- May 18, 2015
- 3
- 0
- 4,510
Hello everyone,
Today I decided to clean up the inside of my PC case again, mainly to reduce the VRM temperature on my graphics card, and in general just to dust everything out. I never actually physically took any of the components out and I treated everything very gently.
However, after plugging all the cords into the back of the PC my monitor would no longer display anything, although it was connected (it did not display a ''not connected'' message) and my PC booted up just fine, Mobo gave one short beep and I heard the startup sound from Windows 7 after a while, so my computer must've thought it was indeed starting up properly. Graphics card and Motherboard were both receiving power and running.
After several reboots nothing changed and I thought it might be monitor related, hence I decided to swap around my current monitor for one of my older ones. This did not work.
Hardware used while testing:
MOBO: MSI Z77a-g43
Graphics card: Radeon 7950 Sapphire/ Geforce 260 GTS
I decided to take matters into my own hands and reseat my graphics card, which is a Radeon 7950 Sapphire. Again, monitor would not display anything. I made sure it was 100% shoved into the pci 3.0 slot, I'm certain it did not stick out a millimetre.
I tried to boot my PC again without my graphics card and now it did work and automatically switched to onboard GFX. This completely eliminated any chance of it being the monitor or any of the cables connecting it to the PC.
At this point I was almost certain my graphics card was the culprit, but just to be completely certain I put my old 260 GTS in the same motherboard pci 3.0 slot that my 7950 used to be settled in.
Nothing. I attempted to reseat both graphics cards again, just to be completely certain they were not seated incorrectly, another two boots later it still did not display anything on my monitor.
I tried putting it into the pci 2.0 slot on my mobo and voila, it booted up, recognising my 260 GTS. The 7950 would unfortunately not fit in my 2.0 slot (too large, cables blocked the way) so I had to forego that for now. Instead I attempted to, out of frustration I admit, push the 260 GTS into the pci 3.0 slot again, roughly, since i presumed my motherboard was entirely broken anyway and I don't care much for my older graphics card.
Suddenly it booted up, no problem. 260 GTS recognised in the pci 3.0 slot. At this point I admit I was astonished. the pci 3.0 slot didn't recognise my 7950 nor my 260 GTS before, why would it now? Deciding to test my luck, I took my 260 GTS out and put my 7950 back in. It was recognised, even with my 7950 I could again boot my PC up no problem.
I ran FurMark for 20 minutes to make sure my 7950 wasn't just malfunctioning, and in case it was malfunctoning to force the GFX card to break down, but it didn't have any trouble keeping up and only ran a little cooler (because I cleaned it
). Temps 63-66 celsius under load (it was inching below 70 before), should not be enough to damage it either way.
Right now I'm uncertain as to what the problem exactly is, I prefer if something just stops working entirely instead of the ''sometimes it will work, sometimes it wont'' phenomena.
TL;DR
My graphics cards seem to have problems connecting to my pci 3.0 slot, but only sometimes, is it possible my motherboard is partially, but not entirely, broken while displaying no errors whatsoever when it does decide to work? Could something else be the culprit instead?
With friendly regards,
Kevin
Today I decided to clean up the inside of my PC case again, mainly to reduce the VRM temperature on my graphics card, and in general just to dust everything out. I never actually physically took any of the components out and I treated everything very gently.
However, after plugging all the cords into the back of the PC my monitor would no longer display anything, although it was connected (it did not display a ''not connected'' message) and my PC booted up just fine, Mobo gave one short beep and I heard the startup sound from Windows 7 after a while, so my computer must've thought it was indeed starting up properly. Graphics card and Motherboard were both receiving power and running.
After several reboots nothing changed and I thought it might be monitor related, hence I decided to swap around my current monitor for one of my older ones. This did not work.
Hardware used while testing:
MOBO: MSI Z77a-g43
Graphics card: Radeon 7950 Sapphire/ Geforce 260 GTS
I decided to take matters into my own hands and reseat my graphics card, which is a Radeon 7950 Sapphire. Again, monitor would not display anything. I made sure it was 100% shoved into the pci 3.0 slot, I'm certain it did not stick out a millimetre.
I tried to boot my PC again without my graphics card and now it did work and automatically switched to onboard GFX. This completely eliminated any chance of it being the monitor or any of the cables connecting it to the PC.
At this point I was almost certain my graphics card was the culprit, but just to be completely certain I put my old 260 GTS in the same motherboard pci 3.0 slot that my 7950 used to be settled in.
Nothing. I attempted to reseat both graphics cards again, just to be completely certain they were not seated incorrectly, another two boots later it still did not display anything on my monitor.
I tried putting it into the pci 2.0 slot on my mobo and voila, it booted up, recognising my 260 GTS. The 7950 would unfortunately not fit in my 2.0 slot (too large, cables blocked the way) so I had to forego that for now. Instead I attempted to, out of frustration I admit, push the 260 GTS into the pci 3.0 slot again, roughly, since i presumed my motherboard was entirely broken anyway and I don't care much for my older graphics card.
Suddenly it booted up, no problem. 260 GTS recognised in the pci 3.0 slot. At this point I admit I was astonished. the pci 3.0 slot didn't recognise my 7950 nor my 260 GTS before, why would it now? Deciding to test my luck, I took my 260 GTS out and put my 7950 back in. It was recognised, even with my 7950 I could again boot my PC up no problem.
I ran FurMark for 20 minutes to make sure my 7950 wasn't just malfunctioning, and in case it was malfunctoning to force the GFX card to break down, but it didn't have any trouble keeping up and only ran a little cooler (because I cleaned it
). Temps 63-66 celsius under load (it was inching below 70 before), should not be enough to damage it either way. Right now I'm uncertain as to what the problem exactly is, I prefer if something just stops working entirely instead of the ''sometimes it will work, sometimes it wont'' phenomena.
TL;DR
My graphics cards seem to have problems connecting to my pci 3.0 slot, but only sometimes, is it possible my motherboard is partially, but not entirely, broken while displaying no errors whatsoever when it does decide to work? Could something else be the culprit instead?
With friendly regards,
Kevin
), beyond that I didn't touch anything. As far as I'm aware all cables are connected exactly as they have been the last two years. 
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