PC Graphics

[grezgov]

I'm not sure this is the right section to post this in, but to hell with it.

My r9 290 has been acting up as of late, and I want to ask you lads for help. What was happening, was rainbowy colored lines and blocks were appearing on my screen, and eventually culminated in a BSOD. I did what others did. I uninstalled drivers, reinstalled drivers, unplugged the card, and re plugged the card, and for a little bit it worked. Now, it's just going to a black screen, and I'm running on intel integrated graphics. Am I screwed? is there a way to solve this? Please help a guy out.

[dstmnd89x]

Let's start with a more complete rundown of your setup... as in what is the rest of your hardware including power supply and any cooling modifications.

When did you first notice it occurring? Was it in-game or was the system mostly or full idle? Also, what drivers did you last try and which operating system are you using? The reference 290 cards are known to run hot, so have you fiddled with fan curves or any OC tools? Once we get a bit more information I'm sure we can get to the bottom of it. There could be quite a few things happening.

[grezgov]

Well, here's my specs.

I have (had) an R9 290,

16 GB of ram,

725-watt power supply,

intel i5 4900k.

As for the drivers, I had updated them to the most recent. In my desperate attempts to fix the problem myself, I had flashed a stock version of the vbios, and replaced the thermal paste... but that made things worse. I might want to add on that I had overclocked it, but at the time it started to show problems, MSI afterburner was not running. I had fiddled a bit with fan curves. Does any of this help? Also, apologies for the late reply.

[dstmnd89x]

Your card should have a dual BIOS switch on the PCB, which can be used to recover from a bad flash, if that's the case. Is this a reference card or one with a AIB cooler like dual fans and LED etc? The reference cards ship with the blower type cooler.

Also, which model power supply is this? I'd like to have a look at the full specification and see what the +12v layout is like. Some power supplies split the amperage and can only power so many components on each rail. I believe the R9 290 is a 275 TDP design, give or take, so you might have to reorganize your cabling in order to get ample power to the card.

For now, use the BIOS switch or work on flashing the card back to stock vBIOS if possible and abandon any overclocks.

[grezgov]

for the power supply, https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Power-Supply-240-Pin-SP-730P/dp/B0079QOVCQ/ref=sr_1_13?s=electron... this one is pretty similar to mine. As for the switch on my card, I'm using a Gigabyte 290, so the switch only seems to affect fan performance.
I fear that in my replication of the thermal paste, I may have used a conductive paste. If so, there's nothing more I can do, yes? I'll try to find my exact power supply later on.

[dstmnd89x]

Yea I'll need the exact model in order verify the internal power design of the PSU.

As for the paste... did you use a generic or brand product? Unless you were really careless and got paste where it shouldn't have gotten then I don't think it would have harmed anything. Are you still getting any video from the card or is not displaying anything on the screen? You can use TechPowerUp's vBIOS collection to download the stock BIOS for your card; it should flash back just fine. If you're concerned about the thermal paste, remove the cooler and post a picture of what the die looks like.

[grezgov]

I only put the paste onto the chip itself, so it would stick onto both the chip and the heat sink. As to branding, it was just your generic thermal paste. the only thing that the card does now, is spin it's fans. I get no video output from it. I was pretty careful in not getting the paste anywhere it didn't need to be, but I don't know if I used too much. I'll post a pic of it alongside the PSU when I can.