Question Weird bug: display image just disappeared one day - seems to be GPU-related

Oct 25, 2022
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I had to move recently, and the owner of new apartment generously allowed me to use his old GPU which was just laying around. It was Radeon HD 7770, but since my GPU at the moment was even older (Nvidia GTS 450) I decided to give it a try. Everything seemed to work, and for 2,5 - 3 weeks I seemed to enjoy increased performance compared to my old card. HD 7770 did seem to be quite louder, especially during intense gaming, but I didn't mind it.

Yesterday, as I was gaming, the image on the display just straight up disappeared. Soundtrack was still playing, and keyboard with mouse were active, but there was no image. I figured it was some hiccup and rebooted the PC. It seemed to boot up, I launched the same game and continued where I left off. Some time later, the image disappeared again. And this time even rebooting didn't help. I shut off PC completely, rechecked all connectors, removed excessive dust (I figured it might be because of dust in power supply, there was a lot of it), especially since it helped with my GTS 450 in the past - but no good. No matter what I did, the image was not there. Monitor was completely fine, and looking inside the case there were no sounds or flashing lights to indicate anything is amiss. On GPU itself the fan was swirling and the light indicating the connection to PCI-E was on. I just coulnd't understand what was the problem

As a sign of desperation I removed HD 7770 GPU and installed my older GTS 450. And, lo and behold, the image appeared immediately. I replaced GPUs one more time just to check and yep, HD 7770 which was working fine these weeks now gives no image. I checked the internet but couldn't find anybody with similar experience.

So, did anyone had anything similar happen? What could be the cause of the problem? Is it possible extensive mining (owner of flat and GPU used to mine a lot, don't know if he mined with that GPU) could cause this? Most of all I'm afraid now is that HD 7770 malfunctioning is just a symptom, not a problem, and that it could happen with my trusty GTS 450. Is there anything I should check? Any assistance will be appreciated.
 

Tennis987

Distinguished
Sep 9, 2015
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Well if you plugged one GPU in and the other didn't work, that means the problem is either with the GPU dead or the port on the back. If it has multiple HDMI ports i would try plugging them into another one and see if it shows anything. If it doesn't, you can try opening up the GPU and adding new paste to it, to see if it boots. This is how my old card died. It was running at max degrees pretty often, kept freezing and crashing, i repasted it, it worked for a bit but eventually died.
 

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