PC no display randomly

[VISA MC]

I am scratching my head on this one:

Customer brings in a gaming rig built out of state and uses it to run a full on car racing simulator. He has the seat with pistons that move, pedals, wheel and oculus and takes this rig to local fairs and car shows. The whole thing fits in a trailer.

It's an i5 processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a Gigabyte GV-N980WF3OC-4GD (Geforce 980) graphics card. Customer brought it in because it had no display on any of the ports on the card or on the board. I hooked it up to our bench equipment and got the same result. I reseated the 2 8GB memory sticks one at a time turning the PC on after each one with success. I rebooted three times, shut down brought it back up, unplugged power plugged it back in and booted again successfully. I called the customer they came and got it. Got it home, same issue.

Now that I have it back on my bench, I can most of the time get video out of the on-board graphics card, but not out of the geforce. I cannot get the Nvidia control panel to open on the screen at all. I ran the windows 10 memory test and it found no issues. I tested the power supply and everything came back normal. Sometimes when I boot it here with no geforce installed, I still get no output, not even the Gigabyte screen. My next step was checking for a BIOS update, but I'm a little nervous to try to install that given the track record of the PC not booting up every time. Any help on this one would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GreyWolf]

As stupid as this may sound had a similar issue and the frigging problem was the motherboard battery that was too weak kept switching from video card to mother board at will without any intervention.

Besides that Nvidia had a recent driver update like 4 days ago... so could be something on that side screwing something up.

 

[MichaelBits]

Testing the power supply will only tell you what it's doing when not under load.

I would try swapping the power supply and see if the issues clear up.

 

[VISA MC]

Unfortunately I don't have a 750w psu on hand, I'll have to order one in. I did try to reinstall the drivers for the NVIDIA card, and it cannot continue saying the graphics driver could not find compatible graphics hardware. Do you think a card not under load would not appear even though the PCIe leg of the power supply tested 12V? I am using the on-board graphics on the bench and nothing is running except the windows desktop.

 

[MichaelBits]

You should be OK using a smaller power supply like a 500 just for testing. So long as it has the compatible connectors.
Just don't put much load on the system. Don't run any tests, just see if it boots and you can see the desktop.

It shoudn't draw over 500 watts just sitting idle. My rather beefy desktop at home only draws 220 watts when idle.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Sometimes when I boot it here with no geforce installed, I still get no output, not even the Gigabyte screen.

but the fans cut on and everything right? does it ever not boot without the geforce in from a regular windows restart or is it a situation where the problem only occurs from a cold startup like the system was completely off then you power on without the geforce in there and it sometimes has no output at all but the fans still spin?

 

[VISA MC]

but the fans cut on and everything right? does it ever not boot without the geforce in from a regular windows restart or is it a situation where the problem only occurs from a cold startup like the system was completely off then you power on without the geforce in there and it sometimes has no output at all but the fans still spin?

The fans kick on sometimes high speed sometimes low speed. I have booted it more than 30 times without the GeForce in and it was successful. I am at a buddy’s shop now testing another graphics card to see if we can swap it in and at least get it recognized.

I think it’s either a board, video card or PSU. I would think the PSU would at least power the card enough to be recognize in Windows under no load.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

The fans kick on sometimes high speed sometimes low speed. I have booted it more than 30 times without the GeForce in and it was successful. I am at a buddy’s shop now testing another graphics card to see if we can swap it in and at least get it recognized.

I think it’s either a board, video card or PSU. I would think the PSU would at least power the card enough to be recognize in Windows under no load.

Yes but what happened with "Sometimes when I boot it here with no geforce installed, I still get no output, not even the Gigabyte screen." You said sometimes, did it only happen once or whats the situation? In my opinion that is potentially the most important piece of information you provided.

 

[VISA MC]

Yes but what happened with "Sometimes when I boot it here with no geforce installed, I still get no output, not even the Gigabyte screen." You said sometimes, did it only happen once or whats the situation? In my opinion that is potentially the most important piece of information you provided.

I have gotten this to boot every time except once with no GeForce installed. When GeForce is inserted I get output about every 3-4 times.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

I have gotten this to boot every time except once with no GeForce installed. When GeForce is inserted I get output about every 3-4 times.

ahh ok well let us know what happens

 

[Romaniac]

He could use a GPU upgrade anyway.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I smell a bad power supply, and possibly a bad GPU.

That 980 is plenty of power to run anything still, BUT it's VERY power hungry and VERY hot. The 1080 is MUCH lighter on systems. Which again, makes me think PSU is weak.

 

[VISA MC]

I smell a bad power supply, and possibly a bad GPU.

That 980 is plenty of power to run anything still, BUT it's VERY power hungry and VERY hot. The 1080 is MUCH lighter on systems. Which again, makes me think PSU is weak.

That's where I am at right now.

I installed a basic GPU with no additional power connectors from the PSU and was able to get video output, which tells me the socket or board are not having issues. I have ordered a PSU with the additional PCIe connectors as I don't have anything of that nature on my shelf. I am hoping to use that with his existing GPU to rule out one or the other.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@VISA MC, that's a good call because honestly the most likely culprit is the PSU. Second only to platter drive failures, they are the most frequent loss point. Given the behavior, I'm going to assume the 3.3v leg is dropping below 3.0v intermittently under load. That creates what I call the lights are on but no one is home problem, fans spin, lights illuminate, but the main board never POSTs, no logic. The difference between post and not is literally 2.9 vs 3.0v...

 

[VISA MC]

I was traveling over the weekend and picked up a 750w power supply, swapped it into the rig this morning and still no output from the video card. I do get output from the on board video with no issues. When I try to reinstall the drivers, the NVIDIA installer stops and says you must have an NVIDIA card installed before it can continue, which tells me it is not even detecting that it is present.

I believe I can successfully rule out the PSU and suggest a new GPU for this machine. I am not a graphics guy, what would be a comparable unit to the Geforce 980 that is in here that won't be outrageously priced. Keep in mind, the only game this guy runs here ran beautifully with no issues with a 980.

 

[Sky-Knight]

The GTX980 was replaced by the GTX1080, and then replaced again by the RTX2080. None of the above are cheap cards.

The 1080 is technically a downgrade, slightly slower for more features and a vastly more power efficient chip. The 2080 adds even more stuff, but comes with a performance upgrade. The 1080 as an old part is cheaper, if you want that one I suggest the EVGA GTX1080 FTW2 card. I have that specific card in this machine, and despite my desert climate the fans barely run. Note, that's FTW2 NOT FTW, the original had massive cooing problems!

The 80 series cards are HIGH END, and expensive. 70 is upper middle, 60 is middle, 50 is lower middle. So when looking at nVidia, you're looking at the second two numbers for the line, the first two numbers are the family. 900 series is two generations old, 1000 series is one generation old, 2000 series is current generation.

This is the card I have: https://www.newegg.com/evga-geforce-gtx-1080-08g-p4-6686-kr/p/N82E16814487319

Crazy because I paid almost $300 LESS for it, two years ago....