screen artifacts - cpu overheating?

Hello.

This is my first time posting on the board, so please bear with me. I've been having some issues with my computer as of late. Lately, when I boot the computer, I get some screen artifacts ( lines horizontally across the screen ). This was getting me a bit worried and I also had the computer restart and when it booted again, I was told that it was caused by my nvidia drivers. I updated the drivers and the artifacts persisted but even more than before.

At this time, I thought something might either be wrong with my monitor or my video card. My monitor is hooked up to a KVM switch and when I switched over the my linux box running at the same refresh rate, the screen was fine with no artifacts.

At this time, I felt that something was wrong with my video card so I decided to upgrade my video card. I then replaced my old gainward geforce 2 pro/450 with an ati radeon 9600 pro 128mb ( i wanted a newer card anyways ) So after installing the new card, I didn't notice the artifacts off the bat but then I started to see them again and this time mainly when the computer is booting up. This is leading me to believe there might be something with my processor/mobo. I ran memtest on my machine and it said the RAM was ok.

So.. based on the information above (i know, not that much) but any ideas/tests/suggestions to try and narrow down the issue? I don't really want to spend a lot of money as I feel my current setup is pretty good for my needs. Right now, my thoughts are on replacing the mobo to see if anything gets better but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Specs:
Monitor: Viewsonic G90fb
processor: AMD 1.4 Tbird @ 1398 mhz
hsf/fan: Vantec CCK 6035D using quiter vantec fan (not the black delta)
mobo: Epox 8k7a
case: antec 1040b

temps:
24C, 28C, 52C (pretty high for my processor,eh?)

volts:
+3.3 @ 3.31
+5.00 @ 4.68
+12.00 @ 11.71

Also, based on the cpu temps, I was thinking that my problems might be caused by the temp and was considering getting a better hsf/fan combo with perhaps a 92mm fan instead of the smaller 60mm.

Thanks for your time and consideration.
w.

WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!!!

When you say it works fine on your Linux box, did you spend a lot of time on the Linux box to test this or just boot up with it? I'm wondering if something in the monitor is slowly getting too hot and that's causing the problem. If you just boot with the Linux box and then switch the monitor off it might not have time to show the problem.

I actually used my linux box straight for 2 days to test it out. I rebooted, surfed, installed some packages, diddled around with the server, etc. Granted, the video card in my linux box is pretty much the onboard video on my old Dell (500mhz). Currently, I'm thinking of booting into Knoppix with my current windows box just to see if I can replicate the same behavior.

Also, I figured that it wasn't a monitor issue when my pc rebooted and I received messages from windows regarding nvidia driver issues. strange...

Thanks for your time.
w.

wujimon said:

Also, I figured that it wasn't a monitor issue when my pc rebooted and I received messages from windows regarding nvidia driver issues.

Click to expand...

That's true enough, I kind of glossed over that part. But that doesn't exclude the possibility that you were having both a monitor problem and software problem at the same time. But if Linux is behaving well with the monitor then I can't see the monitor being the problem. Are you overclocking? Did you recently flash the BIOS?

go into you hdd and delete anything to do with nvidia and go to add remove programs and unistall all nvidia drives and ati drivers then reinstall you ati drivers

Hi eobard.

Thanks for taking the time to read my thread and reply. I am not overclocking at all and I've modified my initial post to reflect that. Also, I have not flashed my bios recently but I will be sure to check the epox website to see if any updates have come up.

What I'm worried about is that the screen artifacts may affect my monitor/video card. Do you think that's a possibility? I'm considering not using my windows box at all until this issue has been resolved as I do not want it to spread to other components. What's strange is that I mainly only get the artifacts during bootup and when I play games. I've monitored my cpu usage and I sometimes get it when my processor spikes but other than that, it's not fully persistent.

I really don't want to upgrade/replace components unless I have to since I feel that my current "power' is good enough for me.

Thanks again for taking the time to read/respond. I appreciate it
w.

I actually ran that driver cleaner utilitiy before install the ATI drivers. However, I will run it again to verify that I don't have any trace/orphan nvidia drivers around. Thanks for the suggestion.

w.

countermods said:

go into you hdd and delete anything to do with nvidia and go to add remove programs and unistall all nvidia drives and ati drivers then reinstall you ati drivers

Click to expand...

If that isn't enough then the next step is to do a complete reinstall (assuming you haven't done that already).

...I just re-read your initial post. Are you really getting 4.68v on your 5v line???? Is that what BIOS/software is reporting your did you check a molex with voltmeter? If you didn't check a molex connector with a volt meter I suggest you do that (if you have access to a volt meter) and see what your real numbers are. 4.68v is way into the danger zone. I'm surprised the system kicks over at all.

Good catch eobard. Your 5 and 12 lines are pretty low, especially your 5. What kind of power supply are you using? That 9600 will suck up power. Perhaps the artifacts could be happening by both cards-but caused by two totally unrelated problems?

I see the answer is your PSU. I've been through all that crap u just went through. All the advice above is good but I'm almost certain it's your PSU. But u can prove me wrong by telling me what u have. I've gotten artifacts before that covered the screen to a point where u could not make out a single word. It was messed beyond belief. I was running a 9700np at the time. Heat was not an issue. Drivers were not an issue. Default and underclocked speeds did not help any. Less AGP volts in bios did squat. Reapplying thermal paste and reseating HSF on videocard did squat. I covered everything u can think of in a span of a week. But finally I took off some devices (DVD-Burner) and ran my 9700np flawlessly for weeks. By than of course I already bought a 9800np thinking my 9700np was f__ked. Boy was I wrong. I learned my lesson. Never skimp on a cheap PSU. I bought a generic 420w PSU and I payed the price for it. Artifacts from videocard and 2 corrupt HD's. I now have a Antec Truepower 550w and I can do anything and everything flawlessly now. The good news about all this is that I now have a 9800np that clocks to 420/760 with stock air and my 9700np is goin in my sh_tty second rig.

What u need to do is start pulling things out of your PC and leave the bare essentials plus your videocard and run it all day/night looping 3dmark or something and see if it still occurs. My friend at work didn't belive me about this cuz he had the exact same prob as u and when he did what I asked of him to do all probs were solved. He was about ready to RMA his 9700 A-I-W too.

In reply to eobard, yeah.. the 4.68v is for my 5v line. I got this value from motherboard monitor as well as checking the values in my bios. I figured something might be wrong with my power supply due to the low values of these lines.

As for my power supply, I'm using the one that came with my antec 1035b case, so I'm assuming it's a 350 watt antec truepower PSU. At the time when I got the case (probably 3-4 yrs ago) that was pretty high for a power supply but I'm starting to think it's just not cutting it anymore.

TheGr8s1, I'm glad to hear that you've gone thru some similar stuff b/c I was getting ready to just put together a new intel 2.8 system, but I want to try to squeeze some more juice out of what I have since it's working well for me.

I think I'll try to find a place that sells PSU's locally to test it out to see if that does the trick. Is 550 watt an overkill in this day and age? Sounds like TheGr8s1 is doing well with his so perhaps I should just get that for mine too

Thanks again for all the suggestions and stuff. More suggestions would be greatly appreciated if one thinks that it could be other things.

Thanks again, all. Great forum here
w.

wujimon said:

In reply to eobard, yeah.. the 4.68v is for my 5v line. I got this value from motherboard monitor as well as checking the values in my bios. I figured something might be wrong with my power supply due to the low values of these lines.

As for my power supply, I'm using the one that came with my antec 1035b case, so I'm assuming it's a 350 watt antec truepower PSU. At the time when I got the case (probably 3-4 yrs ago) that was pretty high for a power supply but I'm starting to think it's just not cutting it anymore.

TheGr8s1, I'm glad to hear that you've gone thru some similar stuff b/c I was getting ready to just put together a new intel 2.8 system, but I want to try to squeeze some more juice out of what I have since it's working well for me.

I think I'll try to find a place that sells PSU's locally to test it out to see if that does the trick. Is 550 watt an overkill in this day and age? Sounds like TheGr8s1 is doing well with his so perhaps I should just get that for mine too

Thanks again for all the suggestions and stuff. More suggestions would be greatly appreciated if one thinks that it could be other things.

Thanks again, all. Great forum here
w.

Click to expand...

You may want to see if you can borrow a friend's PSU for a test run. 350W should be enough to power just about anything you have, barring an 8 HDD RAID array. I think 550W is way over the top. (yes, I know some of you guys/gals will disagree with me). I'd start by yanking some components out of the system to see if it changes the system stablity, and/or voltages.

Good call about how much power is needed. I think perhaps my PSU is just getting old as the voltages aren't holding so well. I think I'll try unplugging some components to see if that has any affect. Also, I was reading about How much Power and they had the same thoughts as you regarding how much power is needed if a PSU is efficient.

Thanks for your thoughts.
w.

*added*: Based on my current voltages, is that pretty bad/unstable for a power supply?

Keep in mind dust is an insulator, you may find that if you just clean out the PSU that things won't be quite so hot inside anymore and it'll go back to handling all your components 100%. You may not need to replace your PSU after all. (fingers crossed for ya)

addendum: PSU's can kill you if you aren't careful so if you crack yours open watch what you touch. (fingers doublely crossed for ya on this)

I generally take compressed air can to my PC every couple of months. During that time, I usually hit all the nook and crannies, including the PSU and heatsink areas. Good thoughts tho.

To reiterate, in case my previous edited post was missed, are those voltage values pretty bad for a power supply = faulty/unstable psu?

w.

I'd not be too concerned with the 12v line, it is low but it's roughly the same as my 12v right now and my system's solid. I would keep an eye on it to see if it drops any more though. If it goes below 11.5v then I'd start to worry. That 5v line though, I'm still amazed that the system works at all with it so low. I gotta believe that BIOS is lying to you, I'd check the 5v with a volt meter on a molex connector to see what numbers you get. 4.68v is just horrible!

alrite wujimon, like what everyone else has said its proally ur power supply, though most power supply related problems would proally not give you artifacts across your screen...

faulty power supplies would give you a no-boot or a post-failed problems instead and/or instability...


so,...

try a different power supply first, and if that doesn't do it try a new mobo,... cause a single filter cap either ageing or failing can also give you heavy drops over ur 5v/12v lines...

your temps are fine, dun need to worry about those and besides, you might wanna try out an abit NF7-S or something.. an nforce2 would proally be a decent speed upgrade also assuming you're getting new ram some time in the future...


and eobard, 4.6v is proally also within tolerances... it all depends on ur mobo... seriously unless you have the worst mobo on earth with a single phase power supply the mobo should be the weakest point in the power loop, and unless your mobo is just plain bad, it *should* be able to deal with anything between 4.5v-5.3v without issues...

Thanks everyone for their suggestions. Everyone here has been a great help!

As for my PSU issue, I'm gonna try and unplug some unnecessary components tonight and run that for the weekend to see if that makes any difference. I hope that it's the PSU b/c if it's the mobo, I'm not sure I'd want to invest that much $$ and just stick with my old 1.4 amd. I'd be very tempted to just pick up a new processor to go along with the new board...

I'll see how the PSU things go tho. I had a feeling it might be my mobo but just didn't want to believe it. Just not sure how much I want to invest in my current rig.

Thanks again for all the help.
w.

Well.. I decided to head to the local shop and get a power supply to test out. I picked up an Antec TruePower 430 watt PSU and when got it all hooked up, I didn't notice any of the artifacts! However, I'm gonna keep testing all weekend and see what happens.

Anyhow, I'm a bit puzzled by some of the voltage readings. Here's what I got:

+3.3v @ 3.31
+5 @ 4.81
+12 @ 11.35

I'm a bit concerned at the 12v reading. This one seems to be lower than when I was running my previous PSU. What are the implications of this value?

Also, when I observed the startup, I noticed that the fan on top of my AMD-761 Chipset was no longer running! It's a very small fan that plugs directly into my mobo. Is it advisable to replace this fan? Anyhow, gonna run some 3dmark tests and try to put some load on my cpu to see if any artifacts appear.

Thanks again for your help. Any thoughts regarding the above would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
w.

As for the AMD chipset fan going out, apparently it's a pretty common thing as mentioned on this thread .I also followed their suggestions and took off the old fan and let it run for a bit and touched the heatsink. The heatsink wasn't very hot so at this point I'm assuming that it'll be ok to run without a fan.

The change in the power supply really helped out a lot. I think that was perhaps the issue.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

w.