Help ! Display randomly turns off !

Ddave · November 1, 2016

First off, specs:

i5-4590
Cooler Master Hyper 212x CPU Cooler
Sapphire Nitro r9 390
2x4Gb HyperX Black DDR3
Asus h97m-e motherboard
Seasonic S12II 520w 80+ bronze PSU
2 120mm intake, 2 120mm exhaust fans.
WD Caviar blue 1Tb HDD
Sandisk Plus 240Gb SSD.

Yesterday, while I was playing, my display suddenly turned off. The monitor displayed the No Signal message. Weirdly, I can still hear the game's audio in my headphones. I pressed the windows key, alt+tab, ctrl+alt+delete, but the game audio didn't stop, probably meaning that my display did not simply turn off. When it last happened I was playing Witcher 3 and I'm on the menu so the "menu" music is playing. Pressing esc did not bring back the sounds from the environment so I assumed that the menu did not close. The same thing happened a couple times a few months before, so I just pressed the power button, then turned the PC on again. Then it happened again, twice, with no distinct interval or pattern. It even happened when I was just typing on notepad.

I just installed the 212x cooler a couple days back so I decided to check my temps. CPU is maxing at around 65c and GPU is maxing at 78c while playing. Seems fine.

I rolled back my driver to the previous version (16.10.1 I think). Everything seemed fixed, so I thought it was just a driver issue.

Then it happened again an hour ago. So I turned it off, then on again. Motherboard LED lights up, case fans spins, no signal. Unplugged the system, plugged it, turned it on, still no signal. Connected the HDMI cable to the motherboard, disconnected the GPU power, no signal. I disconnected the SSD and HDD. Finally it posted. I reconnected the GPU, post. Reconnected the SSD, it worked. I did not test the whole system with the HDD because I'm afraid all these sudden shut downs may damage it.

Ever since the first time this happened I'm suspecting that my PSU might not be delivering enough power. Back then the system only has 1 intake and 1 exhaust fans, 1 HDD, and no SSD.

Any thoughts on what might be causing this ? Any way to test and confirm ?

TL;DR: Display turns off, audio still there, fans still spinning, any input seems not registering. It's Halloween, and my PC is scaring the shit out me. Halp.

Watashi · November 1, 2016

Sounds strange, while you can still get onto it, why don't you try updating all of your drivers? I would check and see that the power connector for GPU is properly seated. Sometimes they wiggle around in there, and this can cause that same problem. I have a similar problem with my GPU

G33k 4 L1F3 · November 1, 2016

If you can use the PC as intended while this problem ocurrs, then seems like it can be isolated to either the Monitor or the media that allows the communication and display from the graphics card to the monitor.

verifiy that everythingn is snug with the cable, and if you can, see if you can downclock the GPU. set the game to the lowest graphics and see if it still occurs.

https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/105904-sapphire-r9-390-power-consumption

In this discussion, One user recommends at least 550w PSU, although the other use states that max load is 400W, but depending on what all you can have connected while you play, it could be topping out the PSU, causing the graphics card to freak out with the output.

But thats just a theory, simply check the connection with the monitor or use a different monitor to see if it still replicates the problem. if not, its the monitor, not the PC.