Black Screen randomly under load

[Danwalkee38]

I've been facing a strange issue with my PC for a few months now, and I've not been able to pin down what it is. Any help is appreciated!

 

SPECS:

Ryzen 9 5900X

32GB (2x16) Crucial Pro 3200MHz DDR4

Crucial P2 1TB NVMe

Radeon RX 6800 XT (Sapphire Nitro+ Special Edition, 16GB)

850W Seasonic GM-850

Gigabyte B550M DS3H AC - BIOS F20G, rev 1.1

AMD Driver ver. 32.0.11027.2001

 

ISSUE:

During gameplay, my monitor goes black, and displays "No Signal". The PC appears to still be running (all lights on, fans going etc) but does not respond to power button/reset button signals. I then have to cut power, and reboot. There are no crash logs at all. It's like nothing happened. No minidump, no AMD driver crash logs, nothing. I've run memtest86 to verify the RAM, stress tests on CPU and GPU via OCCT with no issues observed. It seems particularly bad in more recent games, as both Schedule 1 and Cities Skylines II seem to draw crashes, where I can play GTA V for hours with no issues. I DDU'd the AMD Drivers and Adrenalin on a fresh Win 11 Pro install, and still the games crash.

 

Troubleshooting steps welcomed, but also feel free to put me out of my misery and tell me it's probably a new GPU situation. Thanks

 

[strange13930]

11 minutes ago, Danwalkee38 said:

I've been facing a strange issue with my PC for a few months now, and I've not been able to pin down what it is. Any help is appreciated!

 

SPECS:

Ryzen 9 5900X

32GB (2x16) Crucial Pro 3200MHz DDR4

Crucial P2 1TB NVMe

Radeon RX 6800 XT (Sapphire Nitro+ Special Edition, 16GB)

850W Seasonic GM-850

Gigabyte B550M DS3H AC - BIOS F20G, rev 1.1

AMD Driver ver. 32.0.11027.2001

 

ISSUE:

During gameplay, my monitor goes black, and displays "No Signal". The PC appears to still be running (all lights on, fans going etc) but does not respond to power button/reset button signals. I then have to cut power, and reboot. There are no crash logs at all. It's like nothing happened. No minidump, no AMD driver crash logs, nothing. I've run memtest86 to verify the RAM, stress tests on CPU and GPU via OCCT with no issues observed. It seems particularly bad in more recent games, as both Schedule 1 and Cities Skylines II seem to draw crashes, where I can play GTA V for hours with no issues. I DDU'd the AMD Drivers and Adrenalin on a fresh Win 11 Pro install, and still the games crash.

 

Troubleshooting steps welcomed, but also feel free to put me out of my misery and tell me it's probably a new GPU situation. Thanks

 

try a different pcie slot on your motherboard? and if you have access to one try a different gpu.

[Sawa Takahashi]

36 minutes ago, strange13930 said:

try a different pcie slot on your motherboard? and if you have access to one try a different gpu.

Trying to limit the PCIe speed to Gen 3.0 may help too. You should still have enough bandwidth to feed that big GPU of yours

[Danwalkee38]

since posting DDU'd again and installed latest AMD driver, without Adrenalin. Still wasn't holding.

 

1 hour ago, strange13930 said:

try a different pcie slot on your motherboard? and if you have access to one try a different gpu.

Tried it in the only other slot I have on this board, a 4x. Issue persisted. Installed Afterburner and it said I had a core clock of 2364MHz, which I understand is boost clock for my card. I turned it down to 2064MHz, and it seemed to hold for around half an hour, which is way longer than before. I'm thinking this may have been the issue.

 

45 minutes ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

Trying to limit the PCIe speed to Gen 3.0 may help too. You should still have enough bandwidth to feed that big GPU of yours

I've also done this in the BIOS. Hopefully it'll hold steady now in-game. Will try for longer tomorrow and see what happens

[FireLegend]

1 hour ago, Danwalkee38 said:

since posting DDU'd again and installed latest AMD driver, without Adrenalin. Still wasn't holding.

 

Tried it in the only other slot I have on this board, a 4x. Issue persisted. Installed Afterburner and it said I had a core clock of 2364MHz, which I understand is boost clock for my card. I turned it down to 2064MHz, and it seemed to hold for around half an hour, which is way longer than before. I'm thinking this may have been the issue.

 

I've also done this in the BIOS. Hopefully it'll hold steady now in-game. Will try for longer tomorrow and see what happens

Are all drivers up to date by curiousosity?

[Danwalkee38]

7 hours ago, FireLegend said:

Are all drivers up to date by curiousosity?

I updated to 32.0.13031.4034 using the driver only mode of the Adrenalin installer. That's the latest the AMD site offered me, dated 16/03/25. Chipset etc are also up-to-date according to the versions I have. Maybe I should give them a closer look...

[Sawa Takahashi]

10 hours ago, Danwalkee38 said:

That's the latest the AMD site offered me

Did you check Sapphire's website first ? Some manufacturers are publishing tweaked drivers that are intended for their cards. They may not be the latest version AMD is offering (ASUS is doing this for example). 

[Danwalkee38]

8 minutes ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

Did you check Sapphire's website first ? Some manufacturers are publishing tweaked drivers that are intended for their cards. They may not be the latest version AMD is offering (ASUS is doing this for example). 

Seems Sapphire signpost you to download the official AMD drivers from their site.

[Sawa Takahashi]

27 minutes ago, Danwalkee38 said:

Seems Sapphire signpost you to download the official AMD drivers from their site.

It means they use unmodified AMD drivers.

[Danwalkee38]

1 minute ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

It means they use unmodified AMD drivers.

Hmm. Well I definitely have the latest from AMD installed currently then. 

 

Just played for another 15 this evening and had another crash. Doesn't seem to be overheating or anything. 

[Sawa Takahashi]

18 hours ago, Danwalkee38 said:

Just played for another 15 this evening and had another crash. Doesn't seem to be overheating or anything. 

At this point I think you should test with another power supply. The one you have may have a hair-trigger ocp or a defective voltage regulation and it messes with your system. Try using one from another brand and/or more capacity to see if it solves the issue. If you don't want to buy another power supply, you probably can borrow one from a repair shop or buy and return from a retailer.

Have a nice day !

[FireLegend]

10 hours ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

At this point I think you should test with another power supply. The one you have may have a hair-trigger ocp or a defective voltage regulation and it messes with your system. Try using one from another brand and/or more capacity to see if it solves the issue. If you don't want to buy another power supply, you probably can borrow one from a repair shop or buy and return from a retailer.

Have a nice day !

Agreed, had an old psu myself which made my gpu keep on crashing however was a cheap one

[Danwalkee38]

10 hours ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

At this point I think you should test with another power supply. The one you have may have a hair-trigger ocp or a defective voltage regulation and it messes with your system. Try using one from another brand and/or more capacity to see if it solves the issue. If you don't want to buy another power supply, you probably can borrow one from a repair shop or buy and return from a retailer.

Have a nice day !

Hmm ok this is interesting. I hadn't thought of this as the PSU is only about 18 months old. Being seasonic maybe I've blindly been assuming that it couldn't be the problem 

 

In the mean time, I did have a bit of a splurge on a 5070 so we'll have to see if I have any continuing issues going forwards. 

 

Also, did a few longer stress tests for 1h+ with no crashes. But still cities skylines 2, 15 mins in and it was down. 

[Sawa Takahashi]

13 hours ago, Danwalkee38 said:

Hmm ok this is interesting. I hadn't thought of this as the PSU is only about 18 months old. Being seasonic maybe I've blindly been assuming that it couldn't be the problem 

Seasonic definitely makes good power supplies but the problem may be that they are too good and won't let a power spike go free. Sometimes cheaper power supplies will not detect the power spike and continue operating as if nothing happened. This is not ideal but you certainly can see why the cheaper PSU may seem better in that specific case.

Good luck !