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Black screen while gaming beer accident.

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  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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April 22, 2014 11:33:46 PM

Just built 2 new PCs last week to enjoy some Elder Scrolls Online with the wife.

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/stephen1239/saved/4soz

I drank too much the other night, and incidentally spilled the remainder of my beer into the vent at the top of my tower.

The majority of the spill seemed to have landed on the Graphics Card. I removed it, cleaned it with alcohol, and wiped off a few splashes that bounced from the GFX to the motherboard. I removed the heat sink to check for spill around it, cleaned off the thermal paste, applied fresh thermal grease.

Everything seems to run fine now... great... but then the next day, when I try to play games, after 10 mins or so, I will get a black screen. I can still hear the game music and the fans all seem to be running. Half the time when it does this, the keyboard lights will not work (caps lock ect.)
It will rarely do this when im not in a game as well?

I tried using my wife's GFX card, and it does the same thing.

My question is what piece of hardware do I need to replace to fix this issue?

More about : black screen gaming beer accident

April 23, 2014 2:38:46 AM

could be the motherboard or the power supply, who knows which or who knows what else. It may be several pieces of hardware.

I would run prime95 torture test, which will run the CPU at 100% usage, a true test indeed. That'll see if the CPU may have something to do with this.
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April 23, 2014 9:30:27 AM

unknownofprob said:
could be the motherboard or the power supply, who knows which or who knows what else. It may be several pieces of hardware.

I would run prime95 torture test, which will run the CPU at 100% usage, a true test indeed. That'll see if the CPU may have something to do with this.


Have ran the Prime95 program for 2 hours. Everything has passed. So Its now between the motherboard and power supply?


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April 23, 2014 7:42:40 PM

Tried playing games again today. All was well till about 2 hours in and the black screens start happening. Changed out the power supply with the second computers then booted up the game.

This time I received an error "display driver has stopped responding and has recovered".

Any ideas? I'm at a loss of which hardware needs to be replaced.
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April 23, 2014 9:19:04 PM

that can be due to an overclock that is unsupported by the game, if no OC has been done, I would suggest you do a small underclock, then OC back to same level.
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April 23, 2014 11:35:49 PM

unknownofprob said:
that can be due to an overclock that is unsupported by the game, if no OC has been done, I would suggest you do a small underclock, then OC back to same level.


I'm not even sure how to overclock/underclock?

I removed my GFX card, ram, and power supply and put in parts from the other computer. Same issue.

I then put those parts into the other computer that has no issues, worked perfectly running the game for 2 hours.

Has to be the motherboard or processor now? Ordered a new motherboard, hopefully this fixes my issue.
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April 24, 2014 2:51:36 AM

sounds like the motherboard, but could you try your GTX card. power supply, ram in your other computer, not the one you tried before.
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April 24, 2014 9:03:56 AM

unknownofprob said:
sounds like the motherboard, but could you try your GTX card. power supply, ram in your other computer, not the one you tried before.


Yeah, I swapped power supply, GFX card, and Ram piece by piece between the computers. The spill computer was still black screening with each piece from the unaffected computer, and the unaffected computer was running fine with the spill computers hardware. Has to be motherboard or processor related.
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April 24, 2014 8:41:10 PM

Yes, defiantly. I would opt for the motherboard, still. Did the spill go onto the processor?
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April 24, 2014 8:49:49 PM

unknownofprob said:
Yes, defiantly. I would opt for the motherboard, still. Did the spill go onto the processor?


None that I could see. A few spots from splash on the side of the heatsink, but other than that its clean.
I'll post when the new motherboard gets if it works or not!
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April 24, 2014 8:56:37 PM

good, The reason the motherboard is that there is so much surface area for a spill to cause such a scenario to this, if the CPU is untouched (has the CPU cooler for slight protection I guess) it should be functioning normally, but the motherboard, though flat, can still catch liquids in the slots and flow down the entire board.
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!