Question Weird intermittent graphics card issue

[johnx125]

I have a Sapphire Radeon R7 370 Nitro 4GB which is over 5 years old and has been overclocked since the day I bought it. However these last two weeks, whenever I run a game (or any 3D application really) there's a good chance my system will freeze to some random color screen sometimes with stripes too. It might do it the moment I launch the game, after 5 hours of playing or it might not crash at all. I tried reseating the card, cleaning the pcie slot with IPA and cleaning the card itself etc, but nothing worked. Today I decided to test my system with an older Nvidia GPU just to see if it would crash. I ran unigine heaven for a while and it didn't crash. But when I put back the R7 something very strange happened.. at first the system seemed like it didn't post at all but then my peripherals switched to the custom lighting profile that I've set. Which means the system had successfully booted but without displaying anything! And yes the HDMI cable was connected. I even pressed play on my keyboard and spotify started playing normally! Anyway after reseating the card for 1000th time video output came back, I reinstalled the drivers and everything is back to normal now.. as long as I don't play any games that is. I have no idea what's really causing this. What does this type of problem usually indicate?

Specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-UD3P (rev. 2.0)
CPU: AMD FX-8350
RAM: Crucial Ballistix sport 8GB
GPU: Sapphire Radeon R7 370 Nitro 4GB
SSD: Corsair Force LE 120GB
HDD: WD Green 2TB
PSU: Corsair CX650M

P.S.: I also tried running the graphics card without any overclock, I tried reinstalling the drivers several times and I even ran memtest86 because you never know. But nothing has solved the problem..

 

[Nemesia]

5 years old GPU overclocked since then. Tested another GPU in your system and it worked.

It's the GPU or the PSU.

Test your GPU in another system to see if it does the same thing. If it does it's the GPU.

If not the PSU.

" I have no idea what's really causing this issue because it's impossible to reproduce it "

You said " as long as I don't play any games that is "

So this is reproducible. By playing games.

 

[johnx125]

5 years old GPU overclocked since then. Tested another GPU in your system and it worked.

It's the GPU or the PSU.

Test your GPU in another system to see if it does the same thing. If it does it's the GPU.

If not the PSU.

" I have no idea what's really causing this issue because it's impossible to reproduce it "

You said " as long as I don't play any games that is "

So this is reproducible. By playing games.

It can't be the PSU because it's a new one, the old one actually had some issues. What I meant by saying it was impossible to reproduce the problem, is that I don't know exactly what's failing and causes the crashing. Also I did test the card in my other pc and it didn't crash but then I also tested it on my main pc for over an hour and still didn't crash. Now if I test it on my other pc again tommorow it might insta crash, it's totally unpredictable.

 

[Tigru11]

I have a Sapphire Radeon R7 370 Nitro 4GB which is over 5 years old and has been overclocked since the day I bought it. However these last two weeks, whenever I run a game (or any 3D application really) there's a good chance my system will freeze to some random color screen sometimes with stripes too. It might do it the moment I launch the game, after 5 hours of playing or it might not crash at all. I tried reseating the card, cleaning the pcie slot with IPA and cleaning the card itself etc, but nothing worked. Today I decided to test my system with an older Nvidia GPU just to see if it would crash. I ran unigine heaven for a while and it didn't crash. But when I put back the R7 something very strange happened.. at first the system seemed like it didn't post at all but then my peripherals switched to the custom lighting profile that I've set. Which means the system had successfully booted but without displaying anything! And yes the HDMI cable was connected. I even pressed play on my keyboard and spotify started playing normally! Anyway after reseating the card for 1000th time video output came back, I reinstalled the drivers and everything is back to normal now.. as long as I don't play any games that is. I have no idea what's really causing this. What does this type of problem usually indicate?

Specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-UD3P (rev. 2.0)
CPU: AMD FX-8350
RAM: Crucial Ballistix sport 8GB
GPU: Sapphire Radeon R7 370 Nitro 4GB
SSD: Corsair Force LE 120GB
HDD: WD Green 2TB
PSU: Corsair CX650M

P.S.: I also tried running the graphics card without any overclock, I tried reinstalling the drivers several times and I even ran memtest86 because you never know. But nothing has solved the problem..

You maybe want to test your RAM. https://www.memtest86.com/ Test your RAM. Keep the test running for 2-3 hours to get real results. It might be a problem with RAM or with your motherboard. You said it's unpredictable. Test everything. Maybe you find a way to test your processor too. There is a chance to be a problem with the HDMI port too. Try inserting your HDMI cable in the HDMI port "for a thousand times" or blow some air in there And then play some games or run a benchmark with this ( https://geeks3d.com/furmark/ ). Be careful, this will make your Graphics card to heat up a little, make sure it's cooling properly.