Hello everybody,
I'd like to ask anyone here for some advice on how to fix a couple of problems that my newest rig seems to possess!
First off, whilst I have some computer expertise (this is my fifth rig I've put together) I'm by no means a veteran, and ever since I left Uni I seem to be keeping up to date with new tech less and less! So please feel free to ask any question/suggest anything
Basically, the computer is as follows:
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G43 Socket AM3+ LAN 8-channel audio ATX
Chip: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz Socket AM3+ 14MB Cache
RAM: Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL9 1.65V
HDD: Seagate 1TB Barracuda 3.5" SATA-III Hard Drive - 7200RPM 64MB Cache
Graphics card: Asus GTX 660 DirectCU II OC 2GB GDDR5
PSU: Corsair CXM 500W Semi Modular 80+ Bronze Power Supply
Everything fired up fine, and I installed Windows 7 Premium without and difficulties. However, there were a couple of problems with the graphics - flickering and crashing.
Crashing
The crashing was of the momentary black screen and the "the xxx.xx driver stopped working and has recovered" bubble message in the taskbar. It crashed when playing games, and it crashed whilst browsing the internet. This seemed to be a common problem with the 660, and I tried several of the fixes suggested on this website, including disabling some of the 3D physics features, keeping the card at high performance power mode and increasing the windows graphics recovery timeout. These fixes were largely successful, and I could browse the internet without crashes, but I was still getting maybe 1 crash a day during gameplay.
Flickering
From quite early on, I noticed quite a lot of flickering on screen during games, particularly in older games like Empires: Dawn of the modern world, Rome Total War 1, but also in recent games like Magic the Gathering 2013, Empire Total War. I replaced my VGA monitor for a DVI one, and this helped, and then I switched the cable to an HDMI and this helped further. I should emphasise that some games played very well (XCom enemy unknown, Assassin's Creed III, Metro Last Light) with very little flickering, so I guessed it was something to do with the graphics engines used by certain games.
I contacted Nvidia about these problems, and they decided it was a driver issue, so I tried almost every driver available, none of which made the slightest difference. After talking to them for several months, they concluded that it might be a hardware failure, and eventually I got an RMA from Ebuyer to return the card. Since I was going to lose the card for some time, I decided to buy a replacement card to both cover the gap and potentially to replace the 660, since I've lost a lot of faith in the Nvidia cards. So I opted for a SAPPHIRE HD 7870 GHz Edition OC 2GB GDDR5, since I've had a lot of success with Radeons in the past. Card installed fine, but lo and behold, the same games are still flickering! In a different way, perhaps, in that it's less pulsing and more jagged, but still there. And additionally, the Radeon has also crashed twice in the same manner as the Nvidia (driver stopped working). This has made me wonder if perhaps there is another component at fault.
Sound problems
However, at this point I should mention the other problem that is currently afflicting this system, which is the audio. At low volume, it works fine, but at high volume I get a high pitched interference noise from the speakers. After doing some browsing online it seemed possible that the problem was my HD audio from the graphics card clashing with the mobo's onboard sound, so I bought a small PCI sound card, and installed it. Weirdly, the interference was much worse with the card, I was unable to get any sound out of it at all without a loud overlay of buzzing/scratching. Now something did happen to the computer about 6 months ago, when I had my 3D printer plugged into the computer and something shorted inside the power supply for the Arduino, which I believe caused some kind of surge on the USB, crashing the computer. The upshot was that the computer worked fine except that the audio was completely fried, anything plugged into a jack got a much louder and stronger version of the noise I'm getting now. So I replaced the mobo with a new one (identical model), and the problem went away (except for the smaller interference issues mentioned above).
To anyone who is still reading this essay at this stage - thank you for persevering, and I shall try to summarise the situation.
Graphics - flickering on two different graphics cards, and both crashing
Audio - high pitched whine audible on both on-board sound and dedicated PCI audio.
Now the only thing I can think of is that there is some problem with the motherboard or processor causing these issues, and to that end I'm considering replacing both with perhaps an Intel i5 4440 and a Gigabyte B85M-HD3. Is this likely to solve anything, or am I just going to end up throwing good money after bad? I'd appreciate any insight anyone can offer, I don't usually appeal to the internet in this way but I seem to be canoeing without a certain stick-like object at the moment
Thank you for reading.
Chris
I'd like to ask anyone here for some advice on how to fix a couple of problems that my newest rig seems to possess!
First off, whilst I have some computer expertise (this is my fifth rig I've put together) I'm by no means a veteran, and ever since I left Uni I seem to be keeping up to date with new tech less and less! So please feel free to ask any question/suggest anything
Basically, the computer is as follows:
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G43 Socket AM3+ LAN 8-channel audio ATX
Chip: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz Socket AM3+ 14MB Cache
RAM: Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL9 1.65V
HDD: Seagate 1TB Barracuda 3.5" SATA-III Hard Drive - 7200RPM 64MB Cache
Graphics card: Asus GTX 660 DirectCU II OC 2GB GDDR5
PSU: Corsair CXM 500W Semi Modular 80+ Bronze Power Supply
Everything fired up fine, and I installed Windows 7 Premium without and difficulties. However, there were a couple of problems with the graphics - flickering and crashing.
Crashing
The crashing was of the momentary black screen and the "the xxx.xx driver stopped working and has recovered" bubble message in the taskbar. It crashed when playing games, and it crashed whilst browsing the internet. This seemed to be a common problem with the 660, and I tried several of the fixes suggested on this website, including disabling some of the 3D physics features, keeping the card at high performance power mode and increasing the windows graphics recovery timeout. These fixes were largely successful, and I could browse the internet without crashes, but I was still getting maybe 1 crash a day during gameplay.
Flickering
From quite early on, I noticed quite a lot of flickering on screen during games, particularly in older games like Empires: Dawn of the modern world, Rome Total War 1, but also in recent games like Magic the Gathering 2013, Empire Total War. I replaced my VGA monitor for a DVI one, and this helped, and then I switched the cable to an HDMI and this helped further. I should emphasise that some games played very well (XCom enemy unknown, Assassin's Creed III, Metro Last Light) with very little flickering, so I guessed it was something to do with the graphics engines used by certain games.
I contacted Nvidia about these problems, and they decided it was a driver issue, so I tried almost every driver available, none of which made the slightest difference. After talking to them for several months, they concluded that it might be a hardware failure, and eventually I got an RMA from Ebuyer to return the card. Since I was going to lose the card for some time, I decided to buy a replacement card to both cover the gap and potentially to replace the 660, since I've lost a lot of faith in the Nvidia cards. So I opted for a SAPPHIRE HD 7870 GHz Edition OC 2GB GDDR5, since I've had a lot of success with Radeons in the past. Card installed fine, but lo and behold, the same games are still flickering! In a different way, perhaps, in that it's less pulsing and more jagged, but still there. And additionally, the Radeon has also crashed twice in the same manner as the Nvidia (driver stopped working). This has made me wonder if perhaps there is another component at fault.
Sound problems
However, at this point I should mention the other problem that is currently afflicting this system, which is the audio. At low volume, it works fine, but at high volume I get a high pitched interference noise from the speakers. After doing some browsing online it seemed possible that the problem was my HD audio from the graphics card clashing with the mobo's onboard sound, so I bought a small PCI sound card, and installed it. Weirdly, the interference was much worse with the card, I was unable to get any sound out of it at all without a loud overlay of buzzing/scratching. Now something did happen to the computer about 6 months ago, when I had my 3D printer plugged into the computer and something shorted inside the power supply for the Arduino, which I believe caused some kind of surge on the USB, crashing the computer. The upshot was that the computer worked fine except that the audio was completely fried, anything plugged into a jack got a much louder and stronger version of the noise I'm getting now. So I replaced the mobo with a new one (identical model), and the problem went away (except for the smaller interference issues mentioned above).
To anyone who is still reading this essay at this stage - thank you for persevering, and I shall try to summarise the situation.
Graphics - flickering on two different graphics cards, and both crashing
Audio - high pitched whine audible on both on-board sound and dedicated PCI audio.
Now the only thing I can think of is that there is some problem with the motherboard or processor causing these issues, and to that end I'm considering replacing both with perhaps an Intel i5 4440 and a Gigabyte B85M-HD3. Is this likely to solve anything, or am I just going to end up throwing good money after bad? I'd appreciate any insight anyone can offer, I don't usually appeal to the internet in this way but I seem to be canoeing without a certain stick-like object at the moment
Thank you for reading.
Chris
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