New Graphics Card: Fan slow to turn on then turns off then on again on startup + black screen problem

repzaj1234

Honorable
Aug 10, 2012
21
0
10,510
I recently bought a Powercolor 7870 Myst ed, when I plugged it in for the first time and turned on the power the fan was slow to spin until it turned off for about 1-2 seconds then turned on again. I'm also having a black screen, from the moment I turn the PC on it's all black. I tried mobo only and it booted, I tried my old graphics card and it booted also. I tried a VGA and an HDMI cable but still nothing.

Maybe it's just a faulty card. BTW here are my specs.
i5-3450 3.1ghz,
8GB RAM,
Seasonic S12II 620W,
MSI H61M-P31 (G3) Mobo
Powercolor 7870 Myst ed (My old one is a 550 TI)

I'd appreciate the help, thanks!
 

mjomble

Commendable
Jun 17, 2016
11
0
1,520
TL;DR version: I had a similar problem, updating the BIOS fixed it.

Long version:

Bought a new video card, replaced the old card with it, powered on the computer and no video signal was sent to the monitor.
I googled the problem for several days, read many forums, etc, none of the solutions worked.
I suspected that the card is probably dead and was about to give up when I got an idea from somewhere to try updating the BIOS.

As I couldn't even access BIOS with the new card (nothing would appear on the monitor at all), I had to take it out and put my old card in temporarily. I went to the motherboard manufacturer's website (MSI in my case), looked up my model and followed the instructions there.

After updating the BIOS, the new video card worked fine.

I'm guessing the issue was that my motherboard had a PCIe 2.x slot and the card was PCIe 3.x.
Although these PCIe versions are compatible, the old BIOS version probably did not recognize the new standard, while the update added support for it.