Black Screen when Vertical all fine when Horizontal - MSi 7950 Boost Twin Frozr III

zcwaa22

Reputable
May 30, 2014
2
0
4,510
Hi all,

I have built a machine for a project which requires the machine to be running 3d visualisations for 8 hours a day every day for a month.

Here are the specs

Intel 3570k not overclocked
Gigabyte GA Z77 DS3H v1.1
16gb (2x8gb) Patriot Black Mamba Ram not overclocked
Intel SSD
MSI Radeon HD 7950 Boost Twin Frozr III
XFX Core Edition 550W Pro PSU ( 80 Plus )
Catalyst 14.4 Release Drivers (Not Beta)

I tried to test the machines performance by gaming and was getting strange black geometry in Titanfall so decided to stress test the machine to find out what was wrong.

I reinstalled Windows 8.1, latest catalyst drivers 14.4 and furmark.

Running Furmark's 1080p 15minute benchmark I would get between 30 -120 seconds in and the screen would go black, the fans on the CPU and GPU would continue to run on full and there would be no response to keys or mouse clicks, the caps lock light will not turn on or off when pressed, Id have to do a hard reset and there were no issues hen booting back up.

I have downloaded Speedfan and logged everything, there are no sudden jumps before the black screen crash. The GPU gets up to 65degrees and the CPU cores stay in the 40's ( from memory but I'm pretty sure they're around that).

The really weird thing is that when my case is oriented horizontally- and the card vertically the card works absolutely fine in Furmark and will get to the end with no problems!!! Speedfan shows the card getting hotter up to 67degrees so the GPU temp doesn't seem to be the issue.

I've taken the board out and reseated it, changed the power connectors from two 6 pins to one 6pin and a 2 ide to 6 pin power convertor.

I thought it might be to do with the CPU getting stressed and overheating but running prime95 for an hour with the case vertical doesn't give any black screens.

Ive tried running this in windows 7 and get the same results, I get a black screen when the tower is upright and it runs fine when the tower is horizontal.

Ive tried using the hdmi cable to a LCD TV and the mini displayport to a monitor and in both cases I get a black screen when the tower is upright and it runs fine when the tower is horizontal.

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine states that when under full load I'll only be using 414watts so I'd have though my PSU would not be a problem.

I was hoping someone might be able to point me in the direction of whether this sounds like a dodgy PSU, mainboard or graphics card - its so hard to work out which might be the problem - I'd be more than happy to do more tests if anyone has any ideas of what to test!

I did see there was someone with similar issues :
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1908367/7950-twin-frozr-iii-boost-unstable-vertical-position.html

but was unsure of whether to reply to that thread or start a new one, apologies if I've done wrong!


EDIT: Just to add other than Furmark i.e. when Im on the desktop everything runs as fine in horizontal or vertical positions.
 

zcwaa22

Reputable
May 30, 2014
2
0
4,510
In case anyone else comes across the same issue.

I completely rebuilt the system and noticed that for the connection between the PSU to the CPU power ( unsure if its called ATX 8 Pin or EPS 8 Pin ) I was using the PSU's 2x4pin, I changed this to the 1x8pin and it's all ok now.