Lose Signal

[Ishakir]

Hello guys,
Not quite sure why, but when I play games sometimes, I lose signal to screen usually when the game loads. When I run 3Dmarks on it, it runs stable. One time, when I opened the cd-rom drive, I lost signal instantaneously.

Could this be my no name cheap power supply? Or is it my video card (in sig). My vcard is overclocked to 295/620.

Thanks a lot
-Ish-

 

[RnPgrosz]

Thats an odd problem. I'd say that it could very likely be attributed to your generic PSU. You should have a PSU thats 350W or better and it should be a name brand(Antec, Enermax, Sparkle, PC Power & Cooling to name a few). How are your 5V and 12V rails? In Advanced Chipset Features in the BIOS go to Video card options(or something like that) and change the AGP signal strength, I believe the default is DA but I'm not positive.

 

[Ishakir]

Thanks for the reply,
This is what MBM 5 shows for voltages. I'm not quite sure what all of it means, tell me if you see anything strange.

 

[cack01]

The 3.3V line controls the AGP and PCI cards. If those numbers are correct, your 3.3V is way to low. Thats kind of odd though since the 12V and 5V are within specs. Do you have a lot of PCI cards??

 

[Ishakir]

The only PCI card currently installed in the rig is a 56k winmodem (I know its crap). Sound and lan are onboard. Could it be that MBM is giving a crappy reading. Also, when I took that pic it wasnt under load, during load my 5.0 drops to 4.89, not sure if that's still within specs. Could the reason for the extremely low reading be the overclock?

Also, my power supply also all of a sudden started making strange noises, it sounds like a grinding type noise which happens periodically for about 3-5 seconds - I'm thinking that's the fan.

 

[DaddyB]

The 5V line is fine, 4.89 isnt low. Motherboard monitor often gets the voltages mixed up, if you want to know the real voltages check your BIOS.

When you say you lose signal you mean that the screen goes black and maybe says"no signal please check signal cable" (or something similar) right? How do you get the signal back? do you have to reboot or does it come back on its own?

I think you should unplug the monitor cable and plug it back in (both ends if they both come off), you might also try doing the same to the monitor power cable. You could also reseat your video card but if the vid card wasnt seated properly it would likely cause your whole system to lock up.

Strange problem though...

 

[Ishakir]

Thanks for the response,
I just checked out my bios and this is what I found:

VCore .......1.66V
Vagp........ 1.53V
+5V.......... 4.91V
+12V........ 12.09V
Vio............ 3.23V
VDimm...... 2.56V
VBat( V )..... 3.08V
5VUSB( V ).. 5.26V

Not exactly sure what some of those mean.

Thanks again
-Ish-

 

[DaddyB]

Vcore - CPU core voltage
Vagp - AGP (vid card) default 1.5
+5V - the 5 volt line (red) on your power cables and motherboard
+12V - the 12V line on your power cables (yellow)
Vio - Voltage input/output on the CPU default 3.3V
Vdimm - RAM voltage (dimm- dual inline memory module) default 2.5V
Vbat - voltage to the battery, default 3V
5VUSB - (not sure) presumably the voltage going to your USB ports

All of your voltages are good, Vio is a little below spec but I think most motherboards run it at about what you have (3.23V). I really think the problem is either with the video card, the monitor cable or the monitor... possibly drivers for the vid card or AGP (chipset drivers).

You can try updating the drivers but I first I would try what I suggested in my last post if you havent already.

 

[cack01]

you never answered if you need to reboot to get the signal back. That may help narrow it down.

 

[Ishakir]

Thanks for the replies,
Yes, I need to reboot to get signal back. With Medal Of Honor specifically, sometimes when I try loading a saved game it locks up half way through. During this time I sometimes lose signal to screen. I have to restart a couple of times to get the game to load normally again. This usually only happens after a crash or something during the game.

This is the first system I've built in a while, so bear with me - heh

Thanks again,
-Ish-

 

[DaddyB]

Well you can try updating the video card and chipset drivers ( 4in1s from www.viaarena.com ) but it sounds like something is wrong with the video card, if its new maybe you should RMA it if nothing else fixes it.