Video pixelation, 12v rail reading 18v with DVOM

[johnduaneg]

I have a Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU 500W ATX 12V 2.0 Power Supply. today when i came home i fired up call of duty mw2 and i started getting red and green pixels all over the display it would flicker 10-30 times very rapidly and then id get a BSOD with a nividia dll error.
steps i took.
blew out all dust
reseated RAM, Video card, all power supply connections
disconnected extra hardware (2 extra hard drives, cd rom ect)
updated motherboard bios
updated all drivers in safe mode

at this point im now getting red and green pixels on the bios screens i got out my trusty DVOM and powered the pc back on while checking the 12v rail started out at 12.1v as stayed there as long as i just used the internet and file explorer i then launched world of warcraft right away i got the red and green pixels and my 12v shot up to 18.9v i shut down the PC right away. i dont know too much about PC power supplies is this the most likely cause of my problem or is this normal?


other specs
Intel Core Duo 3.0 ghz
Asus p5k-e WiFI mobo
nvidia 8800 GTS
2 WD 160 gig HD striped raid

any help is appreciated

 

[delluser1]

Over Voltage Protection should kick in at around 15.6v, I 'd get a new psu.

 

[Collie147]

have you tried removing your nvidia card and using the mobo GPU? other than the BSOD I'd say it could've been a prob with your monitor, but it defo sounds like something is overheating. silly question but is there something in the way of the fan on your nvidia card? or maybe it's not getting enough airflow? although it does sound like a short circuit if the voltage is shooting up... try your onboard GPU and see what happens

 

[johnduaneg]

bought a new power supply, voltages are stable now, still have the pixelation issue and windows recovering the driver from not responding. air flow to the gpu is unrestricted and i have 5 80mm case fans moving air. im running dual displays a 19in widescreen viewsonic lcd and a NEC 17in CRT been running this combo for over a year. i disconnected the LCD and connected it to another win7 machine works fine. unfortunately i do not have onboard video im debating pulling the GF 7800 out of my other machine and trying it. im wondering if the over voltage of the power supply damaged my video card. i am going to uninstall the driver and run the win7 defualt one see what happen ill post the results in a few min. thanks for the input so far its helping me think logically about diagnosis

 

[johnduaneg]

swapping the video card solved the problem, guess it was just that cards time to go. bought a new card. problem fixed.

 

[saaiello]

I would say the overvoltage the power supply fed to it killed it.