Motherboards Screen goes black randomly?

Hey guys. Over the last few weeks my monitor has randomly started going black for no reason. Seems like the PC is still running, but I can't get the screen back on without restarting my PC. If I'm watching a movie, sound will continue to play for roughly 20 seconds then it freezes. At first I thought it was due to overclocking so I under clocked my PC and the problem went away for about a week, but now it is back again. Not sure if my motherboard is dying or if its the graphics card. Haven't got any spare peripherals to try swapping out parts. Also noticed that the leds on my keyboard go off at the same time my screen goes black (Which I guess would indicate that the PC itself is crashing and thus has nothing to do with my monitor).

Edit: Also, my PC stays on for ages in safe mode.

 

Sounds like the motherboard, maybe a BSOD then it is trying to restart and failing?

Does it do it during anything specific? Gaming, TV, Idle etc?
Does it do it under a stress test? Prime95 etc?
What happens if you unplug and reattach your monitor?
Does it occur in safe mode?

First thing I would suggest would be try running with the bare minimum (1 stick RAM etc) and see if it still does it, could be a power supply instability.

 

Could be a PSU issue

My screen would go black randomly (monitor goes to standby) with the PC still running as you described. I opened up the PC, reseated the graphics card, removed my CPU overclock, and also switched the 2 PCI-E cables powering my graphics card with the other ones (I have 4 in total 6-pin PCI-E connectors from my PSU) and it worked.

I'm almost certain switching the PSU cables fixed the issue, I think one rail on my PSU was getting overloaded, so rebalancing the load by switching cables fixed the issue.

 

@Matt, possibly. It happens when it wants, i.e it could happen as I'm watching a downloaded episode of eastenders. I can play a game like Crysis 2 for a few hours and it will run fine. Then decides to go black whilst I'm web browsing. Seems like keeping my temps under 45c (both CPU & GPU) stop it from happening so much. I've had it happen to me at least 7-8 times today, opened my window and now its working fine (and my room is freezing), highly doubt its a temp issue though. It works fine in safe mode, and since booting it up again normally my PC has been on for a while without any hiccups. hmmm

@Hamza, I'll have a try, difference is though my pc would eventually stop working. If sound was playing it would eventually stop, my keyboard lights (num lock led) go off at the same time as my screen went black.

 

Sounds like either a software issue (as it runs ok in safe mode which is odd) or PSU issue, I have the same one and have never had any hiccups from it yet *touches some wood* so maybe give it a bash running bare minimum?

 

Lol don't jinx it. Yeah once it happens again I'll strip my PC down and see what happens. So annoying since it happens randomly, lulling me into a false of security

 

The same happened with me, the keyboard lights wouldn't work, PC would stop working.

Can't remember about sound.

 

Sounds more like it is trying to go into lower S states at the wrong time, and unsuccessfully. If so it's more than likely a software problem. Try disable all power saving / sleep option in OS, and maybe even disable S3 sleep in bios too if you have that option and see if it still occurs before tearing apart your pc.

 

I'll give that a try too thanks. Hopefully I won't be bumping this thread because the solutions provided have failed.

 

It's the graphics card. I had a problem eerily similar to this, any kinda of stress beyond 2d would cause screen to go black and just lockup. My card(6970) was out of warranty and I suspected it might the ram going bad due to the board flexing since a certain card manufacturer was too cheap to include a back plate even to the card showed it having one at the time of ordering. So I pulled everything off my card, cleaned it thoroughly, preheated my oven to 385F(~196C), threw the card in there for 10 min, took it out let it cool to room temp, then threw it in there for another 5. After the card cooled I reinstalled it and it's good as new no problems at all.

Edit: fyi, for those freaking out "omg oven". Every single component on the video card was rated for500F

 

So it has happened again. Started playing Tomb Raider yesterday and all was fine. Started playing Tomb raider again today and no issues. Had a good 2 hour session on Resident Evil 6. Then played some Crysis 2 (Crysis 2 has always had stability issues in my case. Crash to desktop etc), crashed to desktop twice then had a nice run of 40 minutes then my screen went black. Rebooted, did some web browsing then black screen and freeze 10 minutes later. Another reboot and black screen and freeze roughly 10 minutes later. Reboot and I've been running fine for the past hour, which means it probably won't happen again for a while.

Edit: Also of note, when Crysis 2 crashes I normally get a "AMD Driver Has Stopped Responding" error message. This is ONLY with Crysis 2 though. I'll be gutted if its my video card, warranty period ran out last month. Also going to try changing over the PCI-E cables to my PSU and see if its the same issue Hamza described. Will run some tests on my memory using Memtest too.

Edit 2: So playing Crysis 2 whilst GPU temp is at 70c caused my screen to go black. Tried rewiring the pci-e cables but that didn't help.