Monitor stays black after boot, likely faulty graphic card but want confirmation.

Tidec

Reputable
Mar 27, 2014
1
0
4,510
My homebuilt PC: Asus P8Z68-V , Geforce GTX-570 , Intel I7 2600K, Windows 7 on a Vortex 3, WD20ears for data. Built in september of 2011 if I recall correctly.

Yesterday I shutdown the pc, it did some Windows updates for some minutes and then went off.

Today I want to boot it, but the monitor stays black. No beeps from the machine, but it makes normal noise and some lights flicker so it has power.

I replace the monitor with another one, that one also stays black after boot.

I connect the original monitor to another pc, there it works fine, so I connect it back to the faulty pc.

I reset CMOS, no difference

2 red leds on motherboard stay on after booting (I only noticed it then) : VGA_LED and BOOT_DEVICE_LED

I replace the Geforce GTX-570 with an old backup graphic card. After booting the monitor is still black, but VGA_LED stays off now. (it only lits up very shortly after boot, I assume this is normal). BOOT_DEVICE_LED is still red now.

I remove CMOS battery for a few minutes and put it back in. I start the pc still with the backup graphic card. Now the monitor is showing boot up process and it mentions the cmos reset. I use bios menu to select my vortex and the pc goes to windows as it should, there is no problem anymore. BOOT_DEVICE_LED is also off now, no warning leds are on at this point.

I replace the old graphic card with the Geforce GTX-570 again, boot up. Monitor black, VGA_LED and BOOT_DEVICE_LED on again.

I put the old graphic card back in, and now it boots without problems and Windows comes up.

So may I conclude my graphic card is defective and everything else is ok ? Replacing my video card with a new one should solve all problems ? I don't have the means to reliably test this graphic card in another pc though, so some confirmation of my suspicions would be nice. If there are other parts that I also should replace just to be sure, then I would like to hear about it.