Is it a power supply or card problem?

[mikeo01]

I am not sure, I have talked about these problems in another thread but want to rule out the problem.

I suddenly started having strange issues, firstly I had "Display driver stopped responding", this went. I still have the motherboard not booting up, its doing it again...

Now I have had another issue, random freezes (I am not overclocking this time). I just had a lockup with vertical lines, like this image but in GREY and BLACK (I was only on Google images and this forum, nothing else):

http://i1.tinypic.com/sdijvm.jpg

The card is slightly bent in the PCI-E slot because its slightly warped, but the PCI-E power cables are pushing it a bit. But yeah on boot up theres either no screen and always indicates a VGA POST problem (by the LED lights on my motherboard). But with all these problems I am not sure on the problem, the card runs cool after applying new thermal paste, and it runs a stress test fine.

Heres another problem I had today. On Battlefield 3 it has special effects after you start a game where the screen would turn fuzzy like on a tv, well this happened constantly and my game kept minimizing and maximizing (thats not the problem), when it finally stopped playing up I noticed my mouse cursor (ONLY the cursor) was corrupt, it was spilt in half and duplicated. I thought it was the card, so I ran stress test, was fine.

SFC /scannow found errors (which I assume was a wrong calculation done by my previous overclocking) and repaired some of it. Rebooted, all is fine.

These errors are very random, and all of a sudden, does it sound like the VGA or out of all my posts is this really summing up that my trusty 2 year old Corsair has gave up and can't give out the power needed?

I carried on running Battlefield 3 for hours, its as if the errors spur randomly, either a dying card or () the power supply.

Thanks everyone for the help!

[dfour]

is there anyone you can beg or borrow a card from to eliminate yours?? Have you tried moniotring the 12 volt line to see if you get bad peaks or drips in it?? HWmonitor can do that for you (the non pro version is free)

[mikeo01]

I have a slight suspicion it may be the power supply. Heres what I found, starting up furmark I found huge artifacts, the same verticals lines I had before, but it flickered and distorted the image. Closed down furmark, reopened it and it was fine.

HWMonitor has reported a drop in voltage to 11.68 when I started furmark up. As soon as I closed furmark the voltage bumped back up to 11.73. This is will full load, extreme test.

I was going to buy a cheapy ATI card just in case this one fails anyway to see. I must really note that there is a lot of warm air coming out of the power supply. The power supply itself is warm to touch, not hot just warm.

I know software can report incorrect voltages, but there is some change when there is load put on my graphics card.

Also I am monitoring using AI Suite II, and this reports the 12+ rail is at 12.097 at the moment.

EDIT

I am getting more artifacts again when running furmark. Nice corrupt mouse cursor again, along with them vertical line flicker.

Also sometimes I get random freezes, then the computer goes back to normal. Such as loading something or just suddenly.

Sometimes the screen stays black after Windows start up screen happens, don't know if this is linked

[mikeo01]

I just had huge graphical problems, freezing, blank screen, some of the screen displayed, mouse wouldn't move. It would come back on and I could move the mouse, after pressing CTRL ALT DEL the mouse froze. I had the CPU overclocked at the time, now my CPU is at stock I can actually log into Windows.

The CPU is overclocked because I was trying out some settings someone mentioned on another forum. Can overclocking the CPU cause this many problems with the graphics card?

I am leaning towards the power supply, but the card could be faulty also. Is there any REAL way to check if one of those are dead or dying?

I don't see why overclocking the CPU could cause so many issues with the graphics. It isn't my monitor, I am running two with two different cables to see if it was the graphics card, the artifacts happened on both monitors.

So, could I have damaged the CPU when overclocking for it to cause so many problems when overclocked? Or is my PSU not handling the overclock so it can't provide power to the graphics card. When the CPU is at stock I had problems I didn't have before, so is my PSU starting to be stressed from all the overclocking I did? And I pushed it over the edge?

Or does it sound like the GPU is dying, due to sometimes the screen being blank, POST indicating VGA problem etc?

All these problems were suddenly, and it has kind of accelerated in the past week or so.

[dfour]

I would buy a decent PSU online and then use it to test the system and if it still does play up send it back under DSR. Then you would know its most likely your grpahics card.

I have a 2400 ati pci-e card I could lend you to test with if your interested. obviously wont run new 3dmark but will run 01or 05/06 and furmark slowly.

[mikeo01]

Yeah I could do, what PSU would you recommend though? I was thinking going for the OCZ 700W. I don't really want to go with a Corsair again they are expensive and if it really is the PSU 2 years isn't very long for a PSU, my FSP lasted longer.

And thanks for the offer, but I don't want to risk using your card in case my PSU is faulty and ends up totalling your card, like it may have done to mine from a voltage spike or something. I will probably get a cheapy ATI card or lower nVidia card in case.

My card is running now, I just stress tested it with Furmark on both displays, no artifacts. A flicker but thats probably 2D to 3D mode.

[dfour]

LOL the cards prob worth less than it would cost to send it to you and get it returned. If you got the corsair new isnt it under warranty?

[sniper2o2o]

Just a thought but does your PSU have rails if it does you may be exceeding the limits on the rail powering your card

[mikeo01]

Yeah the PSU is under warranty, but to be honest paying £30+ is pointless, the hassle of waiting for it to be received and returned from Netherlands is not worth it, they would only reburb it, may as well get a brand new one you know?

And no, its single rail, 52 amps on 12+ rail

[sniper2o2o]

Yeah the PSU is under warranty, but to be honest paying £30+ is pointless, the hassle of waiting for it to be received and returned from Netherlands is not worth it, they would only reburb it, may as well get a brand new one you know?

And no, its single rail, 52 amps on 12+ rail

What is with that £30 with all Corsair products do they somehow get to bypass the law where any product not fit for purpose is repaired or replaced with no cost to the customer (not even postage). Had the same issue with corsair when a friend had to send a case back cause rivets were not tight, we got around it though by returning it on DSR which I am guessing your PSU is older than 7 days.

[mikeo01]

Yeah, its 2 years old! why can't Corsair have a department in the UK or something. I don't want to assume my PSU is dying, but theres something very dodgy going on somewhere.
The TX650 is one of the best stable PSUs too apparently. Everything is basically brand new. Brand new CPU, Brand new motherboard, 6 months old GPU, hmmm.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

IIRC,XFX PSUs have RMA located in the UK but you will need to confirm this first though. A decent 500W PSU should be more than enough for you setup.

I have run an overclocked Q6600 and an overclocked HD5850 1GB off a 450W SFF PC PSU,so an ATX 500W would be fine with an overclocked FX6100 and an HD5830 1GB IMHO.

[mikeo01]

To be honest I was going to get a 700W because I thought the reason my FX wouldn't overclock good at all was due to the power requirements.

It may be my PSU then if I am getting random problems, if a VGA card was dying, wouldn't it have artifacts every time you stress it, and have problems on every boot up. There isn't a pattern to when my problems occur, its just as and when it feels like it.

If it turns out my PSU is in fact faulty, what brand of PSU would you all recommend? I expected my Corsair to last at least 5 years

[dfour]

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...-year-warranty

also antec, seasonic and xfx.

[mikeo01]

Guys, guess what the problem was. On my other posts you will see that I had an issue with my motherboard, massive graphical corruption, screen full of lines. Dying graphics card symptoms.

Turns out you were all right, its my power supply. the PCI-E plugs has gone up, after hours of diagnosing a little thought came, "use the 4-pin molex adapters to 6-pin...", looks like my actual PCI-E plugs have gone up.

Does this mean the power supply can't provide the full 75w through the PCI-E cables, or the PCI-E cables have been moved and twisted so badly the wires have mangled?

[wilson5393]

For a single graphics card a PSU of 500w~650w (depends the GPU you use) is far more enough. My suggestion is seasonic this one is really quite and over 87% eff. But try to change a power cable first see if there is problem with the cable