GPU, RAM or PSU problem?

[Bommeldinges]

Hi all,

Been reading here for a while now but never wanted to post so never registered - until now...

In the past months I have been rebuilding my PC bit by bit. I use my PC on my TV because I spend most my time in my living room (where the TV is) and I do basically everything with my PC: watching TV, playing music, gaming (not very heavily) watching movies, mail, etc. etc.

A little while ago I updated my GPU from an R7 360 to a used RX 580 8G. My TV was a 40" FullHD, but i sit quite a bit from it so the screen was on the small side for PC usage. It worked, but Windows scaling isn't all that and regularly I had to get off the couch to be able to read something on the screen. So my latest upgrade is a 50" 4K TV. Didn't need to be 4K, but not much else is available in that size and I figured that I might as well have it since future developments seem to go in that direction anyway.

Up until that point I had averything set to the previous TV's native resolution of 1080p. But since the native res of my new screen is 4k, I changed it. And since then, I've been having problems. I occasionally play some Hearthstone and very rarely log in to my World of Warcraft account. With HS I never had problems and with WOW either - before the upgrade. But now whenever I start up WOW, the symptoms show up.

It started when I thought I'd look in to undervolting my "new" RX580. Found a tutorial and it recommended the Superposition benchmark. Before, I had already used the Heaven, Valley end 3DMark benchmarks and those worked relatively fine (before the new screen/4K). The video said to use the 4k benchmark so I did - before changing anything to the GPU. To get a baseline.

Well.... That didn't work very well.  The screen started to black out, I got major green-purple atrifacts or even a full green screen. THought that maybe it was too much for the RX 580 so I canceled the test. Then tried the different 1080p tests. Same thing, although less depending on the level of the test (1080 extreme-high-medium). Also tried 720p: no problems anymore. Heaven runs fine on 1080p fullscreen, but not on 1440p.

 

When I first started WOW I thought I'd see if 4k would work, which ofc it didn't. So I set the resolution to full screen 1080p with average settings. Same problems as with the benchmarks. Even in the character menu occasionally the screen blacks out. On HS I didn't have any problems, until I started switching windows/apps. I run it windowed (max) and occasionally switch to my browser. When I do that now, the screen starts blacking out. Switched to fullscreen mode (1080p) and no more problems.

While watching a Youtube video I also switch tabs in my browser and only listen to the video, now the same blacking out happens. 

 

So I started searching for the problem. The RX 580 should be capable of doing 4k, so is it broken? Also found that RAM or the PSU could be a problem. My finances aren't on a leven where I "just" go out and buy any part I need so it's hard to swap out parts. But, I saw an offer on the same XFX RX580 - only new - and bought it. Swapped them out: same problems still there. So the GPU must be fine then?!?

No cash yet for RAM or PSU. They are planned to go next though. In the mean time, I figured I'd test my RAM but so far that doesn't show any troubles. Tested it with Memtest86 and Aida64 and the results are fine. When I do the GPGPU benchmark in Aida the system crashes to a screen screen and needs to be rebooted. The Aida64 stress test fails due to "hardware failure" but it doesn't say what failed. The GPGPU test failing makes me wonder if the new 580 is also broken, or is it possible that it IS my RAM? What I read of the PSU being bad are very different symptoms. Although my PSU already is a little older, I find it hard to believe what it is based on the symptoms described for PSU problems...

Can anyone help me in the right direction here? Is the only way to find out what is wrong actually swapping my RAM and/or PSU or even try a completely different GPU?

These are my specs:
Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite Motherboard

Ryzen 5 1600x @ 3,8GHZ (but also tried stock)

16 GB Team Group Excalibur 3200 RAM (2x8) (XMP)

PNY 500GB NVMe SSD

XFX Radeon RX 580 GTS XXX edition 8GB OC+

Win 10 pro up-to-date

AMD drivers up-to-date

Corsair 600W 80+ "white" PSU from about 2009

Please let me know if more details are needed. Sorry for the long story, but I figured it may help explain things.