Hey guys. Long read, I apologise in advance! Recently, my WCed-since-Christmas 4870X2 has been acting up. When it gets to the VGA BIOS check during POST (God bless the Asus LCD Poster ), it will hang. If I leave it for around 20 seconds, it will pass, but will have some God awful bands of artifacting (pictures below). These will persist until Windows desktop, where the PC will usually crash. If it does pass the VGA BIOS check, it will get to the screen with the black background and Windows loading bar fine, but when it get's to the Windows loading screen with the colourful background (blue for me, as I am using 7), and where the resolution actually changes to represent your desktop resolution (I am assuming this is when drivers kick in), my screen will go black, and my monitor will swap between analogue and digital channels, trying to find a signal (VGA is no longer sending any images, basically). This requires a restart, unless you leave it for a while, in which case the PC will do it itself. Other times, when it has passed VGA BIOS check, and hasn't crashed at start up, I can be using it fine for hours, passes 30 minutes of Furmark, and I can game on Crysis for ages. However, totally randomly, my computer will crash. Even in games like CSS. I don't get how it can do that when it can survive plenty of torture from Furmark? If it is not during a game, it will be at the desktop, where the mouse will suddenly be surrounded by a box of very small black dots. Very ****ing strange. Shortly afterwards, the montior will either just outright lose signal, or I will get some badass artifacting and then lose signal. Pictures (from my Blackberry, so can't make out the level of detail in the artifcating very well, sorry): This picture is from when the BIOS checks have passed, and Windows is about to begin loading (when you have the flashing white "_") This is from shortly after, when you can choose the OS to boot (obviously, if you only have one it just boots straight in to that). I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure it out, and have come up with nothing. So, I removed the water block, re-installed stock cooling (ready to RMA), and figured I would try it one more time. It managed to pass VGA BIOS checks first time for 7 times in a row. This would never happen before. So I started playing games and trying it out, and it seems fine. Figuring maybe I can cleaned off something causing a short, I reinstalled the water block and fired it up. Not having it. Same things as earlier. So right now I have the stock cooling on, and am just putting up with the noise, ridiculous heat and my nice, nickel coated EK waterblock is just hanging there. It is heartbreaking. I checked if the block could be shorting something, but it doesn't touch anything it is not meant to, and even if it was, it would have been from when I first installed it, not 8 months afterwards. I have emailed EK, so hope to hear off them, but I tend to find hardware communities are the best help in such circumstances. So has anyone got any ideas, or heard of anything like this happening before?
I would hazzard a guess that the block is not making good contact with the RAM on the card. Iv'e seen this on WC 4870x2s and tightening some of the screws was enough to get it back to working. Also try fitting the block using AS5 rather than thermal pads, then when you take it off you can see where there is poor contact.
RAM chips have always had always had MX-2 on them, as well as the two GPU chips. Contact was always great, with no parts not making contact. RAM chips have never gotten too hot either (thanks to Rivatuner hawrdware monitoring for that). Besides, if it was that, why would it only start happening after ~8 months? I need to get some more thermal paste to retry the waterblock, and when I do I will make sure to take heed of what you have said, but I always do and it does not seem to help. Thanks for the input all the same!
Also make sure the voltage regulation chips make good contact with the cooler. They get incrediby hot.
You mean the VRMs? They hit about 75c at max load (FurMark). At first I thought that was way too hot, but apparently that is normal. Either way, I doubt it's heat. Think about it; when it does get to Windows, I can even run FurMark for half an hour and not have any issues. If it was heat, chances are iit would either always pass then overheat, or always overheat before passing. Besides, it was fine for 8 months with no issue. Thanks for the help thus far, but we need to think outside the box a little here The only thing I can think of is a short or something else electrical, but again, how do we explain that being intermittent?
Nope, not overclocked. But alas, the thing has officially died on me even with the stock cooler on. I think the damage was already done, and putting the stock cooling back on was just a coincidental improvement. Thanks for the help guys, but it looks like a genuine case of the card just having an earlier death than usual :/ So much for the great mystery!
hehe yeah was gonna say.. when you get crazy characters on the screen on boot- that's the gpu plain and simple.. I had a card go out like that before but oc'd
