So at this point I’m convinced that something in my computer is cursed, inhabited by an evil entity whose goal is to create as annoying a hardware issue as possible.
… Seriously though, the issues I’m having are driving me up the wall.
So about a month ago my machine started having issues after I did some processor voltage tweaking(relatively minor tweaks, I look the vCore from 1.28 to 1.26 for some very temporary temperature testing, total of perhaps 5 minutes). I would occasionally either get a black screen with a device disconnect sound, requiring a standard restart, or my primary hard drive would hang indefinitely requiring a hard reset. I tried a bunch of things including resetting CMOS, reseating hardware, etc. with no results.
Eventually I admitted defeat and did a full reformat, assuming that I had some freak OS corruption problem due to my undervolted processor saying 2+3=4 at some point. My hard drive hang was resolved, but the black screen was not. Eventually the black screening got worse and I began to experience considerable display artifacting in the BIOS. The artifacting was inconsistent and letting the machine sit/reseating the graphics card would temporarily fix it, but on the next black screen it would resume.
Alright perfect, there’s the issue, I’ll RMA my graphics card. This card is a relatively new Zotac 780, so I figured it was just defective. I placed in a known good graphics card (my old MSI 570) and the issue seemed resolved. The MSI card was originally replaced due to overheating, but if I let it sit at desktop or only give it light loads it chugs along happily at 80C tops.
Now, after about a week, I wake up, wake my computer from sleep, and no video. I reboot from windows (pushing power button) and the machine happily restarts for me, no video. I reseat a few connectors, no video. The machine posts properly with a cheery motherboard beep and boots into windows, there seems to be nothing physically wrong with the machine that I can immediately see (no red LEDs, graphics card fan is spinning) but no video. The worst part is I’m sure I’m going to come back from work today and the machine will magically be working again, temporarily.
So it seems to me that I still have some hardware issue. My graphics card at this point seems to be the symptom and not the cause, I’m leaning towards a power supply issue because at this point what else could it be? My full specs are in my signature if that helps any.
What do you guys think, am I missing anything?
Thanks for taking the time to read this wall of text, hopefully I’ll get to the bottom of this soon.