I am having great difficulties with my desktop computer lately. Even though I am a pretty tech savvy guy I have had huge problems which I haven't been able to fix lately. First of all, I've had this GPU problem with my Nvidia GTX 570. I posted the following on the Nvidia forums about a week ago, but the problem has been here for a few months.
The past 2-3 months I have had huge issues with my Geforce GTX 570 GPU. Sometimes when I play video games, mostly Dota 2 but also games like CS:GO and Rome 2 Total War, the screen will start getting artifacts after about 15-45 minutes within playing a game. Then the artifacts will spread out like crazy, and it is impossible for me to play on. But only a few seconds later, the PC will crash and lose connection with the monitor, so the monitor says no input. Then I will manually have to turn the PC off and on, and on reboot the computer will show artifacts during the loading screens, but return to normal once it reaches the desktop. Sometimes it will show a bluescreen instead of the lost monitor signal when it crashes, and it will automatically reboot. However, If I am really fast clicking CTRL ALT DEL and exit the game I am playing, I may be able to recover the computer from crashing and the artifacts will stop. But doing this the GPU clock and memory clock will fall about 60 %, illustrated by EVGA Precision X. This is also seen if I try to re-launch the game I was playing, it will have huge FPS lag. Usually I run Dota 2 with 100 FPS (but I use Vsync to keep it stable at 60), but after a recovery from an imminent crash I will just have 20-30 fps in Dota 2 and it is unplayable.
This computer has run perfectly up until these recent months. The artifact and crash thing happens randomly and sometimes it can happen several times a day for a week, while other times I can play for maybe 2 weeks without any interference. However it seems to occur more frequently if it already happened shortly, so its almost like it is in intervals. This may or may not be how it actually is, but it seems this way to me for some reason. I have tried and ready many guides and forum posts on this website, and others, but I have yet to get it to stop working. As of right now, this is what I have tried:
* Revert back to older drivers, including the 'savior' of all drivers for many, 314.22
* Set Power Management Mode to 'Prefer Maximum Performance'
* Physically remove dust from the GPU and CPU fan, as well as the cabinet altogether
* Increasing the voltage from 963 (min) to 1013 (max) in EVGA Precision X
* Overclocking the GPU (it has never been overclocked before, not even once)
* Monitoring heat and setting GPU fan at 85 % (max) constantly instead of auto
* Uninstall all Realtek drivers (as suggested by NVIDIA)
I have not tried the following, but ruled it out
* PSU not powerful enough? Same equipment used on this computer for 2 years with no problems until recently
* Memtest, check that RAM is OK? I have tried to remove 1 Ram unit and then swapping it with the other to test them this way, and computer worked fine (until game crashed)
* Overheating? Even with auto-fan the max heat I would get was 70 Celsius for the GPU during hardcore gaming, and then fan was not even max. When I toggled max fan I would get around 50-60 Celsius on the GPU.
The Artifacts and crashing occurs ONLY when I play newer games. It does not occur if I am just in desktop. However, as others have pointed out, I do believe there is a connection between flash use and computer artifacts and crashing. For instance if I have Chrome open with a lot of flash-based websites like Youtube, Facebook, Internet Radio and the likes combined with playing video games, it seems to me that the computer crashes much more often than if I just play the video game with everything else shut down. However, if I am not gaming the computer has not crashed even with 5-6 flash websites open.
Now I oredered a new GPU, R9 280X Toxic. It just arrived today and I was just about to try it out when this happened ....
Once I booted the computer after coming home today it would not boot properly, as it had crashed last night when I was playing video games, so I had to do a hard shut down that night to turn the computer off. Now the computer would simply not boot Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, even if I tried to start Windows normally or go to System Restore Options (I do believe that's what its called). So regardless of which option I choose it will go into System Restore Options. However, none of the options work in System Restore, it does not find any previous images of my desktop, nor can i use any of the tools available except command prompt.
Before I go on I should probably tell you what sort of computer I am running. It is a computer I built myself back in November 2011, so about exactly 2 years ago. All the parts were ordered from newegg and nothing has been changed in terms of parts since I built the computer. I am running RAID0 with 2 HDD.
RAM: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820145345
PSU: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817171053
HDD#1: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822148767
HDD#2: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822148701
MB: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813131647
CPU: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819103849
GPU: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814500215
DVD: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16827151233
Apart from the random freezes and crashes with the GPU during video games as quoted from the NVIDIA forums above, I have not had any problems whatsoever until the boot problem as of today.
I tried to insert the Windows 7 install CD and I booted from it ... And it gave me 3 Windows Setup [EMS Enabled] and x64 Recovery [EMS Enabled], or Memory Test. Trying both the first ones gives me error 0xc00000e9, basically saying there is a problem with some hardware on my computer. Now I mentioned I was running RAID0, so I was guessing one of the hard drives had failed. Therefore I turned RAID0 off in the bios and in the RAID menu, and turned it back to ACHI so both my HDD's were independent, and I was hoping I would discover 1 faulty HDD and then just reinstall Windows 7 on the other. However this did not work, as with both HDD's running AHCI the Windows 7 disk still gave me error code 0xc00000e9. I then turned off the computer and tested each HDD separately by completely removing all cords to one HDD first, and then the other HDD second. Alas, I still got the same error code. The only other SATA unit I had connected was the DVD unit, but it was used to read the Windows 7 DVD and even if it was faulty, it probably would let me boot still, so I am ruling this out. Before you ask, I do not have any flash drives or anything else in the USB slots. It is just the keyboard, mouse, wireless adapter and my headphones which are connected to the USB, which they have been for 2 years without any problems.
What is strange to me, apart from all this mess, is the fact that in bios and in RAID control I could see both HDDs connected and it seemed everything was fine, even as I was experiementing with running AHCI and 1 and 1 HDD at a time.
At this point I am pretty desperate and clueless on what to do, so all help is very much appreciated. Thank you in advance for taking the courtesy out of your day to reading this, and please let me know any suggestions.