- Jun 18, 2014
- 31
- 0
- 4,540
Hey guys I REALLY need some advice here. This is the first big issue I've come across where I can't even load into Windows. I know this is long, but PLEASE, bear with me. I've tried to keep it organized and not too difficult to follow. Honestly the first paragraph is just in regards to what I have in my setup, so if you want to just skip to paragraph 2 for the issue that's fine. I know most people don't want to read all this but I don't want to omit anything that someone could recognize as potentially being the cause of the issue.
To provide better insight I'll give a little history of what I've changed recently. I had a Fractal Arc XL case, A gtx 780 FTW w/acx cooler, 8350 fx cpu w/corsair h100i , Asus M5a99fx pro 2.0 mobo, and evga supernova 1000 watt psu. Also using a Qnix 2710 1440p monitor overclocked to 96hz. I recently added a second gtx 780 ftw in the case. This was a huge mistake, as I soon learned firsthand how TERRIBLE two cards with these ACX coolers are in a case. Thermal. Freaking. Nightmare. The top card was hitting upwards of 86 degrees in games like far cry 3, crysis 3, tomb raider etc. I mostly play BF4 and for some reason it ran cooler in that game--maybe around 67-71. Anyways I was considering picking up two full waterblocks (XSPC Razer 780/780ti/titan) and making the jump to water cooling. My other option was selling these two cards and getting two reference designed cards that I read were much better temperature wise in SLI. I then read about the Corsair Carbide 540 and how awesome it was at cooling and from the looks of it, it seemed like it might be a decent solution that could save me hundreds of dollars in water cooling while also allowing me to keep my current card setup (I like the dual bios option available on the FTW cards).
So I bought the Carbide 540 and installed the two 780 ftw's into the new case without any issues. Powered on and it was fine. Played BF4 for awhile and it was working great with slightly lower temps
Then I joined a friend on Rust, which is still in alpha. I was getting horrible frames--avg around 50 and dipping to 22. I realized the game probably wasn't optimized for SLI and may be why I was getting such awful performance. So here we go, this is where things went downhill:
1.) I disabled SLI and the computer froze.
2.) I thought well maybe I should go ahead and re-install the Nvidia drivers (don't ask me why lol). I went to device manager and uninstalled them there, then rebooted in safe mode and re-installed the current 337.88 WHQL drivers and rebooted. Windows started up fine, and the desktop loaded, taskbar was loaded, corsair link had loaded, origin was trying to get my permission for something (some update for Titanfall I think) and then the screen flickered black for a second, desktop appeared again, then the screen went black and I couldn't do anything. No message, nothing.
3.) I rebooted into bios, set everything to default and rebooted. Same thing. Loaded windows fine, then after about 15 seconds, screen flickered once, loaded back and then it went dark grey this time. Tried again. This time the screen went all white.
4.) I went to bed pissed off.
5.) I downloaded the Nvidia Display Driver uninstaller at work along with the new beta 340 drivers and another copy of the 337.88 drivers, put them on a USB and went home. Switched the cards in the PCI slots and booted into safe mode. Used the new Nvidia uninstaller I had downloaded (which was released 6/12/14, it removes all NVIDIA files, folders, and registry items, something I'd read driver sweeper doesn't do very well).
6.) I rebooted into regular windows. Worked fine. No black screen. But you know when you boot into windows after uninstalling the drivers how windows installs driver hardware? I think it was installing vga display adapters or something. There was a total of 4 things it was installing, two for each card, and the one of the vga installs had failed. Everything was working ok though so I went ahead and booted back into safe mode and installed the new 340 beta drivers with the clean installation box checked, opted not to install the 3d vision and 3d controller things, then rebooted back into windows. Same thing...loaded desktop, corsair link, origin again trying to get me to update something, then the screen went black.
7.) I went to dinner pissed off
Both cards are fully inserted into the slots, they are in the correct slots, and I tried running just one card (my original card) in the top slot. Still no luck. I haven't tried running just the new card in the top slot yet, or tried running each card separately in just the bottom slot. Those are the only other things I can think of trying--which I plan on doing when I get home today.
Any ideas or suggestions??
To provide better insight I'll give a little history of what I've changed recently. I had a Fractal Arc XL case, A gtx 780 FTW w/acx cooler, 8350 fx cpu w/corsair h100i , Asus M5a99fx pro 2.0 mobo, and evga supernova 1000 watt psu. Also using a Qnix 2710 1440p monitor overclocked to 96hz. I recently added a second gtx 780 ftw in the case. This was a huge mistake, as I soon learned firsthand how TERRIBLE two cards with these ACX coolers are in a case. Thermal. Freaking. Nightmare. The top card was hitting upwards of 86 degrees in games like far cry 3, crysis 3, tomb raider etc. I mostly play BF4 and for some reason it ran cooler in that game--maybe around 67-71. Anyways I was considering picking up two full waterblocks (XSPC Razer 780/780ti/titan) and making the jump to water cooling. My other option was selling these two cards and getting two reference designed cards that I read were much better temperature wise in SLI. I then read about the Corsair Carbide 540 and how awesome it was at cooling and from the looks of it, it seemed like it might be a decent solution that could save me hundreds of dollars in water cooling while also allowing me to keep my current card setup (I like the dual bios option available on the FTW cards).
So I bought the Carbide 540 and installed the two 780 ftw's into the new case without any issues. Powered on and it was fine. Played BF4 for awhile and it was working great with slightly lower temps
Then I joined a friend on Rust, which is still in alpha. I was getting horrible frames--avg around 50 and dipping to 22. I realized the game probably wasn't optimized for SLI and may be why I was getting such awful performance. So here we go, this is where things went downhill:1.) I disabled SLI and the computer froze.
2.) I thought well maybe I should go ahead and re-install the Nvidia drivers (don't ask me why lol). I went to device manager and uninstalled them there, then rebooted in safe mode and re-installed the current 337.88 WHQL drivers and rebooted. Windows started up fine, and the desktop loaded, taskbar was loaded, corsair link had loaded, origin was trying to get my permission for something (some update for Titanfall I think) and then the screen flickered black for a second, desktop appeared again, then the screen went black and I couldn't do anything. No message, nothing.
3.) I rebooted into bios, set everything to default and rebooted. Same thing. Loaded windows fine, then after about 15 seconds, screen flickered once, loaded back and then it went dark grey this time. Tried again. This time the screen went all white.
4.) I went to bed pissed off.
5.) I downloaded the Nvidia Display Driver uninstaller at work along with the new beta 340 drivers and another copy of the 337.88 drivers, put them on a USB and went home. Switched the cards in the PCI slots and booted into safe mode. Used the new Nvidia uninstaller I had downloaded (which was released 6/12/14, it removes all NVIDIA files, folders, and registry items, something I'd read driver sweeper doesn't do very well).
6.) I rebooted into regular windows. Worked fine. No black screen. But you know when you boot into windows after uninstalling the drivers how windows installs driver hardware? I think it was installing vga display adapters or something. There was a total of 4 things it was installing, two for each card, and the one of the vga installs had failed. Everything was working ok though so I went ahead and booted back into safe mode and installed the new 340 beta drivers with the clean installation box checked, opted not to install the 3d vision and 3d controller things, then rebooted back into windows. Same thing...loaded desktop, corsair link, origin again trying to get me to update something, then the screen went black.
7.) I went to dinner pissed off
Both cards are fully inserted into the slots, they are in the correct slots, and I tried running just one card (my original card) in the top slot. Still no luck. I haven't tried running just the new card in the top slot yet, or tried running each card separately in just the bottom slot. Those are the only other things I can think of trying--which I plan on doing when I get home today.
Any ideas or suggestions??
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