[mdlug] Seeking advice or at least commiseration

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 28 Jul 2015 12:23:15 +0000
"Ingles, Raymond" <Raymond.Ingles at dynatrace.com> wrote:

> Have had a good, stable system for three years now. Decided to
> upgrade the video card so I could hang onto the system for another
> three years.
> 
> Replaced an Nvidia GTX 560 Ti with a GTX 970  two and a half weeks
> ago. No problems at first, games ran faster in Linux and Windows.
> Over the weekend, the computer locked up a couple times in games, and
> I had to power-cycle once or twice to get it to POST. BIOS said
> "Overclocking failure" - but I don't overclock anything. Googling a
> bit, it seems that message comes up from power fluctuations sometimes.
> 
> I updated the MB to the latest BIOS last night, and got things
> running. Worked for a while, then I gamed for about an hour, and got
> a hard crash. And now the computer won't POST at all. I can power the
> system on, and the fans spin up and so forth, the HD activity light
> comes on briefly, etc. But no video signal at all to the monitors,
> and no disk activity indicating a bootup. Left it powered off
> overnight, but it won't boot this morning either.
> 
> I'm assuming some kind of power issue. It's weird - it's an 850 watt
> power supply, and it's not driving anything close to 850 watts.
> Indeed, the new video card has a *lower* TDP than the old one. I'm
> hoping the MB isn't fried or something.
> 
> When I get home I will pull the video card and see if it'll boot with
> the onboard Intel graphics. I have two PCI Express 16 slots, so if
> that works I might move the video card to the other slot, see if that
> helps. Otherwise, I imagine I'll be replacing at least some hardware.
> 
> Specs of system:
> 
> ASUS P8Z68-V Gen3 motherboard
> Intel Core I7-2600K CPU
> 16GB 1333 RAM
> Nvidia GTX 970 (EVGA)
> 3 3.5 1TB drives
> 1 240GB SSD
> 1 BDROM/DVD +-RW drive
> 850 watt power supply
> 
> If anyone has any tips for isolating the problem, I'm all ears.

Hi Ray,

What you have here is a genuine intermittent symptom. These are always
difficult because diagnostic tests are never completely definitive: Did
it switch states because of what you did, or did it just feel like
switching states on its own. 

Did you ever have this problem with the old Nvidia GTX 560 Ti? If you
*never* had this problem with the old video card, I'd put it back, run
it that way for two weeks, and see if the symptom happens. If not, it's
probable (nothing's certain with an intermittent) that your new card
caused or exacerbated the problem.

Here's a partial list of some intermittent busting tactics:

http://troubleshooters.com/tpromag/9812.htm#WeaponsintheWar

People in this thread suggested swapping your power supply and cleaning
contacts on the video card. Both are great, low cost examples of what
the preceding link calls "General Maintenance" (I now call it
"Corrective Maintenance"). As a matter of fact, I'd recommend getting
some electronics lubricant, and cleaning every connection in the entire
computer. Cleaning and lubricating every connection takes 45 minutes,
and can save you weeks of troubleshooting: Perfect example of
Corrective Maintenance.

If, after doing all this stuff, the intermittent symptom remains, what
*I* would do is start pulling on wires, bending circuit boards, and
seeing if I can cause the symptom to happen. This is what I refer to as
"turning the intermittent against itself" in the link I provided
earlier.

Intermittents are a bain on all our existances, and my books and
courseware all discuss intermittents and the best ways to solve
them. Here's another web resource I wrote on intermittents:

http://troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200807/200807.htm

Another possibly valuable, although time consuming, test would be to
disconnect everything from the mobo, including the reset and power
switches, except the keyboard and the video card plus monitor, and RAM.
Boot it (short appropriate pins with screwdriver), go into the bios,
and leave it running for a weekend. Does it hang? If not, your mobo,
ram, processor and video card are probably OK.

What you might try doing, if you're that kind of guy, is after it
survives the weekend, pick up and drop the front of the computer one
inch on a hard surface. If there's a mechanical intermittent, this is
likely to trigger it.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21