Hello!
My roommate built a new rig and we've been experiencing same strange issues. I really want to pinpoint the problem before we're outside of the 30 days which the parts were purchased. So, here's the build:
ASUS Z97 A
Intel i7-4790K @ 4ghz
Asus GTX 770 (4gb, DirectCU2 cooler)
EVGA SuperNova 750w (Bronze Rated)
G.Skill RipJaw Z, 16gb
Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit
The first issue we encountered was almost surely related to the GPU. At a certain point, usually right at or after the GPU reached 70 degrees, the GPU would fail resulting in no display on any monitor. (Tested with 3, DVI and HDMI). The PC would continue to run until forced restart. Windows would provide an error log with no more information than that the Kernel lost power. So, to my understanding, the only critical error was that we had shut the PC down unexpectedly.
Updated the BIOs on the MOBO, ASUS GPU Tweak had already updated VBIOS on the gfx card, and the drivers for the gfx card were the most recently released as well. When the issue persisted after updating the BIOs we continued troubleshooting until we found a forum on Asus's website that had some instructions to disable the NVIDIA Audio drivers, the issue kept occurring, later in the thread it was suggested to change "Power Management Mode" to "Prefer maximum performance" from within Manage 3D settings in NVIDIA Control Panel.
After changing the setting in NCP, we were able to put the card under full load and get the temps over 80 degrees. That seemed sufficient, so, we didn't push it any harder. But we did reenable all of the NVIDIA Audio drivers. (we were sacrificing audio over HDMI, which is unacceptable). The card had no problem running 3 instances of Unreal Engine 4 with some physics going crazy in each instance. At some point during our troubleshooting, but before landing on what seemed to be the fix, we encountered a crash that filled the screen with multicolor blocks (much larger than pixels).
A day later while the GPU was under no significant load (fairly sure only photoshop and illustrator were running) the multicolor block crash occurred again. Upon the next 3 consecutive reboots we were greeted with the same rainbow hell. I'm no IT expert but I consider myself capable of performing any troubleshooting related to Windows or hardware, unfortunately, I'm out of ideas. I've found numerous threads detailing this, or similar problem with this card. I've yet to read anything very conclusive, however, so I don't feel confident that the problem is solely the GPU.
Later tonight I'll probably put the 770 in a different machine and try to replicate it. I appreciate any response and I'll be happy to update with more information if necessary. Thanks!
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strange gpu issues