Could someone help clarify what’s happening?
Could someone help clarify what’s happening?
Hi everyone, I’m looking for some of your helpful tips. What’s been going on and what have I been doing so far? *I was playing Midnights Sun Suns on Steam, the screen went black but I could still hear the game sounds. After a short while, my fans switched to hardware mode like Corsair does. Then the PC restarted.* *I downloaded DDU, went into Windows 11 safe mode and removed the latest NVidia drivers. I restarted and installed the new drivers 552.22.* *I ran a system file scan with "sfc /scannow" in CMD, and it fixed a file.* *I made sure my BIOS was updated (excluding the beta version).* *Checked for updates on Windows, ESET, Malwarebytes, iCUE, SteelSeries, Alienware, L-connect, Windows apps, and installed all the drivers my motherboard maker provided, except RGB, Norton, and I switched to UEFI using the Dragon software. The Asrock A-tuning wasn’t installed.* *I played Midnights Sun Suns for three hours and everything worked fine.* *I turned off the PC, went to bed, and got up later.* *When I woke up, I turned on the PC and started using a website (tinkercad.com). The screen was black, then restarted.* *I uninstalled the NVidia GeForce Experience.* *I restarted in safe mode, reinstalled the drivers again with DDU, and restarted the PC.* *Once back at the normal desktop, I restarted into safe mode and reinstalled drivers 551.76.* *I ran a system file scan once more with "sfc /scannow" in CMD, and no issues were found.* *Also, I changed the mini dump file to a full dump. Throughout, the CPU and GPU temperatures stayed normal.* Here are some temperature readings before and after the Furmark 2 tests.
Typically the issue is a black screen not due to a connection problem, often caused by the driver being reset on weak GPUs or factory reset GPUs when a load triggers a thermal fault. Check if it repeats; if so, likely hardware failure. If random, it points to RAM or CPU problems, usually RAM. A faulty GPU will consistently fail under the same conditions. For GTX/RTX 70/80/90 models and AMD equivalents, this may also signal a power connection issue with the GPU power connector.
I noticed my PSU was running in eco mode (EVGA G3 850W Gold). I switched it off. It seems the behavior is unpredictable and random. After testing, the memory passed Windows Memory Diagnostic, and the CPU performed well under stress (temperatures peak at 90°C during a 7800X3D stress test, which is normal). It doesn’t seem consistent. Could the GPU driver or eco mode be responsible? The GPU looks normal during games and beforehand. It runs at full settings with 4K and HDR.