Troubleshooting new gaming PC

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brentsg

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 8, 2003
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So after years of playing only low requirement MMOs and such, I've built a new gaming PC as well as a HTPC for Steam streaming.

System is a new Z97 board with plenty of RAM and I decided to go with 2x MSI Gaming R9 280's in Crossfire while I wait for new GPUs. When I see something good come along, one of them will go into the Steam box and one to my kids' PC.

Everything's setup on Win8.1 now and I'm ironing out kinks, wanted to get a feel for troubleshooting suggestions on a few things.

1) I get random audio pops and clicks when nothing is going on (ie while in 2D messing with Windows apps). I'm using HDMI out so both video and audio from video card.

2) When in 2D apps during normal Windows usage, I have 2 square areas on desktop that randomly flicker blocks of pixels that obviously belong someplace else. It's like the wrong memory locations are being displayed on those 2 areas and they flicker on and off.

3) Audio seems to work out of game, and within the game I've tried, but when I transition from the game's opening menus and cutscene into the action, sound is gone. Not only that but when I go to the game's menu volume is 0 and cannot be changed. This is in Bioshock via Steam. I'm grabbing some more games to test now. EDIT: This issue seems specific to the game.

Thanks for any tips.

I should note that I downloaded the MSI apps and have overclocked/underclocked and that has no bearing on any of this.

B
 
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I might have answered my own question. After about 24 hours of it working fine other than the above issues, it froze at Windows desktop and won't POST. I reseated everything, swapped in a different PSU, CPU, RAM, video card, tried integrated video.. CMOS was cleared, different RAM slots used..

Dead motherboard I suppose, RMA time.
 
Definitely looking like a bad motherboard, but just a little fyi, when I went from Windows 8 to 8.1 I heard popping and crackling. This was fixed by changing my sound settings from CD to DVD quality on both speakers and headphones. I guess switching to 8.1 put those settings back to CD quality by default.
 
Also for audio popping and crackling disabling all audio enchancments can solve this issue too.
 
Thank you for the suggestions regarding the audio. I typically roll with some speakers that connect via USB and have an onboard DAC, so this bit of using either motherboard or video card audio is new to me.

I did swap out the motherboard and all is well on that front now. I believe #2 above might be down to the MSI tool auto-downloading ancient drivers. During the initial build and patch-fest, I was satisfied that the MSI tool had fetched new drivers. Once I circled back I realized it was only considering whatever MSI happened to host on their website, which is 13.2 or older.
 
not only that...even when you install the newest drivers go into the sound menu and disable audio thru the hdmi's since youl be using audio thru what ever usb setup your using....audi thru usb is not extremely common these days imo except for those that don't use sounds cards or integrated audio.

if your minds set on using usb audio, you should disable onboard audio if your board has that and disable audio thu hdmi since imo it could only cause problems. You really can only use one or the other they way i see it.
 
Yeah sorry, I should have been more clear. My final configuration where I'll have the USB sound is missing a couple cables atm so it's hooked up via HDMI to my TV elsewhere. I've actually disabled onboard audio in BIOS so that's gtg. The USB comment was simply there to explain why I don't know wtf I'm doing with the HDMI. I honestly thought I'd be needing to jumper audio from the MB to the video card, I'm so out of touch.
 
I tagged onto the artifacts thread and got some guidance that I had 1 bad card. That's sent for RMA, but I've never solved the crackling audio despite trying all the suggestions in the thread.

Oddly, it will occasionally stop for a lengthy period of time for no apparent reason. Unfortunately it resumes no next reboot.
 
With the crackling audio is it only during certain games, applications or playing music?
 
Nexillus said:
With the crackling audio is it only during certain games, applications or playing music?
Click to expand...

Normally it's just when I'm doing general tasks in Windows desktop. It doesn't seem to do it in games, or it isn't noticeable in games.
 
strange to have to RMA a motherboard and a video card... unless sometime cuased them both to fail while in your case.

i am sure it is possible, but seems like something else is going on.



i have had a PSU blow and take out my motherboard, GPU and CPU.... which sucked
 
Adidas4275 said:
strange to have to RMA a motherboard and a video card... unless sometime cuased them both to fail while in your case.

i am sure it is possible, but seems like something else is going on.



i have had a PSU blow and take out my motherboard, GPU and CPU.... which sucked
Click to expand...

I've had a similar experience with a power supply, but in this case I think it was just bad luck. The video cards were ordered at the same time, but arrived days apart. I built the system with just 1 card, and it was the one that would artifact. However, it did that from the first moment it was powered up. I thought it was simply a driver issue. The next day I did some gaming for a few hours and it was flawless. I exited out of the game and was tinkering around at Windows desktop and it froze. That was it, never would POST after that. It wasn't anything spectacular or anything though, just froze.

When I picked up the new MB (locally), I bought a power supply tester. It tested fine, but I still stuck it in an old PC I had around. I load tested that for a couple days before I got comfortable. I had almost bought another power supply as well just b/c I was suspicious as well.

After rebuilding with the new MB, I put both video cards in the machine and messed around with Crossfire as well as single card use. I also swapped video cards between slots when troubleshooting. I actually didn't consider that the video card could have damaged the MB, since I was suspecting drivers to be the problem. That being said, I never had any further trouble aside from the desktop artifacts with the 1 card. I still can't wrap my head around that though, especially since it wasn't load related and didn't do it in-game.. just at desktop.

Regardless, Newegg did me right on the RMAs. Both the MB and video card arrived there today. Both RMAs were approved within a few hours and I have an order number for the new card.

Statistically I'm still ok I suppose. I've been messing with this stuff since monitors were monochrome and this is my first bad video card and second bad motherboard.
 
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