Hardware & Technical Corrupted display woes

[Porina]

I've more or less done my new Skylake PC build, and it has left me with more questions. Since I haven't ordered the new GPU, I was going to use the R9 280X until then. It has worked with my current 3440x1440 monitor in my old system, limited to 50Hz over HDMI. I didn't have the right DP cable to connect it which I have bought now. Connected it up, and I get an occasional bad flash like corruption on screen every few seconds or so. Lowered display rate to 50Hz, still happening. Lowered to 30Hz, no problem. All is good, although even on the desktop I could feel the mouse pointer moving less smoothly. Ok, back to HDMI then. Nope. That was also glitching at 50Hz. Not good at all.

Ok, I'll try the GTX960. Pulled it out of the other gaming rig, into this new build. Use a different DP cable (this has full size connectors, the 280X uses mini) and... I got corruption at 30Hz. Not flashes now, but blocks of noise both graphically and in sound. Fine, back to HDMI here also, and that was fine at 50 Hz. Better than nothing. Out of impulse I decided to try DP again, using a different socket on the GPU. This time clean at 60Hz! Yay! Are GPUs that fussy for some reason? I had tried both DP sockets on the 280X so that didn't help there.

Into a fresh install of ED, I was surprised. When I tested the 960 on my Haswell i5 I was only getting 50fps average in space at Ultra setting. Now I'm getting 70fps in space. What happened? Previously I had thought the CPU doesn't have any significant impact on performance. Maybe it was more complicated than that? Maybe the CPU isn't important around 1080p, but more can be used at higher resolutions? Anyway, going into training to visit a station, as my main save is out exploring, I found station interiors were around 40fps. Not great but not too bad.

This glitching in graphics has given me concern though. I don't have cables to swap out and test it further, and in the case of the 280X even a different interface didn't help.

 

[Surfinjo]

Does your board have an onboard graphics capability?

My experience is limited here but the way the problems are showing up differently with different boards suggests a hardware problem to me.

I don't know which MB you're using. If you have mentioned it, I am sorry, other than a quick read, I haven't really followed this adventure. (I do recall your thinking on water cooling for example )

Personally, I would remove as much as I can, back to 'good wood' then work forward. That means removing everything that is not essential to the most basic running.

Also, there are some diagnostic programs available, most MB manufacturers for example produce some. Their performance can be a bit iffy but they are a start.

 

[Porina]

Motherboard is an Asus Maximus VIII Hero. I think it does have on board graphics but I see no reason to touch it. As said, I did find using a different socket on the GTX960 gave a stable image at 60Hz after all but don't know why there were those problems earlier. I'm still shopping for a new GPU anyway.

 

[Surfinjo]

I've been seriously looking at that same board.

Anyway, what I was getting at is, removing the graphics cards and seeing how well things perform using the onboard graphics output. My current baord had an onboard graphics output and I seem to recall, the settings were set up primarily for it. I adjusted these in the BIOS. Sorry but that was about 5 years ago.

As I said though, I don't have any direct experience of this board but that would be my thinking.

If I may, can I ask how you are getting on with the Maximus? It will be a while before I can buy one. My intention is to put it into my current case and use my current PSU and Graphics card, both of which I bought a few months ago.

I know you mentioned it in another thread, but may I ask, which CPU did you install and how much DDR4 RAM? I was thinking of going for a i5 for now and upgrading to and i7 when the prices come down. Similar for RAM, start with 4Gb and upgrade to the full monty later.

I know you are being quite ambitious with monitors and that seriously interests me as well. But that will definitely come later.

Would really appreciate your feedback

 

[Porina]

As I now have a working 60Hz refresh with the GTX960 I don't intend to diagnose the system any further at this point. I still intend to buy a higher end GPU at some point before I consider this build completed.

The motherboard is a bit smaller than I thought. It has enough stuff on it, but I am using almost all of the connectors for example. If I understand correctly they usually have an even higher end model in each series but it currently isn't released. I updated the bios as there was a newer one than shipped. On occasion I had lockups when exiting bios, but it is fine after a hard reset. I haven't had it running 48h yet so can't talk about longer term reliability. I did play with the LED colour on the logo heatsink this morning. Since I have a window case now I might as well try and look at it, even if it is obstructed by the GPU. I'm still installing the other Asus applications to see what else I can do.

Oh, if you're a geek like me, I only just discovered Corsair Link software. This can talk to other Corsair equipment. I got their HX750i PSU and H110i GTX water cooler for CPU. These connect by USB so you can monitor temperatures, fan speeds, and power usage through their application. I wish I did this earlier! The only downside is there appears to be a minor compatibility problem between some Asus motherboards and that water cooler, which I had to work around by finding my own spacers from elsewhere to make the fit tighter.

CPU is i7-6700k. Well, there's only a choice of two at the moment, and the other option is the i5 without hyper-threading.
Ram is G.skill F4-3333C16Q-16GRRD. This is 3333 so much higher bandwidth than the standard 2133. I have applications elsewhere which are known to be memory bandwidth hungry, and in some initial testing this is gaining me tens of % more throughput than if I had the slower standard ram. The kit is 4x4GB. I would have preferred 2x8GB instead but in general high performance DDR4 is not greatly available presumably as lots of people are building new boxes at the moment and buying it all up. I assume the 4 DIMM kit might have been optimised for quad channel uses, even if we only need dual channel here. Also this ram was listed on the Asus QVL for the mobo so I had one less compatibility to worry about.