[Prodigyy11]

Hey guys!

My computer display crashes randomly when playing games.

When the display crashes, the monitors go into sleep mode by my computer remains on (fans, LED's etc.) but I can't shut it off by holding the power button down. I have to go to the back of my computer and pull the power cord out manually to turn the computer off. I then have to fiddle with the switch on the back of the PSU a few times for the power button to respond and finally work again. When it finally turns back on, it takes forever to start up. The "starting windows" screen hangs for over a minute and then the screen goes black for 10 seconds or so until finally the login screen comes up. Once I log in, the desktop takes another minute or two to load. Another thing to note is that the crashing seems to happen sporadically. It'll crash 4-5 times over the course of a couple days and then it won't happen again for a week or two and the cycle repeats. Everything runs very sluggishly after a crash (things take forever to start up, games take tons of time to load, etc.).

I have tried so many things to isolate the problem including replacing a few parts that I though were causing it. It is NOT a temperature issue. I have used multiple programs such as HWmonitor, GPUZ, CPUZ, etc. and my CPU maxes under full load at 45 Celsius and both my GPU's max at around 70 Celsius. I have uninstalled and re-installed driver and have ran multiple spyware and virus scans

I thought it was a PSU issue. I replaced my 550W XFX Core Edition 80+ Bronze PSU with an OCZ 750W Fatal1ty 80+ Bronze PSU and the crashing persisted. I replaced my XFX Radeon HD 6870 and the crashing still persisted. I ran memtest for 4 passes (around 4 hours) and it picked up no errors.

Honestly, I have no idea what to do next. What do you guys think these symptoms indicate?

My Specs:

pecs:
Mainboard : MSI 890FXA-GD65 (MS-7640)
Chipset : AMD SR5690
Processor : AMD Phenom II X4 955e @ 3200MHz
Physical Memory : 8GB 1333Mhz DDR3 Corsair 9-9-9 Freq RAM.
Video Card : XFX Radeon HD 6870 (x2)
Hard Disk : Western Digital WD5000AAKX-753CA1 ATA Device (500GB)
PSU: OCZ Fatal1ty 750W PSU
DVD-Rom Drive : HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NS50
Monitor Type : Acer Acer G235H - 23 inches (x2)
Network Card : Realtek Semiconductor RTL8168/8111 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
Operating System : Windows 7 Ultimate Professional Media Center 6.01.7601 Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
Thanks for your help

[black-wolf]

Have you tried a different cord to the monitor or tried the monitor on another PC?

[Prodigyy11]

Well I have two monitors and both crash simultaneously when it occurs so I highly doubt it's a monitor issue.

[black-wolf]

Have you tried running in safe mode? If it doesn't crash in safe mode it means that it is a software/driver/malware issue. If it crashes in safe mode it is probably a hardware issue.
Run the WD diagnostics Western Digital

[Prodigyy11]

It only happens while gaming and you can't really game in safe mode. I let the computer sit in safe mode for around 10 hours to see if it would crash but it didn't.

[Prodigyy11]

I'll run the diagnostic asap.

[Prodigyy11]

The hard drive diagnostic appears to be for windows vista -- correct me if I'm wrong.

Here is a concise list of current symptoms for convenience:

1. When playing games, both monitors randomly crash, fixing which requires a hard reboot (HARD as in even holding down the power button on the PC refuses to shut it off so I have to literally pull the power cord out of the back of the computer).
2. Monitors refuse to turn on when the PC boots up until the windows login screen (Unable to see motherboard logo, bios, or "starting windows" screens).
3. When changing the "extend these displays" option in the screen resolution section of the control panel to a single display, the both monitors go black for 30 seconds or so until it finally changes to the single display. Also happens the other way around.
4. Even rarer than just the displays crashing, the PC literally shuts off by itself when I'm playing a game.
5. After a crash, PC startup is VERY sluggish and once I log into windows, the desktop icons take at least a minute to show up.
6. The crashings seem to occur in any game I play.. no specific one.. and I don't experience any crashing when out of a game.
7. PC experiences random mini-freezes when out of game like when I start a program or when I start a video, the screen will freeze for 30+ seconds and then finally catch up.
8. It appears that starting HWmonitor freezes the computer but only when I have both video cards in crossfire -- it works fine when I just have a single video card connected to the PC.

Concise list of attempted and failed fixes:
1. Successful BIOS flash (although the error in which the monitors don't turn on until login screen didn't occur until after the BIOS flash)
2. 4-pass Memtest with both sticks in at the same time and no errors experienced (perhaps a more thorough memtest is required?)
3. Wiping and re-installing video card drivers.
4. Multiple malware and virus scanners that all turned up clean
5. Temps are all well under harmful level (VGAs max at around 70 Celsius and CPU maxes at around 45 Celsius.
6. Replacement of PSU (I though my PSU was at fault. I replaced a 550W XFX PSU with a 750W OCZ PSU .. both 80+ bronze rated and SLI/Crossfire ready. Even after replacement, crashing persisted.
7. Had an earlier issue where I was experiencing artifacting in-game and the same crashing issue so I sent my video card in for repair. They sent me a new one back and the artifcating went away but the crashing persisted so I don't think it's the video card.
Checked for broken capacitors on my motherboard -- there are none.
8. Re-applied thermal paste to my processor.
9. Turned off any sleep mode on my PC

Things to note:
1. Crashing didn't start occurring until around 6 months after I built my PC (I built it around a year ago).
2. As I said before, the crashing occurs EXTREMELY RANDOMLY. I've had it crash twice a day for 3 days in a row and then not crash for an entire month and then crash again, you get the idea.

Thank you all for any assistance you can provide -- this problem is really frustrating!

[black-wolf]

Try running a stress test on the GPU's, Furmark is good http://majorgeeks.com/FurMark_d4183.html
There seems to be a lot of issues trying to run duel video cards with both nVidia and AMD, but if it ran good for 6 months, what did you change at the time the problem started (drivers, new hardware, new program, etc.)?
If you don't have a problem running either card alone then it probably has to do with crossfiring them. Perhaps an updated driver made the change.

[Prodigyy11]

Well I was experiencing the crashing before I added the second video card recently (last 2 months or so). I just completely wiped my system of all AMD/ATI drivers and reinstalled them and PC booted perfectly after doing so -- even when crossfire was activated. I'm currently running a 24 hour memtest on each stick of ram and will report back with results.

[jimmyhelu]

My computer display crashes randomly when playing games. When the display crashes, the monitors go into sleep mode by my computer

[captainron276]

jimmyhelu,

If you want help with your problem, start your own thread as it is next to impossible to work on more than one issue/computer at a time.