cancel
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Graphics Cards

sircrimson
Journeyman III
‎12-22-2018 11:47 AM

Trouble with PC lockups (Screen and Sound stuck), even without GPU

Hey everyone,

I'm having trouble with my PC, which is set up as followed:

  • Motherboard: ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP 1155 Socket
  • CPU: Intel(R) Core i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz
  • RAM: Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3-1600 4x4GB
  • PSU: BeQuiet Straight Power 10 500W
  • Storage: Samsung SSD 830 Series 256 GB + Seagate HDD ST2000DM006-2DM164 2T

I also had a Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Vapor-X Tri-X 8GB, which is now broken. The PC does not post with it plugged in, even in different machines

I'm experiencing frequent lockups that make using the machine for anything other than browsing unusable. The lockups freeze the screen and the sound loops until I restart it. It may happen once a day if I'm just browsing, or every few hours in 2D games, while 3D games lockup in the first hour.

I have checked the following things:

  • Event Viewer in Windows: Loses the past 20-30 minutes of infos after freezing
  • Checked cables: Seems OK
  • Temperatures: OK
  • CPU stress test via Prime64: No lockup after a full night of testing
  • Memtest + Checked each RAM unit one after anothe
  • Checked voltages in HWMonitor: not sure what to look for here, any tips?

My assumption is that the motherboard somehow fried the graphics card with the lockups. I can't find out exactly though.

However, I had an old Gigabyte 8600GT lying around which has been running Team Fortress 2 + Youtube videos for the past 5 and a half hours. This should usually crash within the first hour, but not always so I will definitely keep testing. Assuming this fixed it however, how would that be possible? The lockups occured when the R9 was still working, and then without any GPU installed at all. Why would they now be (possibly) happening less or not at all? I should also mention at this point that I now only have one monitor plugged in via DVI, before that it was one via HDMI and one via DVI. Do you have any ideas that could help me pinpoint the component causing the problem? If it is the motherboard, would it make sense to just get an old 1155 socket board from somewhere and replace the graphics card?

Any help is highly appreciated. If I forgot anything let me know.

0 Likes
2 Replies
arcticwind
Forerunner
‎12-23-2018 12:10 AM

Test your power supply, you may have been over stressing it with the R9 290x GPU installed.

When stressed that card can use around 300w of power. That's why it has two 8-pin power connectors on it.

Sapphire suggest you use a 750w power supply (minimum) with that card.

The CPU you have uses 77w. 

The Gigabyte 8600GT can use up to 75w of power all pulled through the motherboard. (no additional power connectors)

0 Likes
sircrimson
In response to arcticwind
Journeyman III
‎12-23-2018 03:42 AM

How would you suggest I test my power supply? I don't know much about voltages.

Also, with the 8600GT it's been running for about 10 hours in games without freezes. How is it that with the R9 and without any GPU installed it would freeze, but with an old one it seems to (so far) work fine? I'm still attempting to get it to lockup on me.

Thanks for the insight so far.

0 Likes