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Reboot or black screen during gaming

815 views 22 replies 2 participants last post by  Paul23 
#1 ·
Hello!

I would like some help with a problem I'm having. My old PC recently died and I had to buy new motherboard, CPU and RAM. My old video card survived so I just shoved that back in and made a clean install of Windows 10. But for some reason, whenever I try to play a videogame, after a couple minutes one of several things happen. My computer may freeze with black screen and then reboot. Computer may freeze, the screens go black and then turn back on. If this happens, I receive no error messages or anything, it just turns back on. The game can be HEARD running but it appears as if it's "minimized" (i.e. I'm back at Windows desktop and can't see the game itself, even Alt-Tabbing back and forth). All other OS features work just fine. Or, the previous thing may happen but only just one monitor would come back on (I have two), and won't turn back on until I manually restart. What the heck is going on? My system is as follows.

CPU: Intel i3 8350K
Motherboard: Gigabyte z370P D3
RAM: 1 x DDR 4 8 Gb
Videocard: Nvidia GTX 960
HDD: 2 x SATA 1 Tb
Monitors: 2 x LCD, 22" and 19"
PSU: generic 450W
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Video drivers are up to date, downloaded from Nvidia site itself.

Thank you!
 
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#3 ·
I don't know if this is for sure the answer to your problem, but looking at your specs, your PSU being 450W may be the culprit. I would suggest upgrading the PSU to at least 550 or 600 watts with your setup.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll see if I can get a new, more powerful PSU. Might I try to plug off some of my hardware to see if it helps? Like second HDD, it has all my data but for the sake of experiment...

Also, I know that probably is stupid of me to say this but I didn't really have these issues before I got new CPU and motherboard. I used to use an Intel Core Quad and a compatible motherboard; is the power draw of new ones that much bigger?

What I also noticed during the latest crash when I tried to run some other game is that there were some artifacts on the screen for a second before it died. The screen was black but there was some dark red, thin vertical lines clustered randomly around it. Then the monitors turned off with a No Signal message and turned back on.
 
#4 ·
the site I looked up said that with your motherboard and processor, at least a 500 watt PSU is recommended. With the Nvidia GTX 960 (pulls 114 watts in game) You might want to look at 550 or 650 if you want to future proof it. I personally run a 750 watt Corsair power supply with my Gigabyte board, gtx 950 gpu, 32 gigs of memory and 6 hard drives, I7 processor, and dvd drive. You can get a re-man at Microcenter or Fry's for around 80 bucks.
 
#10 ·
I got a new PSU, a Chieftech one, rated for 650W, and at least, computer stopped rebooting, but video still doesn't work on anything more intense than Minesweeper. At least it's not rebooting, but when running a videogame, it would still freeze, the video would become garbled, screens would go black and then the game would crash back to desktop. Doing a clean reinstall of video drivers doesn't help; in fact, doing so actually broke the drivers so now I have a glaring yellow sign at device manager next to the videocard. Just what the hell is wrong with this machine?!
 
#12 ·
Pull the video card out of the slot (with the computer turned off) and re-seat it.
Did that, twice, no change. I also tried disabling Windows Defender, deleting videodrivers with DDU then reinstalling them, also to no effect. Here's a screenshot of what device manager says. Sorry for the Russian, because that's where I am from; it says "Windows have disabled this device because it reported an error (code 43)".

Weird thing is, this video card may be old, but it is newer than my previous one. I actually had a 760 before that that completely crapped out so I got this 960 instead, it was old stock or something as it was still in the box. And just today it worked just fine, with this new 650W PSU, with high resolution on two monitors, I even watched a movie on that. It still crashed on any game I tried, but ever since I tried reinstalling the video driver, it's been in code 43 state. The hell.

That video card takes 2 X 6 pin connectors. Do you have them plugged in correctly?
Er, it actually has just one 6 pin connector, as seen on the photo.

If you can, take a picture of the inside of your case and upload it to the forum, here.
Sure, here it is.
 

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#14 ·
I'm not sure about this....but there is a possibility that your GPU is one of those Chinese fake reproductions...
Mmmm well it actually may be, although I am sure its manufacturer is Palit or something. So, what're you saying, it just died after half a day of being out of the box?.. Not that I won't believe it, what with my luck and all, but what the heck, how come it still works at least on lowest possible resolution, then...
 
#16 ·
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