Solid Purple and Black Screens, Issue with PSU?

[Epicus]

I apologize ahead of time if this is not in the correct forum, but my question is really a double-question...

So I recently replaced this crappy Rosewill PSU that would constantly cause purple screens when I played games like COD4, with a Corsair TX 750W. I was told that this was the solution to my purple screens as that my video card wasn't getting enough power...

Well, when troubleshooting my PC, I changed a lot of settings in the BIOS, I increased some voltages on my Northbridge and Memory, and I disabled the C1E auto-clocking by Intel. Well, things worked perfect and I had no issues whatsoever after this and I was happy.

Well just yesterday, I went up to my local retailer and purchased the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro to replace the stock cooler, and I also used some Arctic Silver with it, because it's summer now and my PC was idling around 59C.

Well so I installed the HSF, and when I booted up POST, BIOS detected a change in the CPU settings, so I ended up loading factory fail-safe defaults and then kind of re-tweaked it a lil' bit, turning off HD Audio etc... and it also reset any overclocks on the voltages to my PC (which I didn't replace cause I kind of forgot what I had them set at).

It appeared to be working great until... dun dun dun... the power company suddenly decided to cut the power unannounced to my neighborhood and as I sat in front of my PC I watched it turn off and then power kicked it back on real quick then off, and then I leaned over and turned it to off, followed by a 4hr blackout here on the East Coast.

I turned my PC back on and started to play COD4 again, and my screen turned purple (like the issue with my old rosewill). Then after soft-resetting it, the screen this time turned black, but I could still move and hear things, and the light on my monitor was still green (usually it turns orange when there is no signal coming from the video card).

So my questions are, A) This is a hardware issue right ? and B) Is it actually this easy to fry a PSU? I have it plugged into a grounded floor power tap... I just can't believe this PSU is already fried... I just spent $179 on it before rebates...

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Abit IP-35E
Q6600@2.4GHz w/ Arctic Freezer 7 Pro
MSI NX8800GT OC
Corsair 750TX PSU
OCZ Vista Upgrade PC6400 5-6-6-18 DDR2 2x2GB
WD 160GB 7200 RPM SATA

 

[Mondoman]

First, try clearing your CMOS (see your MB manual). If that doesn't work, it could very well be a hardware problem. However, it might not be the PS, but instead your MB, graphics card, video monitor, etc. You might have already damaged the MB and/or graphics card with your previous PS when you were having issues; certainly power and voltage swings such as you describe for the blackout are not good for components.
If I had to guess, I'd start with the monitor, since you imply that the game still works fine.

 

[Epicus]

Thanks for your response!

My monitor is infact very old and uses an HDMI > VGA adapter just to connect in the back, however, on a soft-reset the monitor immediately regains its' signal, so I think it rules out monitor issues.... but I think one great thing is that new monitors are NEVER a waste of money Last night I updated to the newest nVIDIA drivers, a new forceware was released a few weeks ago it looks like. I'm not sure if it fixed it yet, but I haven't had an issues as of yet (only a couple hrs of gameplay). Any other things to check? I know this feels redundant, hehe.

Unrelated: One time when playing COD4, instead of my monitor turning black on me, the game went into a split-screen shift.... and looked really messed up, like you took the current display and kept nudging it far to one side until the left and right side of the screen were then being displayed in the middle. Also, there was some really bad banding going on in the image amongst other things. Maybe I have bad video card? I can't send back since I already turned in rebate, maybe newegg will still RMA it?

 

[Mondoman]

That sounds more likely to be a monitor problem to me.

 

[killraver]

hey guys i finally have my new pc and i quickly installed COD4

i updated directx till latest version
i updated COD4 patches till latest version but im still getting these purple/black jumpy screens altho i can see the menu and stuff the purple jumping colors are very anoying my question is how the hell do i fix this

ty guys,

Killraver

 

[radnor]

hey guys i finally have my new pc and i quickly installed COD4

i updated directx till latest version
i updated COD4 patches till latest version but im still getting these purple/black jumpy screens altho i can see the menu and stuff the purple jumping colors are very anoying my question is how the hell do i fix this

ty guys,

Killraver

Really i don't wanna bring the bad news, but....

In a power surge, that means when they "cut the power" in the last moment the "tension" doesn't come right. Its not 220v. Its usually much higher. Thus the shutdown.
It is a big surge. Maybe your PSU didn't contained it totally some "ripped" in to your hardware. "spiked" mobos/gpus/rams work nicely from time to time. I guess this last spike just trashed something in your case that was already spiked.

English is far from my native language, so i'm trying to skip/adapt the technical terms. But i guess you will have to replace something. Get an Amperimeter if you need one, or check the voltage on BIOS. See if they are inside specs.

Good luck !!! And good PSU also (i have one as well)

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Well if it was the CPU, the computer would do absolutely nothing. If it was the motherboard the computer would either do absolutely nothing, or another component would lose power/signal. If it was the RAM the computer would blue screen. If it was the video card all sorts of video related madness would happen, but things like sound would still work. If it was the PSU you would get a message about underpowered hardware, and if the PSU was not giving the video card enough power, then artifacts and freezing would occur. It is either you fried your video card or you motherboard. Try using another video card and if the problem does not go away it is the motherboard. The only other thing I can possibly think of is your video card is overheating so monitor the temps. Good luck.