PC issues....need a second opinion

[FirebladeRuss]

My media PC is playing up all of a sudden, for no reason I can fathom and so I need a second opinion.

Basically what is happening, is the graphics card (PCIe) isn't being detected/working - although it's not all the time.

It was running WIndows 7 , then 8(and 8.1), then updated before Christmas to Windows 10. All the time running fine, no issues.

A typical boot up is:

- System fans all wind up to full speed then settle down
- Motherboard gives the RAM and POST test confirmation beeps
- Windows loads

Within the last month, when the PC boots up, it doesn't seem to fire up the graphics card, so there is no output. The onboard VGA spits out the display signal instead I discovered. There are not warning beeps or anything abnormal during the boot up.

Using the onboard VGA, I can access the BIOS at boot, and that is all set to use PCIe graphics card.

The only way it seemed to work is by cutting the power to the PC once it was up and running and re-booting. Simply restarting the PC via Windows didn't make any difference.

I took out the graphics card and re-seated it the other night, and reinstalled the AMD drivers, but that didn't seem to make much difference originally, but then it all started working again several reboot attempts later - but honestly I don't think I did anything or changed any settings.

So it has been working fine for about another week, then last night I had the PC on and the display was working - but went to watch a film and noticed there was no sound (sound is also piped out through the graphics card HDMI). Restarted the PC and now the graphics card isn't working at all again, so no display output once again.

The motherboard is a Gigabyte GeForce7050m-m (v2.0), 4GB RAM, graphics card is an ATI/AMD HD5450 (which has windows 10 drivers) running Windows 10 32bit.

What I've noticed happening on boot recently is:

- System fans all wind up to full speed then settle down
- Then they do it again
- Then the MB does the various beeps and stuff as above and windows loads, but no graphics card output only the onboard.

I don't really know if the graphics card is goosed or if it's the motherboard.

I can't figure out how to test the graphics card - as if that has gone South, then it's a cheaper replacement than the motherboard.

However, if the motherboard is messing up, I can get a new one with more RAM and built in HDMI output - I don't use it for games or anything, only watching films, listening to music, etc - therefore negating the need for a seperate graphics card anyway.

I've built various PCs including this one over the years, so I'm not a complete noob, but this has got me a bit stumped.

Any thoughts/suggestions welcome.
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[mudcow007]

have you tried reseating the card?

pci could be full of dead skin an general crap?

also what power supply you got?

[FirebladeRuss]

Yeah, as mentioned above, tried reseating it.

Can't recall the exact power supply but was a fairly decent OCZ unit that is only a year or so old.

PC powers up fine though (just I can only use the onboard graphics), and there's no seriously power hungry components in there.
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[UncleFester]

GFX fan working? Or if working, does it rotate smoothly / freely and is the heatsink rammed full of crud and dust?

I've got several HD5950 cards at work and ALL of them have failed fans / overheat issues.

Far as i can tell, dust gets into the Heatsink and builds up, eventually the heat causes the fan bearings to fail at which point the whole thing eventually cooks itself into a useless mess.
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2017 Z1000SX

[FirebladeRuss]

It's a fanless card.

The whole thing is very dust free inside.
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[UncleFester]

And in the bios, you're sure that the PCiE slot is set to be the first one the system looks to get it's display from?
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2017 Z1000SX

[Jayy]

I had a similar issue a while back. My SLi setup stopped recognising the second card in PCi 2 slot.

After doing pretty much all what you've done, I also swapped the cards around and PCi 1 worked with both cards.

Turns out the PCi slot 2 was fucked. Mobo was under 5 year warranty, so all good.

Take it you have tried the card in the other PCi slots (if there are any)?

[FirebladeRuss]

It's a graphics card, so is PCIe(x16) and there is only one of those slots on the motherboard - and hence i can't check it in another one.
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[Jayy]

I know what a graphics card is and PCIe, I have 3 of them

Test that card in another machine, so you can rule it out. Otherwise, you might as well be guessing.

[FirebladeRuss]

[CaNsA]

pull the heat sink from the card, have a good look for any popped components.

Where is the media pc stored?

[FirebladeRuss]

[CaNsA]

If the unit works when using the onboard graphics, but fucks up when the gfx card is used.....

[UncleFester]

It's either the card, or the slot. Could be power related but less likely.

Only way is to test in another machine. However, ALL the AMD cards i've had from gaming to pro series have always required the thermal paste replacing between the chip and the heatsink at some point in the cards short life.
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2017 Z1000SX

[FirebladeRuss]

Ok. I'll mess around with it later. Going to pick up another card on the way home incase it turns out it is the card.
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[Sload]

Meh it's all been covered, fastest and easiest to try that card in another machine and try another card in that board
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[FirebladeRuss]

Tried the graphics card in a different PC. It didn't work. Maybe the other PC was too old for it...

Took all PCI cards (wifi and another IDE/SATA card) out. Restarted. (no graphics card in at this point). Shut down. inserted the wifi card in the same PCI slot, restarted, still no wifi. Shutdown. Swapped PCI slots, restarted, Wifi card now working.

Shutdown, inserted other card, restarted, all good. Removed all AMD drivers and software at this point.

Restarted again, everything working still.

Right....graphics card again.

Shutdown, card in, installed drivers, shutdown, restarted, boom....working. Ran the GPU-Z software, yep, shows the HD5450 card in place and working happily. Also shows AMD HD5450 in the device manager.

Shutdown, restart, nothing...card's not working again and output has reverted back to the onboard VGA and no sign of the HD5450 in the device manager again.

WTF.

Did note that even when the card is not sending out any signal, the heat sink is still getting quite warm.....starting to think the card is suspect.

Picked up an Asus GT730 card on the way home, just incase.

After much pissing about, I decided to give the new card a go.

it's worked, and has been working after several shutdowns and restarts - so looks like the other card was goosed.
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[CaNsA]

If you have some spare time, give this a bash

https://imgur.com/gallery/v5ce5

The Results,
He managed to get the HD7970 working again.
https://imgur.com/gallery/dk1V9

[FirebladeRuss]

I was actually going to get hold of some new thermal paste and see if I could get it to work in the old/spare machine, just for shits and giggles.
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