- May 1, 2013
- 5
- 0
- 10,510
In April 2013, I built the following system:
Mobo- GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
CPU- AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor
GPU- ASUS GTX650TI-OC-2GD5 GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16
RAM- 2 x OCZ 3G1333LV8GK 4Gb PC3 10666
Main HDD- Crucial 256Gb SSD drive
PSU- Antec EA-500 Green 500W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80
I know I should "breadboard" this system out and test everything one by one, I'm a little skittish since I've been building PCs for 16 years and this is the first time I've got one that behaves quite like this.
I thought perhaps I damaged the CPU upon initial installation; I had used too much thermal grease and the heatsink forcibly sucked the CPU out when I was installing/unstalling the heatsink and one of the CPU's pins was slightly bent. (which I straightened with a pair of tweezers)
The system regardless performed like a champion for several months with only a very occasionally going to a mystery "black screen" for no apparent reason. At first, I thought this might be the graphics card (a conflict between the AMD CPU and GeForce card, maybe, I thought) This seemed to improve when I changed the graphics card in advanced settings for multiple monitors to support maximum compatibility.
About 2 weeks ago, the Black Screen returned and got increasingly frequent. Sometimes it would "black screen" from windows, and then it started doing this on bootup.. by black screen, I mean my monitor would go into power-save mode as if there's no graphical output.
It's possible I never plugged in my case speaker; I don't think I'm hearing any beeps as a result.
I started trying things: I swapped graphics cards and put in an ATI Radeon 7850. No change; boot straight to black screen.
I uninstalled and reinstalled the memory. No change.
I unstalled and reinstalled the processor. Got to windows again.. black screen.
So, I thought, my CPU is damaged, and I ordered a replacement.
The replacement got here today, I installed it, and... No Change. I got to windows one time, 3 times I booted to black screen, once it got to the Bios post screen and then went black.
I'm at a loss here, I'm literally going to have to go back to square zero and test each and every component. Right?
My Feeling is, it's the motherboard, or the RAM, or the GPU.... um, yeah, one of those. Probably. Help, ideas, anything?
postscript: I changed nothing, decided to give it "one more try", got to the post screen, went into the BIOS, didn't change anything, and now it's running fine (I'm typing this from the problem system).. weirdest thing I've ever seen.... upon reboot, black screen. Tried going back to BIOS defaults.. if I can change things in the BIOS, that means the mobo is working, I guess.
(Stick to Intel Builds from now on? Use ATI Graphics cards only? Post your favorite fairy tale here; this is my first AMD build, I've always gone Intel before this..)
Mobo- GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
CPU- AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor
GPU- ASUS GTX650TI-OC-2GD5 GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16
RAM- 2 x OCZ 3G1333LV8GK 4Gb PC3 10666
Main HDD- Crucial 256Gb SSD drive
PSU- Antec EA-500 Green 500W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80
I know I should "breadboard" this system out and test everything one by one, I'm a little skittish since I've been building PCs for 16 years and this is the first time I've got one that behaves quite like this.
I thought perhaps I damaged the CPU upon initial installation; I had used too much thermal grease and the heatsink forcibly sucked the CPU out when I was installing/unstalling the heatsink and one of the CPU's pins was slightly bent. (which I straightened with a pair of tweezers)
The system regardless performed like a champion for several months with only a very occasionally going to a mystery "black screen" for no apparent reason. At first, I thought this might be the graphics card (a conflict between the AMD CPU and GeForce card, maybe, I thought) This seemed to improve when I changed the graphics card in advanced settings for multiple monitors to support maximum compatibility.
About 2 weeks ago, the Black Screen returned and got increasingly frequent. Sometimes it would "black screen" from windows, and then it started doing this on bootup.. by black screen, I mean my monitor would go into power-save mode as if there's no graphical output.
It's possible I never plugged in my case speaker; I don't think I'm hearing any beeps as a result.
I started trying things: I swapped graphics cards and put in an ATI Radeon 7850. No change; boot straight to black screen.
I uninstalled and reinstalled the memory. No change.
I unstalled and reinstalled the processor. Got to windows again.. black screen.
So, I thought, my CPU is damaged, and I ordered a replacement.
The replacement got here today, I installed it, and... No Change. I got to windows one time, 3 times I booted to black screen, once it got to the Bios post screen and then went black.
I'm at a loss here, I'm literally going to have to go back to square zero and test each and every component. Right?
My Feeling is, it's the motherboard, or the RAM, or the GPU.... um, yeah, one of those. Probably. Help, ideas, anything?
postscript: I changed nothing, decided to give it "one more try", got to the post screen, went into the BIOS, didn't change anything, and now it's running fine (I'm typing this from the problem system).. weirdest thing I've ever seen.... upon reboot, black screen. Tried going back to BIOS defaults.. if I can change things in the BIOS, that means the mobo is working, I guess.
(Stick to Intel Builds from now on? Use ATI Graphics cards only? Post your favorite fairy tale here; this is my first AMD build, I've always gone Intel before this..)
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram