Black screen of death

[Dragonsmight]

My computer has been black screening lately while playing games. Has happened on FFXIV, minecraft, TF2, L4D2.

I can still here audio which is weird. If I'm in TS3 I can still press my mouse 3 button and can talk and hear with people in the TS. I tried typing in chat while black screened in FFXIV but people said they couldn't see what I typed.

This has been happening the last few months with different video drivers. Attached is the rig I built about 7 years ago the only thing I have replaced is the video card and the memory which are now as follows:

EVGA 025-P3-1579-AR GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) HD 2560MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

2 x Dominator® — 6GB Triple Channel DDR3 Memory Kit (TR3X6G1600C8D) (Total 12gb)


Any help would be appreciated.

 

[BikerEcho]

That's odd.
Have you tried a different PCI-E slot?

 

[bassfisher6522]

Try hooking the monitor up to a different PC and see it it happens on that one. If it does, now we know it's the monitor that's going bad.

 

[Dragonsmight]

I will try both suggestions and see if it works out, thanks for the replies!

 

[Trotter]

What are your temps, both CPU and GPU, when playing? How long has it been since you blew out your CPU cooler, graphics card, and PSU?

Have you tried updating your motherboard's drivers (chipset, audio, etc.)?

 

[Dragonsmight]

Just blew out my whole rig with a mattress pump about 3 days ago. CPU temp is about 60 and GPU sits around 89 while playing. I have not updated anything related to the mobo

 

[BikerEcho]

89 degrees is quite a high temperature. I'll recommend taking it down a notch.
Increase the fan speed or get better airflow threw your system.

I don't think that's the issue though. Because, if it overheats your computer would crash.
And you say you can still hear the game running. But hey, it might be. Can't hurt to try.
Also, you shouldn't run it that hot anyway.

 

[Dragonsmight]

I never really knew it ran that hot and certainly wouldn't do it on purpose. I did notice my fans only stay at about 40-50%. Just downloaded EVGA riva tuner and it seems I can manually keep them at 85%. I will try this and see if it helps. Will the fans deteriorate faster if I always keep them that high while gaming?

 

[BikerEcho]

No. Don't worry about that.
Are you going to manually apply a constant 85% when entering a game?

If so, i have a better idea.
If you download Afterburner (rivertuner might also be able to do this, i don't use that program, so i dont know), you can make a fan speed profil that automatically increases the fan speed for given temperaturs. That's how your card does it normally, but you can make a higher curve than stuck.
Which means, instead of running at 50% at 65 degrees and 60% at 80 degrees, you can make it run at 70% and 80%, whatever you want.

 

[BikerEcho]

You could ofcause also just make a stairway curve. Like, From 0 degrees to 59 degrees = 30%.
60 and up = 80%. So as soon you enter a game it will crank up to 80, and when you close the game again, it will automatically go down to a quiet 30%.