Black screen with buzzing sound from speaker

weystorm

Prominent
Jan 29, 2018
2
0
510
Hello there,

Getting black screen while playing games (GTA V, Rust) with a strange looping buzzing sound (from the speaker - no beep code). Signal gone, no error code. Have to hard reset to be able to do anything. Getting these crashes varies from playing 10 minutes to 1,5 hours of gameplay.

System Configuration:

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-H170-HD3
CPU: Intel i5 6600
Memory: 16GB DDR4
GPU: Sapphire Nitro R9 390 8GB
OS: Windows 10 x64 (1709)
Driver: 17.12.1
PSU: EVGA SuperNova B2 750W
BIOS: F22c

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Launch a demanding game
2. Wait to crash with black screen

Expected Behavior:

Game runs smoothly without crashing the whole system.

Actual Behavior:

After playing 10 minutes to 1,5 hours, black screen occurs with buzzing sound from speaker. Can't do anything, have to hard reset.

Additional Observations:

Can't think of anything what could produce the crash, I had this system for almost 2 years now with no problem. It all started in the middle of December with a few crashes -like 1 per week. But now, it's getting really frustrating, I can't really play at all for longer period of time.

Things I've tried:

  • ■ cleaned with ddu -> updated to latest 18.1.1 - still having black screen crashes
    ■ cleaned with ddu -> installed old 17.9.3 - still having black screen crashes
    ■ updated to latest BIOS version - didn't resolve issue

Things to add:

Temps are peaking at around 72C (and 81C for the VRAM), but I've heard that it's normal for a hawaii card. Fans are working properly, so I don't think it's a heating problem -at least not the GPU.

Also, the PC keeps running after the crash with all the fans spinning.
 
Solution

Vogner16

Honorable
Jan 27, 2014
598
1
11,160
looks to me like the card needs to be returned. hardware failures are rare but can happen. try to underclock the card and see if that makes it more stable. or perhaps try a different cable to a different monitor? the buzzing makes me still think the gpu crashes however.
 

weystorm

Prominent
Jan 29, 2018
2
0
510


But wouldn't a faulty graphics card produce some error in other areas? I mean, I don't have any FPS issues in game, games still run fine, no artifacts at all. It seems to me that it's likely to be a software issue rather than hardware. I currently don't have any other monitors to test. Also, forgot to mention, that I upgraded to Fall Creators Update (1709) in 11.29. and maybe it is what causing these crashes. I will probably do a clean install today and see how it goes.

I really don't want to mess with clock values, however, I installed my card's fan program, called TriXX, which shows all information about my card, like temperatures, clock speed, etc. And there was this GPU voltage which was set to +19mv by default. Is it normal? If I want to reset the settings, PC would crash (it didn't before).

Update: uninstalled the current TriXX utility, and installed the latest version and successfully reset the settings without crash, so the voltage is now +0
 

Vogner16

Honorable
Jan 27, 2014
598
1
11,160


for amd graphics cards I usually don't install any OC utility beyond the built in amd one in radeon settings.

gaming/global settings/ global wattman

you can lower the clocks, raise them, change power limits, monitor performance etc... radeon settings is pretty good anymore.

the big clue you gave me to your card being ok is the lack of any artifacts or lines in the screen. fps shouldn't change as a card is dying but the screen can start showing signs of problems with random triangles and textures popping in where they don't belong as a card begins to die. you said this IS NOT happening therefor I say there is hope.

do a reinstall and update to the latest windows then get all OEM drivers for chipset, gpu, IO, etc... and even verify game files if you are just going to refind them via steam. if you still get crashes, card is a fault I would believe.
 
Solution