Strange Issues

Ok this might be a long one. Recently my GPU fan died (6950), and was having no boot / reboot issues, so I RMA'd it and got a replacement. After getting the replacement card I was still having the no boot / reboot issues so I replaced the 5 year old PSU. That seemed to do the trick and I have been stable since. Until...

Tonight I noticed I have been getting buzzing from my receiver. So I was fooling around with plugging things into different outlets with not much luck. I noticed that when I shut-down my PC the buzzing would go away. But then When I went to turn it back on, there were artifacts all over the POST screen, and Windows login. It would fail to boot into windows and restart.

Re-seated the GPU with no luck, things got worse and I had no screen (but it booted, HDD LED flashing and num-lock working, and screen did not say "NO INPUT"). Restarted again and nothing on screen, waited a while, then the desktop magically appeared (did not see POST screen or anything...). Seemed stable; re-started again and no boot. Restarted again and same issue; no POST but desktop appears somehow. I am now writing this from that bootup, the system seems stable enough.

I'm pretty stumped here. I would obviously say the GPU I got back from RMA is bad, (esp due to the artifacts), but I'm not so sure.

Any opinions would be appreciated, I don't have any other hardware to troubleshoot with.

Thanks.

Try a different PSU if you can.

Ugh this has to be a bad RMA. I've been searching the web and other people have had bad refurb'd cards sent to them from RMA.

Has anybody ever had a confirmed case of artifacts being caused by anything but a GFX card?

Yes I have: a bad PSU was the cause of the artifacting of a GPU in a system I was fixing. I found out it was the issue when I swapped it out and replaced it with a known good PSU. No artifacts after that.

if you've tried a new psu, it sounds like the card overheated again. how is the cooling in your case?

since you don't have any spare hardware at hand i would just grab a cheapo gpu to verify what the noise is coming from........then again its late so i would just unplug the card.....if its still whining it'll be the psu

i dread rma/remanufactured parts as they tend to be cursed....at least in my experience lol

The cooling is fine 2 x 140mm intake 1 x 120mmx38mm panaflo exhaust plus another 140mm exhaust on top. Card has not gone over 62c. The system will now not even boot BTW.

And the buzzing was coming through my speakers due to some kind of ground loop, no wine from the GPU. Thanks for the input guys.