Randomly get monitors disconnecting while the rest of the PC running perfectly fine

Major J. · April 23, 2023

Hello. First time posting. I have worked IT for 2 plus years and seen and fixed a lot of problems, but my personal rig has me stumped with a new one. I have a triple monitor set up with a ryzen 5800X3D, 1000W Seasonic 80+ gold PSU, and a Radeon Vega 64 GPU. (I think those are all the necessary related specs. If you want more I give further detail.) And ever since I swapped my cpu which is being cooled by a triple radiator AIO that is making proper contact, I am randomly having my computer black screen and displays showing no connection found to me. The rest of the PC is working fine. I can use my keyboard to shut it down. I even was in game once and could here and talk to my teammate but couldn't see anything. (I'm am not always able to do that but have been able to a couple of time.) I'm inclined to think it is GPU related but it is so inconsistent that I don't think that it is related to the GPU dying. I am on a Crosshair VI that I had to update the bios on to get the 5809X3D to run. (Was running an 1800X foe the past 5+ years). I am hoping that it is something software related as I don't have a GPU upgrade in my budget till about Christmas time. The frequency is anywhere from 2x a day to 1 every couple of days. It has happened under load it has happened idling on the windows home screen. I just can't pin point the problem and why it is happening. Feel free to ask any questions and I will do my best to answer to the best of my ability. Thanks in advance for any help.

Livin · April 23, 2023

I know it's potentially a long shot, but I helped a friend with a very similar issue recently. It ended up being when messing around in the computer the PSU side of the power cables going to his GPU came loose. It was still making enough contact to work sometimes, but would blank out seemingly randomly. Thankfully nothing was burned and re-seating the cable in the PSU fixed the issue.

Starting with the physical is always a good sanity check regardless. Check both sides of the power cables (CPU and GPU side) and then maybe a re-seat of the video card. If you happen to have another GPU around you could try running that for a bit to see if it is indeed GPU related, but I completely understand not everyone having a spare GPU around. If the motherboard has another PCIe slot that you can stick the GPU in you could try that too (though this could limit your performance, so not necessarily a long term solution if it does work).

Another place you can check for some evidence of what's going on is taking a look at the application and system even logs in Windows after an event. See if there's anything about drivers crashing or devices being "surprise removed" and if it's just GPU related events looking unhappy or if there's more.