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PC locking up, advice needed.

P

Ph.D

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 9, 2010
Messages
190
Earlier today my monitor suddenly went black and my entire PC locked up. I had to force the PC to shut down by holding down the power button.
I then restarted the computer, got to the Win7 log-in screen, entered my password and pressed Enter. At this point the same thing happened: Black screen, everything locked up.

First, I booted in safe mode. This worked so I began to suspect these lockups were caused by the GPUs or their drivers.
I removed the GPU drivers (the latest Catalyst 15.10 beta drivers) and rebooted the PC. This worked so I decided to roll back to older, non-beta 15.7.1 drivers. This caused my PC to lock up yet again.
So apparently the issue was not the beta drivers.

I then decided to check if the issue was one the GPUs.
(Now, I have to mention that I have a very nonstandard GPU setup: I have an MSI HD6970 combined with an older Asus HD6950 overclocked to HD6970 specs in CrossfireX.)

The first thing I did was leave the 15.7.1 drivers installed and removed the older GPU and tried to run the PC only with the newer, more powerful, non-overclocked HD6970. This locked up the PC even before the login screen.
I then tried the same thing with only the older, weaker GPU installed and, surprisingly, it booted up correctly. (Although I did notice I had lost my overclock.)
I then tried the older GPU in the PCIe slot of the new GPU and that worked as well so I am pretty confident the PCIe slots are both fine. As are the PCIe cables.
I also removed both GPUs and tried making the PC work with integrated graphics only. This worked as well.

So does anyone have an idea what the problem is? Could it be that, after years of not having any problems, the HD6970 suddenly doesn't work with the Catalyst drivers anymore?
The most recent driver change I made was updating the GPU drivers to 15.10 when those were released.

Specs:
  • Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V PRO
  • CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.2GHz
  • CPU cooler: Antec KÜHLER H2O 920
  • RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR3
  • GPU: Asus Radeon HD6950 at HD6970 clocks + MSI HD6970 Twin Frozr III
  • PSU: Seasonic X-760
 
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Looks like the problem is your overclock.
Or a cooling failure.

Sometimes ram issues can masquerade as a bad overclock, try one ram stick at a time without the XMP profile loaded.
Once you get running you can find what upsets it.
 
The RAM seems to be fine and I did not see any heat buildup or hear any fan speed increases recently.
The 6970 was also not overclocked, in fact it was slightly underclocked to standard 6970 spec in order to decrease the stress on the 6950. (The MSI 6970 was sold with a small factory overclock.)
 
If you dont test anything, you'll never solve it.
ps "CPU" overclock
 
Nenu said:
If you dont test anything, you'll never solve it.
ps "CPU" overclock
Click to expand...
I've been up all night testing it, how else would I have been able to get all of the above information?

Are you saying the problem is the power draw/PSU? Is there any way to test this without the use of a multimeter?
I'm also not sure why it would suddenly crap out on me and even refuse to start with the 6970 alone if this is caused by PSU degradation. You'd think it would no longer accept both at the same time in CrossfireX but only 1 of them at stock clocks?

As for the CPU overclock, it has been very stable for a long time and I didn't get any sort of crashing like you would get with a CPU vcore problems. Are you saying I should try to use the PC with the CPU at default clocks and both GPUs back in their old CrossfireX setup?
I've used a power supply calculator and both at idle and under load the GPU power draw should be way higher than the CPU power draw, even at 4.2GHz.
 
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Thats not useful.
I havent got a clue what you tried since, how you did it and the results.
You have ignored the things I requested you check and are going off at a tangent.

To start, disable your cpu overclock and see if it works ok.
 
Nenu said:
Thats not useful.
I havent got a clue what you tried since, how you did it and the results.
You have ignored the things I requested you check and are going off at a tangent.

To start, disable your cpu overclock and see if it works ok.
Click to expand...

Where are all these assumptions coming from?
  • You asked me to check my overclock, which I did. I just didn't know that you meant CPU overclock so I reset the GPU overclock instead.
  • You also said something about overheating, I checked the temps and they were fine. The fans also didn't ramp up at any point.
  • Finally you said it could be the RAM. I tried the sticks and they are all fine. I'm also not using an XMP profile.
And then you say "You have ignored the things I requested you check and are going off at a tangent."
What? I did as you asked and then you say that? Are you here trying to help me or just insult me?


P.S.
I'm back to 3.4GHz now and I still can't boot with both cards in CrossfireX using the 15.7.1 Catalyst drivers.
 
Sounds like the 6970 died on you, if you can boot with the other card but not with it. That was pretty clear just from your first post, unless I misread something.
 
It wasnt until his overclock got reset that he managed to boot.
Later perhaps when his overclock was re-instated, it stopped working again.
That made the overclock suspect.

I see now that at default clock, he has the same issue.
It needed to be established.

Looks like either gfx card or power issue.
Unless he hasnt tested his ram.
Hard to get blood from a stone though.
 
silent-circuit said:
Sounds like the 6970 died on you, if you can boot with the other card but not with it. That was pretty clear just from your first post, unless I misread something.
Click to expand...
It's just weird that the HD6970 does seem to work without the drivers installed but crashes the entire PC on log-in when the drivers are installed. Is that possible for a "dead" GPU?

Nenu said:
Unless he hasnt tested his ram.
Hard to get blood from a stone though.
Click to expand...
Dude...
 
Ph.D said:
It's just weird that the HD6970 does seem to work without the drivers installed but crashes the entire PC on log-in when the drivers are installed. Is that possible for a "dead" GPU?
Click to expand...

Yeah, with no drivers you're asking it to do almost nothing, no hardware acceleration, just display a 2D picture -- the 3D/GPU computing portion of the card isn't even "awake" as such. Once you install the drivers the OS asks it to handle things like desktop compositing and higher end calls. If one card will work with drivers installed, but the other crashes as soon as it initializes fully (works in BIOS/basic 2D/without drivers) it's probably the card. No guarantee of course. Do you know anyone locally who has a machine you could test the 6970 in? I guess the only good news here is, if you have to get another one 6950 2GB cards are running like $60 shipped anymore. I've actually got 2 for sale.
 
silent-circuit said:
Yeah, with no drivers you're asking it to do almost nothing, no hardware acceleration, just display a 2D picture -- the 3D/GPU computing portion of the card isn't even "awake" as such. Once you install the drivers the OS asks it to handle things like desktop compositing and higher end calls. If one card will work with drivers installed, but the other crashes as soon as it initializes fully (works in BIOS/basic 2D/without drivers) it's probably the card. No guarantee of course. Do you know anyone locally who has a machine you could test the 6970 in? I guess the only good news here is, if you have to get another one 6950 2GB cards are running like $60 shipped anymore. I've actually got 2 for sale.
Click to expand...
That's good to know.

I see you have (or at least had) a similar build to mine. I was planning to build a new PC early next year but maybe I'll do what you did and upgrade video cards instead. This (nonstandard) CrossfireX configuration has given me a lot of trouble the last few years and maybe I should just move away from it altogether.
 
Have you tried reseating the video cards? What about swapping the slots they are in?

It could also be a power issue with one of the PCIe power leads.
 
cyclone3d said:
Have you tried reseating the video cards? What about swapping the slots they are in?

It could also be a power issue with one of the PCIe power leads.
Click to expand...
Yeah I tried all the combinations possible. 1 card alone in either slot. 2 cards in either slot. Doesn't seem to make a difference.

Right now I'm thinking it might be an issue with one of these:
  1. The 6970
  2. The PSU
  3. The Motherboard
 
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