Some issues appear connected. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Some issues appear connected. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Issues: All connected to the display.
- This occurred just once, three months prior, prior to a BIOS update. The system was still unstable at that point. The monitor came back on after being off for some time, but the entire display shifted to the left side of the screen. About half of the monitor area was affected; nothing was missing, only compressed. I don't recall what resolved the problem. It never happened again.
- After the monitor automatically turned off (about 15 minutes), it sometimes refuses to power back on. Unplugging and plugging the HDMI cable behind the monitor always restores it.
- Occasionally, some display elements blink (appear/disappear) randomly. The duration varies from a quick blink (a quarter of a second) to two seconds. The blink intervals seem connected to how many elements are blinking together, though I'm uncertain. When several elements blink at once, it's always synchronized. Over the past two months, I've mainly been browsing the web using Firefox.
- One element I've observed is blinking:
- Desktop icons: all blink together.
- A window not in full screen: consistently shows only one blinking element. Never noticed two windows blinking at the same time. Occurs multiple times a day, but sometimes it takes many hours before it repeats. Unreproducible.
- Notepad++: maximized window. Only the text area's content blinks.
- Firefox is always maximized. What I noticed blinking was:
- YouTube thumbnail links on any site. They all blink simultaneously if there are multiple.
- Shortcut icons on the main Firefox page. Never seen all of them blink at once. Usually just one to three.
- Reddit: either the text field or the entire page blinks for a longer duration.
- Firefox, once, when the whole page blinked, it turned white. The cursor became invisible in that white area.
CPU: Ryzen 7700x (never-oc) (6 months old)
Motherboard: MSI PRO B650-P WIFI (6 months old) (BIOS: 7D78v19)
RAM: 2x16GB DDR5 Kingston HyperX fury 6000mhz (6 months old)
Storage: Samsung 850 PRO (OS and apps, 50TBW, 7 years old), 2x Samsung 850 EVO (Games, 12TBW)
GPU: MSI Geforce RTX 2070 (never-oc) (Approx 5 years old) Drivers: 546.33
Monitor: Samsung U32R59C (HDMI cable) (Approx 4 years old)
Power Supply: EVGA supernova platinum p2 650w (Approx 7 years old)
OS: Windows 10 (22H2)
PC and Monitor connected to a UPS. CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD3 900W
Event occurred 6 months ago: Possible voltage spike or brownout. No Post. Replaced CPU, RAM, and MOBIOS.
OS was installed 11 months prior. I didn't reinstall the operating system after replacing CPU, RAM, and MOBIOS.
I uninstalled and reinstalled GPU drivers, but not in safe mode.
For five months, there was instability and increasing memtest86 errors. BIOS update last month resolved it.
I don't have a way to test swapping monitors to another device for testing.
Disabled multi-plane-overlay; it didn't help.
EDIT: It's unclear if it's worth mentioning, but when multiple items blink, they always do so in the same type. For example, on a Firefox page with five YouTube thumbnails, any number of them can blink at once. But if only one thumbnail blinks, only that one will. It never happened for the entire screen to blink. It consistently depends on elements of the same kind.
With the new CPU and MoBo setup, a fresh Windows installation is essential. Proceed accordingly.
With the new CPU and MoBo setup, a fresh Windows installation is essential. Proceed accordingly.
Thanks, so it remains essential! I've been performing OS reinstalls after a MOBIO swap for two decades. However, the previous attempt was to see if I could still access the OS to verify a few details before the new install, but I've read extensively (on Reddit, not on this site) about Windows 10 being capable of doing that without needing it. Now it's more about realizing I didn't actually do anything. Ahhh, should have double-checked there and not rely too much on Reddit's advice.
Could the issue lie with the HDMI connection itself—monitor and GPU ports—or perhaps the cable? Just to be sure, before deciding whether to buy extra cables to test, maybe try a different HDMI cable or switch to a display port instead of HDMI.
Well, Windows might be "sufficiently capable" to operate across different platforms, for instance, using an R5 3600 CPU with a B550 motherboard and upgrading it to an R5 7600 with a B650 motherboard; in such cases, Windows can boot into the operating system, though it often encounters numerous problems. This is mainly because of the various hardware drivers that Windows was originally set up for when installed on the older build.
However, this doesn't guarantee smooth operation. To ensure Windows runs efficiently after hardware changes (such as a different motherboard or memory module), it's advisable to perform a clean installation of Windows following the hardware upgrade. This allows the system to be tailored specifically to the new components.
There are rare situations when you might avoid a clean install altogether, such as when replacing identical hardware parts—like swapping a faulty CPU for an identical one. Generally, a CPU upgrade can also proceed without a clean install, although this depends on the manufacturer's updates.
Replacing the motherboard with the exact same model may or may not require a fresh Windows installation, depending on whether the new revision from the same manufacturer is compatible.
Gigabyte is particularly known for releasing different revisions of the same motherboard model.
Adding or removing storage drives doesn't necessitate a new clean install either. Similarly, upgrading the GPU works well if you remove the old GPU drivers using DDU before installing the new ones.
From a hardware perspective, flickering often signals a loss of signal—this could stem from an HDMI cable issue or a problem with the GPU's HDMI port. If your GPU has multiple HDMI ports, try connecting it to another port. Since a single bad port isn't uncommon, but multiple failing ports are rare, it usually points to a faulty entire GPU.
Your motherboard also features one HDMI port; if flickers occur, you might want to disconnect the graphics card from the system and run a screen recording (e.g., with OBS Studio) during the issue. Check the recording to see if the flickering appears as well.