Hardware Problems driving me nuts
interpolator
hey folks,
iam having some serious hardware problems here for almost half a year now and they are driving me insane.
this system already killed 4 graphics cards. i already have a new mainboard and a new power supply, and yesterday my new graphics card came back from the reseller.
so i did a fresh windows install and wanted to play some league of legends today, but i get graphic errors again. the last three cards had these errors too before they died.
i have absolutely no clue what could be at fault here. the pc is running smoothly in windows. i can watch movies and so on, but when i start a game the graphic errors come.
like i have mentioned above, the mainboard and the power supply are already new!
and i dont have a heat problem either, i was monitoring that, but it doesnt go above 50°C.
no overclocking
system info
System Manufacturer: MSI
System Model: MS-7681
BIOS: BIOS Date: 07/13/11 11:09:48 Ver: 04.06.04
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16354MB RAM
Page File: 1921MB used, 30782MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 660 Ti
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
power supply : 600Watt Be Quiet!
i am seriously considering just buying a complete new rigg only to make the trouble stop.
if someone can point me into the right direction how to locate the defect, i would be eternaly grateful, because the last few months! i was online using my laptop, which is so painfully slow that gaming doesnt work and working isnt fun =(
iam having some serious hardware problems here for almost half a year now and they are driving me insane.
this system already killed 4 graphics cards. i already have a new mainboard and a new power supply, and yesterday my new graphics card came back from the reseller.
so i did a fresh windows install and wanted to play some league of legends today, but i get graphic errors again. the last three cards had these errors too before they died.
i have absolutely no clue what could be at fault here. the pc is running smoothly in windows. i can watch movies and so on, but when i start a game the graphic errors come.
like i have mentioned above, the mainboard and the power supply are already new!
and i dont have a heat problem either, i was monitoring that, but it doesnt go above 50°C.
no overclocking
system info
System Manufacturer: MSI
System Model: MS-7681
BIOS: BIOS Date: 07/13/11 11:09:48 Ver: 04.06.04
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16354MB RAM
Page File: 1921MB used, 30782MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 660 Ti
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
power supply : 600Watt Be Quiet!
i am seriously considering just buying a complete new rigg only to make the trouble stop.
if someone can point me into the right direction how to locate the defect, i would be eternaly grateful, because the last few months! i was online using my laptop, which is so painfully slow that gaming doesnt work and working isnt fun =(
Replies
This may sound like a silly question - but do you have your system and other stuff all plugged in to the same outlet? Other hardware/devices from the same outlet CAN have an adverse affect on your system, and can cause graphical issues as well. I had a system a few years ago that was fine in-game and out, except for when I had a space heater plugged in to the same powerstrip. Everytime the space heater was plugged in and I opened a game, I can only assume the extra power draw did something weird, because I'd start getting some weird artifacting and wavey distortion on parts of my screen. I later discovered that a desk fan caused the same thing.
Moving my other desk devices to another outlet/different power strip, oddly enough, resolved the problem.
I'm also not sure if memory can cause such issues, but you could try removing your memory a stick/pair at a time to see if that helps.
this system was running 6months without problems
@two listen
the PC is the only consumer on this outlet, but i´ll try a different outlet.
@nick2730
"the power supply being just 600 watts doesnt tell the whole story, do you know what the rail voltage is, 12v and 5v"
???
its a common psu
http://www.alternate.de/html/product/be_quiet!/Pure_Power_BQT_L7-630W/919902/?
@overlord
will check it out
600 watt is more then enough for that system, and the PSU doesn't seem terrible. (from a okay brand, not one of those "white products")
Do you perhaps know what brand your GPU is from (MSI/asus/gigabyte/etc)? (and the 3 before your current one, was it the same ones, or different ones).
Best thing would be to try and narrow it down to one piece.
If your motherboard/cpu has a onboard GPU, take your graphics card out for the moment, or replace it by something cheap/basic (pick up a 10dollar one secondhand or something).
If you don't have any spare sparts, just test each thing separate.
-Prime95 on small fft's to just test the cpu (couple of hours to a day).
-Prime95 on blend or memtest(other program) to test your memory. (and if it goes wrong here, swap out sticks to find out wich one is the faulty one).
So hopefully it will be possible to start to pinpoint the problem a bit more if any of the above replies didn't solve it.
graphic cards destroyed :
GTX 570 from Point of View
GT9600 Gainward
GTS450 Gainward
GTX660Ti Point of View
the GT 9600 was my old spare card and the GTS450 was bought cheap 2ndhand for testing
all others did get replaced by my reseller
right now i have a GTX660Ti
right now iam testing it with a different outlet
double checked the wiring, but its all good, running on different rails
This is a really weird problem. If you're using a new PSU and motherboard I can't figure out what could be causing the issue.
You've never heard of Gainward? What third would country do you live in?
What are these graphics error? These errors could contain information help solve the problem.
flickering shadows all over the screen in random shapes
after changing the outlet it didnt happen again, but iam not going to celebrate yet because after changing so many things and the gpu failing again and again i kinda lost my hope.
also the 2hours of testing arent really a long enough period to be sure.
the GTS450 died after 3 weeks...
Well you can stress test the GPU and see if you still get flickering; http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/
Furmark : zero errors
is this the solution to the problems ?
What are your temps like in your case? Get a temp monitoring software like RealTemp and keep an eye on them. It sounds like a heat issue to me. You either have poor airflow and/or a poor placement of the graphics card in your case. Some cases like to place them at the bottom and just blast the heat into the bottom of the case and not get it clear.
heating was the first thing i monitored closely but even if it runs on maximum stress level its not going above 55°C
i have 5x120mm silent fans in my case with a good airflow
hm, dont know, right now iam just using a different outlet (from a different electric circuit ) and the problems are hopefully gone
i just hope my card didnt take any damage the first day it was connected to the faulty outlet
not idea whats wrong with it, my screen didnt seem to care much about it
@Two Listen
shoot me a message if you ever go to middle germany. I´ll hook you up with some free beers and some catering
you certainly saved me from going mad
edit : also big thanks everyone else for helping with the matter
So its working fine with the stress test but not in LoL? Have you tested other games? Could be simply a nvidia driver issue.
You could also underclock the gpu and its memory to see if it helps. I had a nvidia card in a laptop that would crash , and it turned out to be a known bug. The way to solve it was slightly under OR overclocking it.
Fwiw I recently had a weird problem with a new system and a hd7850. The system wouldn't start with the external card versus igp until after many reboots.
After hours of testing different components, I discovered it was the video card. Even though it worked fine in other systems and had no bsods under stress. In this system it wouldn't be seen until it had literally been warmed up. I verified this by putting it in after manually heating it with a hair dryer and the system booted right away.
The replacement card they sent even though they expressed their doubts it being the card, has worked fine.
i changed the outlet and after this i dont have any more errors, be it in furmark or lol.
so right now everything is running as it should