Hi everyone,
I have a build from IBuyPower that is about 1 year and 10 months old. Here are the basic specs. I'm trying to find somewhere that I saved the complete and detailed spec list but I'm having no luck, but I'll keep looking and edit my post if I find it.
Intel i7 950 processor
Asus P6T SE motherboard
EVGA GTX 480 (right now)
6 GB RAM
Corsair 750W power supply
IBuyPower watercooling system
Windows 7 Ultimate
Nothing is overclocked or running at non-stock settings of any sort.
I used to have an EVGA GTX 460 and never had any problems with it. About 3 weeks ago, I booted the computer up and the IBuyPower splash screen had some very strange artifacts. Then it showed some command portion lines of booting up, like normal, and those looked fine. But as soon as I got to the Windows 7 loading screen, these strange artifacts were back and they stayed the whole time I was in Windows. They looked like strange arbitrary lines running up and down in random places with weird colors and various other distortions.
Once I logged into Windows, my color scheme looked like it was a very low bit setting (with washed out shades, like an extremely compressed image format) and I was stuck in 640x480 resolution. I looked in the device manager and saw that Windows no longer recognized my video card. I tried using the device manager to search for new drivers and I also downloaded the latest driver set from the Nvidia website and tried to extract and install it. Still no luck.
I powered the computer down, unplugged everything, and took the video card out. It didn't really feel hotter than I would expect, but strangely enough, the connectors had a bit of room temperature, clear, odorless liquid/gel on them. I've done some searching online and can't find anything about this at all. I'm wondering if the watercooling sytem perhaps leaked? I don't know anything about that stuff, but I lightly touched pretty much everywhere on the motherboard/components that I could get my hands on and absolutely nothing else is wet or damp at all.
I wiped the connectors down very gently with a dry, clean rag (making sure that the connectors and PCI express slot were completely dry) and then reconnected the video card. I tried to boot up and got the same problem again. The computer was on for less than a minute, but when I took the video card out again, it had already somehow secreted that liquid/gel again (and roughly the same amount). I wiped it down once again and tried the OTHER PCI express slot on the motherboard. Exact same thing.
I decided to just buy a new card, so I bought a EVGA GTX 480. There were no artifacts when booting up and Windows recognized the card. I let it install the drivers and it worked fine for about 2 weeks. Then today when I booted up my computer, the same scenario described above happened again, complete with the wet connectors. I wiped it down and tried it in my motherboard's other PCI express slot, like I did when troubleshooting the old card, but this time, the other connector worked and I got no artifacts when booting up. Windows installed the drivers again and now it seems to be working fine. However, I'm really worried now. I don't want my computer to keep eating video cards!
Here are some extra details:
The motherboard battery has failed twice even though the computer is less than 2 years old. Once in August 2011 and once about a month ago.
When I put the GTX 480 (the new card) in the other PCI express slot, it did start working, however, when booting up my computer asked me if I wanted to enter the BIOS setup and restore settings or press F2 to load default settings. It's never done that before. I loaded the default settings, and had to re-synchronize the computer's clock once I connected the internet.
Because of those things, I'm guessing I have a shitty and/or defective motherboard. But I really have no idea.
I should also note that I generally only use my computer maybe an hour or so a day during the week and don't even play any games most of the time then. I use it for maybe 2-3 hours a day on weekends but the games I play aren't really that new or demanding. The most graphically demanding game I ever play is Just Cause 2, so I don't think anything is overheating.
Does anyone have any idea what's wrong and what I could do about it?
I have a build from IBuyPower that is about 1 year and 10 months old. Here are the basic specs. I'm trying to find somewhere that I saved the complete and detailed spec list but I'm having no luck, but I'll keep looking and edit my post if I find it.
Intel i7 950 processor
Asus P6T SE motherboard
EVGA GTX 480 (right now)
6 GB RAM
Corsair 750W power supply
IBuyPower watercooling system
Windows 7 Ultimate
Nothing is overclocked or running at non-stock settings of any sort.
I used to have an EVGA GTX 460 and never had any problems with it. About 3 weeks ago, I booted the computer up and the IBuyPower splash screen had some very strange artifacts. Then it showed some command portion lines of booting up, like normal, and those looked fine. But as soon as I got to the Windows 7 loading screen, these strange artifacts were back and they stayed the whole time I was in Windows. They looked like strange arbitrary lines running up and down in random places with weird colors and various other distortions.
Once I logged into Windows, my color scheme looked like it was a very low bit setting (with washed out shades, like an extremely compressed image format) and I was stuck in 640x480 resolution. I looked in the device manager and saw that Windows no longer recognized my video card. I tried using the device manager to search for new drivers and I also downloaded the latest driver set from the Nvidia website and tried to extract and install it. Still no luck.
I powered the computer down, unplugged everything, and took the video card out. It didn't really feel hotter than I would expect, but strangely enough, the connectors had a bit of room temperature, clear, odorless liquid/gel on them. I've done some searching online and can't find anything about this at all. I'm wondering if the watercooling sytem perhaps leaked? I don't know anything about that stuff, but I lightly touched pretty much everywhere on the motherboard/components that I could get my hands on and absolutely nothing else is wet or damp at all.
I wiped the connectors down very gently with a dry, clean rag (making sure that the connectors and PCI express slot were completely dry) and then reconnected the video card. I tried to boot up and got the same problem again. The computer was on for less than a minute, but when I took the video card out again, it had already somehow secreted that liquid/gel again (and roughly the same amount). I wiped it down once again and tried the OTHER PCI express slot on the motherboard. Exact same thing.
I decided to just buy a new card, so I bought a EVGA GTX 480. There were no artifacts when booting up and Windows recognized the card. I let it install the drivers and it worked fine for about 2 weeks. Then today when I booted up my computer, the same scenario described above happened again, complete with the wet connectors. I wiped it down and tried it in my motherboard's other PCI express slot, like I did when troubleshooting the old card, but this time, the other connector worked and I got no artifacts when booting up. Windows installed the drivers again and now it seems to be working fine. However, I'm really worried now. I don't want my computer to keep eating video cards!
Here are some extra details:
The motherboard battery has failed twice even though the computer is less than 2 years old. Once in August 2011 and once about a month ago.
When I put the GTX 480 (the new card) in the other PCI express slot, it did start working, however, when booting up my computer asked me if I wanted to enter the BIOS setup and restore settings or press F2 to load default settings. It's never done that before. I loaded the default settings, and had to re-synchronize the computer's clock once I connected the internet.
Because of those things, I'm guessing I have a shitty and/or defective motherboard. But I really have no idea.
I should also note that I generally only use my computer maybe an hour or so a day during the week and don't even play any games most of the time then. I use it for maybe 2-3 hours a day on weekends but the games I play aren't really that new or demanding. The most graphically demanding game I ever play is Just Cause 2, so I don't think anything is overheating.
Does anyone have any idea what's wrong and what I could do about it?
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