Video cards keep crashing (not red related)

[Amaury Bargioni]

Hi,

I have a very weird problem with my computer. For the past couple of months the video cards kept crashing 9/10 times i booted the computer. What is weirder about the problem is that the crash only happens when i boot the computer after a long period of rest ( more than 6 hours). What happens is that 5 to 10 minutes after i boot it, the computer freezes and then the screens become black and i have a total failure afterwards or parts of the computer screen come back (e. g. : part of the menus) but i still have to reboot it in order to use it. After a couple of crashes and reboots, the computer works fine. More info: this problem stopped during a week or so, but came back. The crashs only happen after i boot the computer, and not when i am editing or during any heavy tasks.

I tried updating the drivers but it did not change anyhting.


My config:
CPU: intel core i7 920 @3,2ghz
Ram: 12gb
CPU: 2x Ati Radeon hd5850
128gb Gskill Falcon SSD
2x 1tb western digital caviar black HDD


Thanks for your help

[Tim Sutherland]

What power supply are you using? Does the problem go away if you remove one graphics card? Have you run memtest and prime95 to rule out memory problems?

Those would be my best guesses to start.

Tim

[Andy White]

Basically, your PC is running fine when it's 'hot' or in normal use.

At a studio I ran a few years ago (with over 100 large Xeon PC CGI beasts - let alone a massive renderfarm in the basement), PC's were never turned off. In studios 'sleep' is the most you'll get - as turning off/on causes the largest power spike (and therefore a surge)... most IT guys I've worked with never want to fully turn off systems.

It sounds like a power supply issue to the graphics card... or maybe an issue with the motherboard in relation to distribution. In other words, when you're machine is at working temp, it's OK... that means a connection that may be loose or not-working when cold, has expanded and made a connection to complete the circuit.

This is only an idea - without doing a tech eval on the system it's difficult to track problems :) - but - if your issues are based on cold boots and cold starts, I'd certainly investigate these possibilities, as your system runs fine when warm.