Dying video card?

Bigbacon

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Jul 12, 2007
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I've at the end of my troubleshooting so asking for help.

Lately, my computer has been crashing a lot. Games just crash at random and sometimes when I turn it on, it blue screens saying some piece of hardware failed to initialize. I hit reset and its fine.

Games seems to be crashing but some its hard to determine why. the ones that give me good info seem to be graphics related.

I've done clean installs of all drivers. Some days it works 100% all day no problem and then other times, like today, i can play about 5 minutes before it crashes. Temps on video card plateau at 42C and that is under stress test loads.

The 1080 I have used to be a mining card which is why I am starting to believe it is the culprit here. Anything else anyone can think of to narrow it down more? I've done Memory tests and cpu stress tests and that is rock solid. Video card tests like furmark are hit and miss just like games.

I'm screwed aren't I since I can't just buy a new video card.
 
Assuming Windows 10 you might start with the Windows 10 Reliability Monitor which should log some crash data
https://redmondmag.com/articles/2021/01/11/using-windows-10-reliability-monitor.aspx

This
and sometimes when I turn it on, it blue screens saying some piece of hardware failed to initialize
you should be snapping a photo of the blue screen.

With out knowing/seeing any real logged messages, you might otherwise be poking around in the dark.
Best of luck to you, and hope it is as simple as a power supply, and not the GPU.
 
Assuming Windows 10 you might start with the Windows 10 Reliability Monitor which should log some crash data
https://redmondmag.com/articles/2021/01/11/using-windows-10-reliability-monitor.aspx

This

you should be snapping a photo of the blue screen.

With out knowing/seeing any real logged messages, you might otherwise be poking around in the dark.
Best of luck to you, and hope it is as simple as a power supply, and not the GPU.

yea ewvery time it crashes, in windows, I look at the event log and it most of the time doesn't point to anything.

i didnt know about the monitor. luckily it was on. will look at it now.

edit:
that didn't really show me anything that event viewer didnt.

Like today, subnautic below zero crashed 3 times. everything just points to that app crashing. that was it. but yesterday I played it for hours without issue. other days it might shows an nvidia driver issue and the game crash.

next time i get that blue screen i'll snap a photo.

hmm...Know what. I didn't think of the PSU. this one is from 2009. I think its an BFG 800 watt deal. I do have a spare, much newer, EVGA 850 watt one sitting around I bought 2 years ago. I guess I can try swapping it out. no harm there i think but I'm not sure I have enough power connect pig tails to do it. I don't know if the EVGA one came with enough to cover everything in there.
 
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If it is the GPU, use afterburner to downclock the GPU/Memory and voltage. Might not be the most ideal situation, but it could hold you over until you find decently priced GPU replacement.
 
Jesus. Talk about ancient.
I don't even know what quality that BFG PSU is, but a 2009 PSU with a 1080?? Ouch.
Those crashes could be anything. RAM going bad, video card or PSU. Although you usually won't get a BSOD like that on windows load if the card were acting up, so I'm not so sure about that.
I'd start with swpping the PSU first.
 
Jesus. Talk about ancient.
I don't even know what quality that BFG PSU is, but a 2009 PSU with a 1080?? Ouch.
Those crashes could be anything. RAM going bad, video card or PSU. Although you usually won't get a BSOD like that on windows load if the card were acting up, so I'm not so sure about that.
I'd start with swpping the PSU first.

Ram tests of borh system and video have always passed no problem.

Psu have been fi e with everythung for almost 2 years. Was fune with everything before it.

Card was a mining card prior. Did i say that?
 
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