Random pixels (possibly artifacting) popping up in dark areas on screen

chrles12

Commendable
Dec 7, 2016
4
0
1,510
I didn't see a troubleshooting section, so I apologize if this is in the wrong place. I just figured I'd post in the gpu section of the forum because that's likely where my problem is stemming from.
First off, here's my part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/88J4Z8
The issue is kind of weird, so it might take a lot of text to fully explain sorry.
     TL;dr: red, green, and blue pixels start flashing in parts of the screen where the colors are supposed to be dark. Not dead pixels because they scroll with the image.
     Long version: Basically, where an image is supposed to display colors that are rich and dark, but not completely black (kinda like offset blacks and grays and some other darker colors), red, green, and blue pixels/very small lines appear. The pixels and small lines do not take up the whole of the dark area, just certain pixels within. It does not always happen either. It happens most often when the gpu is running at its base clock (so I suspect one of the problems could simply be that the minimum base clock is set too low for some 2D imaging). The other time I've discovered it happens is under intense load (it happened this morning after running battlefield 1 for ~90 minutes straight) and the gpu gets particularly hot (79 degrees celsius and higher, I think it caps at around 83 celsius, so that could have something to do with it as well). The other thing that's weird is that the pixels and lines move with the image. So if I scroll, the pixels don't stay in place, so I don't think it's to do with dead pixels. Also, if I printscreen my display and email it to myself and open it on my laptop, it shows up as a perfect image without the discolored pixels I see on my monitor. Not sure if that points to it being a gpu problem or a monitor problem or the way they interact with each other that's causing the problem. I had to take the pictures at the end of this post with my phone because of this problem.
     Troubleshooting I've done: Switched to the other dvi port, hdmi instead of displayport, changed resolution, changed refresh rate, changed color temperature, did some dead pixel tests, downloaded the latest driver from nvidia, ran bf1 through geforce experience rather than as a standalone game. At lower refresh rates there are less out of place pixels, other than that no changes.
     Troubleshooting I haven't done: a different displayport cable altogether, taking the gpu out and running on integrated graphics, raising the gpu's minimum base clock (though this one's mainly because I can't find a gpu program that allows me to change the base clock). The tough part about this is that it seems to pop up at completely random times. It doesn't show up about half of the time on idle, it never shows up when it's under medium load, and it doesn't show up most of the time under fairly heavy load.
     Photos of the problem: http://i.imgur.com/thqqtyJ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/uDqP75V.jpg
     I didn't want to try to push my gpu to the point where it would start showing the out of place pixels again in bf1 just for the purpose of more pictures. They are most prevalent and obvious then, so if it's necessary for more evidence I can try to get them to show up again. I guess it behaves a lot like artifacting in this way, though I'm not overclocking the gpu and the pixels don't behave quite like artifacting as I understand the term. Certainly could be though, as this is far out of my field of expertise.

EDIT: what happens just on the main screen of bf 1: http://i.imgur.com/MMOCBus.jpg . Also geforce experience stopped working, so I had to uninstall and reinstall it. It works now, though it didn't close bf 1 properly.

     Possible reasons for the problem: gpu's base clock is too low, images are being corrupted while being held in vram (this would be a driver issue I guess?), temperature of gpu resulting in mess up of image rendering and image transfer, displayport cable is faulty (though very unlikely because I had the same problem through the hdmi cable), monitor's display is faulty, others I'm definitely forgetting/leaving out.
     This build is 3 days old. I've sort of hit a mental block where I'm not thinking very clearly because I've been trying to figure this out for a day straight now. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.

Edit: After the problem persisted on the integrated graphics, I determined it was a monitor issue. I went and exchanged it for a new monitor of the same make and model. I have had no problems since.
 
Solution
As I read your post I thought it was the monitor because you couldn't see the problem with printscreen. That to me means whatever image information was coming from the videocard was fine. The next thing in line is the monitor, which means that's where the problem has to be.
As I read your post I thought it was the monitor because you couldn't see the problem with printscreen. That to me means whatever image information was coming from the videocard was fine. The next thing in line is the monitor, which means that's where the problem has to be.
 
Solution