enough power with the Corsair 850w to run my system. Please let me know other trouble shooting ideas I can try and if you know of a possible fix. Thank you.

p.s. I have been surfing the internet and typing this post over an hour without any issues. Normal Windows desktop work seems to not cause it. Seems to be related to heavy usage.

 

[Lutfij]

Corsair 850 watt PSU
Corsair is the brand of the unit while 850W is the advertised wattage of the PSU. What is the model of the unit and it's age?

The RTX3000 series was notorious for having high transient loads spikes. Might want to see if your can source(borrow, not buy) a reliably built 1KW unit from a friend or neighbor and see if the issue persists. If it doesn't then it was power related.

I have updated my graphics drivers to the latest NVidia 576.88.
Using DDU in Safe Mode to remove all GPU drivers(intel, AMD and Nvidia) then manually installing the latest GPU driver sourced from Nvidia's support site in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator?

 

[Spitfire7]

RM850x is the model, sorry.

Okay, going to use DDU in safe mode and try again with the latest drivers later tonight and will push the system and test again. Will update later.

 

[Spitfire7]

Corsair 850 watt PSU
Corsair is the brand of the unit while 850W is the advertised wattage of the PSU. What is the model of the unit and it's age?

The RTX3000 series was notorious for having high transient loads spikes. Might want to see if your can source(borrow, not buy) a reliably built 1KW unit from a friend or neighbor and see if the issue persists. If it doesn't then it was power related.

I have updated my graphics drivers to the latest NVidia 576.88.
Using DDU in Safe Mode to remove all GPU drivers(intel, AMD and Nvidia) then manually installing the latest GPU driver sourced from Nvidia's support site in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator?

So I finally used the DDU in safe mode and installed the new drivers. I then played CMS2021 for at least an hour and no issues. It was also cold in the room and I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I will do another test, but lets hope it was just a graphics driver issue.

 

[Teknoman2]

Just in case this is a temperature issue from the hot spot going too high, i would suggest a more preemptive fan curve for the card to make them spin faster at lower temperatures to keep potential hot spot spikes down.

 

[Spitfire7]

Just in case this is a temperature issue from the hot spot going too high, i would suggest a more preemptive fan curve for the card to make them spin faster at lower temperatures to keep potential hot spot spikes down.

Okay I did all the updates and weirdly was able to play for a good hour the other night with no problems. That whole day I was able to use the computer for work. Gets your hopes up that its fixed now. I even played a little CODMWII and its worked great.

Then today I get into MSFS2020 and all temps seems good and within 15 minutes screen goes black and then "No Signal" pops up.

Before I enter into any game, I always turn cooling and fans to game mode which go to 100% and in all of these tests that was the setting used.

What else can I try and what else could it be? Anything in Windows such as graphics acceleration and all that weird stuff? Could it be a refresh rate issue? I'm running high 120 hz refresh rate in the games and on my screen.

I just did another test. I am wondering if it is graphics related and here's why. I turned everything to 60Hz refresh rate and I was able to play MSFS2020 for almost 45 minutes. Then I went to an outside view flying over a huge expanse with heavy cloud layers and within 15 seconds, screen goes black and then computer actually froze and the sound looped over and over.

What do you think?

 

[Spitfire7]

I recently did all the updates for GPU drivers and weirdly was able to play for a good hour the other night with no problems. That whole day I was able to use the computer for work. Gets your hopes up that its fixed now. I even played a little CODMWII and its worked great.

Then today I get into MSFS2020 and all temps seems good and within 15 minutes screen goes black and then "No Signal" pops up.

Before I enter into any game, I always turn cooling and fans to game mode which go to 100% and in all of these tests that was the setting used.

What else can I try and what else could it be? Anything in Windows such as graphics acceleration and all that weird stuff? Could it be a refresh rate issue? I'm running high 120 hz refresh rate in the games and on my screen. I tried lowering everything to 60hz and still black screen.

I just did another test. I am wondering if it is graphics related and here's why. I turned everything to 60Hz refresh rate and I was able to play MSFS2020 for almost 45 minutes. Then I went to an outside view flying over a huge expanse with heavy cloud layers and within 15 seconds, screen goes black and then computer actually froze this time and the sound looped over and over. Most of the time, screen goes black and then "No Signal", but I can still hear the game in the background and still can operate things.

What do you think?

 

[SkyNetRising]

What else can I try and what else could it be?

Try reducing gpu power target in MSI afterburner.

 

[Spitfire7]

Just in case this is a temperature issue from the hot spot going too high, i would suggest a more preemptive fan curve for the card to make them spin faster at lower temperatures to keep potential hot spot spikes down.

During my GPU stress test the hot spot got up to 105c. The average temps were around 71c. Is 105c hot spot too high and potentially the issue?

 

[Spitfire7]

Try reducing gpu power target in MSI afterburner.

Can you be more specific? I am not seeing anything that says specifically GPU power target.

What should I lower it to and what will this tell us?

 

[digitaldata77]

Hi in my experience with high performance gaming graphic cards, I found that reducing the power target level puts less stress on the card in heavy gaming. Your card is rated for between 60 degrees and 80 degrees Celsius during gaming loads. Temps near or at 100+ degrees can cause throttling physical damage and thermal shutdown. You could try lowering the resolution to 1440 HD and see if the card performance improves. It will increase your in game FPS. What are your in game settings? Ultra settings and 4K resolution can create a high load on the card in some gaming situations. I run my gaming cards at around 85% to 90% power target settings with no issues. Just lower temps higher FPS at lower resolutions and less stress on the card. I hope you can find the reason your card is giving you issues and find a resolution. Your card should be able to play 4K with no issues. Maybe repasting and replacing the thermal pads?

 

[Spitfire7]

Hi in my experience with high performance gaming graphic cards, I found that reducing the power target level puts less stress on the card in heavy gaming. Your card is rated for between 60 degrees and 80 degrees Celsius during gaming loads. Temps near or at 100+ degrees can cause throttling physical damage and thermal shutdown. You could try lowering the resolution to 1440 HD and see if the card performance improves. It will increase your in game FPS. What are your in game settings? Ultra settings and 4K resolution can create a high load on the card in some gaming situations. I run my gaming cards at around 85% to 90% power target settings with no issues. Just lower temps higher FPS at lower resolutions and less stress on the card. I hope you can find the reason your card is giving you issues and find a resolution. Your card should be able to play 4K with no issues. Maybe repasting and replacing the thermal pads?

Hi, thank you for these ideas, however, I've been using max setting for 2 years now and this is a brand new problem. Yes I play these games in 4k and Ultra settings with 30-60fps and this has never been a problem before. Lowering the settings won't tell me what the actual problem is, but might just be a quick bandage.

I am really curious what is actually going on.

I will be trying a new cable once it arrives. I read that a faulty cable can go to black screen and the "No Signal" and can actually freeze or lock up the computer.

I am experiencing both, loss of screen and still active game play and loss of screen and freezes screen and audio in loop.

Haven't found a fix yet.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Can you be more specific? I am not seeing anything that says specifically GPU power target.

Power limit.
Lower it to minimum allowed.

That will tell, if your graphics card is operational at lower power settings.

 

[Unolocogringo]

Try rolling back your driver to the 566.36.
Newer drivers have problems with some older card setups.

 

[Teknoman2]

105C is the thermal limit in most GPUs. If the hot spot reaches that, even if the average of the card is at 71C, it will throttle. You may need to take out the cooler and put new paste on the card.
Its also possible that some core on the card is gone bad and causes that hotspot temperature and when the card tries to use it it crashes.
Also its not impossible for you to be a victim of the 13th and 14th gen intel degradation issue but the symptoms don't match, that usually causes BSOD.

 

[Spitfire7]

Try rolling back your driver to the 566.36.
Newer drivers have problems with some older card setups.

Thank you. I will give this a try. You might be right and I think I started to notice issues when I had to update my drivers due to my TV screen actually going out. That was a different issue, but had to diagnose that issue and that was the TV screen unrelated, but I did download new drivers back then as well. Then got new TV and have had the issue since, but my cooler pump decided to also die next in line. Corsair sent me a new one and its working perfectly, but now diagnosing this screen off no signal issue. A lot has happened, so try to retrace my steps.

However, some new things I tried were changing the pcie slot on the PSU to a new location. I also switched the HDMI to a new location. I just played MSFS for about an hour with no issues. However, I don't know yet if its related, but at night I am always able to play and its chilly in the room. During the day is when it always turns off the screen. This is something I will be looking for tomorrow when I test again. If it shuts off, then we know it might be a heating issue. My hot spot never goes over 105 and average temps always around 72-74 tops with max load. 28-32 at idle.

If it shuts off tomorrow, I will install those rollback drivers. I believe those were the drivers I had before my TV broke.

 

[COLGeek]

One thread per topic, please. Thank you.

 

[Third-Eye]

My hot spot never goes over 105 and average temps always around 72-74 tops with max load. 28-32 at idle.

Hot Spot of 105c on most nvidia cards means the card is thermal throttling and likely shutting the system down to prevent damage to the GPU. I can't say that it's a very wide spread issue, but for the people I've been helping, this is becoming a common issue with 30 series cards and usually just means you need to reapply thermal paste to the GPU.

I've helped probably close to 20 people now, maybe even more, with very similar issues, all with 30 series cards of different brands, usually only the 2020 to mid 2021 manufactured models. Almost all of them had the same overheating issue at varying stages of defect, and I've had it on all of my own 30 series cards manufactured in 2021. It makes me wonder if they all used the same thermal paste supplier and if it was defective.

One of the easiest ways to check for this issue other than the Hot Spot temperature is if the fans suddenly ramp up to high rpm when starting a game and get very loud because of that. Under normal operation, the fans usually won't go past 70% speed at max GPU usage. You only notice the problem when you actually try to use the GPU for some workload like gaming, since the GPU doesn't need all that extra power for basic desktop stuff and web browsing.

 

[JeffreyP55]

I seem to be having a new issue that I have seen very sporadically over the last few months.

In a heavy game CPU temps are 45c and GPU gets up to 75c tops. These temps never go over that. Randomly the screen will just cut out and then I see no signal. I can hear things still going on through the speakers. This is most often the case. However, the last time the screen went out to no signal, the computer also froze. I can only get the screen back by restarting the computer. So far this is only happening at heavy usage, but not so much just normal internet or work desktop use.

I did some research and most are saying its power related and the issue is power to the GPU speculating that the PSU might be going out not giving enough power to the GPU and as a fail safe it cuts the GPU off. Others have been curious if its a GPU related issue, but no 100% proof of this yet in the forums.

Here are my specs.

My Specs:
ASUS Z790E ROG STRIX Gaming WiFi
13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700K 3.4GHz
32GB Corsair Dominator 6400MHz
Gigabyte RTX 3070 GeForce Nvidia 8GB
Corsair RM850x 850 watt PSU
Samsung 980 PRO SSD 2 TB
1 TB HHD backup
Windows 11 64-Bit
65" TCL TV Monitor 4k resolution

Here is what I did to troubleshoot:
I got a new hdmi cable and plugged into all different inputs and still nothing.
I even used a different tv monitor and still happening.
I have updated my graphics drivers to the latest NVidia 576.88.
I don't have anything overclocked.
I have fans set to maximum while playing and temps are CPU temps 45c and GPU gets up to 75c tops.
I re-seated that graphics card, blew out dust which there wasn't any and same with the PSU.
I made sure all cable from PSU to GPU were tight and even used a different connector on my last try.

The main game I am playing while this cuts out is Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. It takes a lot of memory and GPU usage. Maybe as soon as 4 months ago I was able to play this game for 3 hours straight with no issues. Now within 30 min, screen cuts to black and then "No Signal" shows on screen.

Have you heard of this issue and any ideas what could be happening? I definitely have enough power with the Corsair 850w to run my system. Please let me know other trouble shooting ideas I can try and if you know of a possible fix. Thank you.

p.s. I have been surfing the internet and making this post over an hour without any issues. Seems to be heavy usage related.

The RM850x I purchased 12/24 new off of Amazon that was DOA. Failed the jumper test.

 

[Spitfire7]

Hot Spot of 105c on most nvidia cards means the card is thermal throttling and likely shutting the system down to prevent damage to the GPU. I can't say that it's a very wide spread issue, but for the people I've been helping, this is becoming a common issue with 30 series cards and usually just means you need to reapply thermal paste to the GPU.

I've helped probably close to 20 people now, maybe even more, with very similar issues, all with 30 series cards of different brands, usually only the 2020 to mid 2021 manufactured models. Almost all of them had the same overheating issue at varying stages of defect, and I've had it on all of my own 30 series cards manufactured in 2021. It makes me wonder if they all used the same thermal paste supplier and if it was defective.

One of the easiest ways to check for this issue other than the Hot Spot temperature is if the fans suddenly ramp up to high rpm when starting a game and get very loud because of that. Under normal operation, the fans usually won't go past 70% speed at max GPU usage. You only notice the problem when you actually try to use the GPU for some workload like gaming, since the GPU doesn't need all that extra power for basic desktop stuff and web browsing.

I have a fan preset to go max fans and a steep curve so fans on GPU go up to 100% at 45c. I do this to be preemptive.

Is there a thermal paste and pads you recommend or will any do from Amazon thst I find?

 

[Spitfire7]

The RM850x I purchased 12/24 new off of Amazon that was DOA. Failed the jumper test.

Bummer, but that doesn't sound like my issue. Had the comp running great for 2 years straight. But my Corsair cooler broke after 2 years, so maybe they have a bad failure rating. Amazing tech support and RMA though.

 

[Spitfire7]

Hot Spot of 105c on most nvidia cards means the card is thermal throttling and likely shutting the system down to prevent damage to the GPU. I can't say that it's a very wide spread issue, but for the people I've been helping, this is becoming a common issue with 30 series cards and usually just means you need to reapply thermal paste to the GPU.

I've helped probably close to 20 people now, maybe even more, with very similar issues, all with 30 series cards of different brands, usually only the 2020 to mid 2021 manufactured models. Almost all of them had the same overheating issue at varying stages of defect, and I've had it on all of my own 30 series cards manufactured in 2021. It makes me wonder if they all used the same thermal paste supplier and if it was defective.

One of the easiest ways to check for this issue other than the Hot Spot temperature is if the fans suddenly ramp up to high rpm when starting a game and get very loud because of that. Under normal operation, the fans usually won't go past 70% speed at max GPU usage. You only notice the problem when you actually try to use the GPU for some workload like gaming, since the GPU doesn't need all that extra power for basic desktop stuff and web browsing.

I think you might be right with this. I played all night last night for hours and the room was cold. Today I play the exact same thing in a warm room and within 15 minutes, black screen and no signal.

I tried rolling back to the old 566.36 drivers like suggested above and that didn't change anything. Still 15 min or so black screen and/or lock up. So it doesn't seem to be a drivers issue.

Its really looking like an overheating issue at this point especially with the 108c hot spikes on the FurMark stress test today in the warmish room. I have new thermal pads coming in the mail and a new HDMI cable. I will try those on Tuesday when they arrive along with new thermal paste.

Can this also be a sign of my GPU going out or more of just the thermal paste wearing out?

 

[Spitfire7]

Hot Spot of 105c on most nvidia cards means the card is thermal throttling and likely shutting the system down to prevent damage to the GPU. I can't say that it's a very wide spread issue, but for the people I've been helping, this is becoming a common issue with 30 series cards and usually just means you need to reapply thermal paste to the GPU.

I've helped probably close to 20 people now, maybe even more, with very similar issues, all with 30 series cards of different brands, usually only the 2020 to mid 2021 manufactured models. Almost all of them had the same overheating issue at varying stages of defect, and I've had it on all of my own 30 series cards manufactured in 2021. It makes me wonder if they all used the same thermal paste supplier and if it was defective.

One of the easiest ways to check for this issue other than the Hot Spot temperature is if the fans suddenly ramp up to high rpm when starting a game and get very loud because of that. Under normal operation, the fans usually won't go past 70% speed at max GPU usage. You only notice the problem when you actually try to use the GPU for some workload like gaming, since the GPU doesn't need all that extra power for basic desktop stuff and web browsing.

I have some cool results. I just cleaned and put on new thermal paste and my new numbers in FurMark are 68-70c and Hot Spot no more than 86. Wow, big difference. I am now going to test it in game and see how it goes.

 

[Third-Eye]

I have some cool results. I just cleaned and put on new thermal paste and my new numbers in FurMark are 68-70c and Hot Spot no more than 86. Wow, big difference. I am now going to test it in game and see how it goes.

If you want a longer term solution to thermal paste and to avoid the inevitable pump out of the thermal paste in the future, you can get ptm7950 phase change material, or a graphite or graphene pad. Thermal grizzly has the Kryosheet which is a graphene pad and gives better thermal results compared to graphite or thermal paste, but ptm7950 is even better than all of those.

 

[Spitfire7]

If you want a longer term solution to thermal paste and to avoid the inevitable pump out of the thermal paste in the future, you can get ptm7950 phase change material, or a graphite or graphene pad. Thermal grizzly has the Kryosheet which is a graphene pad and gives better thermal results compared to graphite or thermal paste, but ptm7950 is even better than all of those.

This stuff right here will give the absolute best performance of all?

I can out it on the GPUs processor and then all the places that has normal thermal pads?

Give me the best link and I'll buy it.

https://a.co/d/8nY5Usu