Starting ED and monitor screen goes black

[Hooplah]

Greetings,

This post is about helping others and what I found. If I type enough maybe some others will also help me after they quit laughing.

Starting the ED Launcher then the game and running it a few minutes the monitor goes black with "no signal". It didn't matter what I was doing in the game. Windows 7 Alt commands would not get me back to the desktop thus a force PC power down then restart with the "starting Windows normally" option and cleaning up the Temp folder. Before shutting down ED was still running as I could hear the audio.

It turns out that my graphic card was overheating. I have two MSI GTX680s setup for SLI but was only using one. They are rated for 98C max. I'm running a curved ACER Predator monitor in 3440x1440 desktop and ED in 1920x1080 windowed at MID settings. Note that I never had these issues running two 27" monitors in 1920x1080. I ran Nvidia Inspertor to see what was going on with the graphic card and found heat issues. The card runs 45-55C with with the card fans at 30% using any of many desktop programs including Adobe graphic products. Then I ran ED. The temperature started going up but the fans only went to 47% with card CPU usage at 70%. Note the Intel main CPU processor and RAM is barely being used. When the temp hit 103C the card shut down and I lost the screen.

Having three dogs who like to lay near the PC for warmth plus still an idiot smoking I decided it was time to clean up the PC once again. Dog dust and smoke tar makes a wonderful substance to block all the PC filters and attach to the five large fan blades in the PC build producing cavitation and less cooling. It's a Navy thing. Again this post is about my mistakes helping others.

Nice and clean lets run ED again. Now the temperature climbs again and the MSI card fans are at 100% with card CPU at 70%. It went to 103C and shut down. Did I break the card? This problem happened before but I used the MSI Afterburner app to tweak the card with lower settings to get ED to play even in 3440x1440. I killed a lot of Thargoids with that wonderful display while the PC kept me and my dogs warm. Maybe that was a warning I missed.

So let's go with the second GTX680 card not used a lot. Now I get 70C and 100% fans when needed without using MSI Afterburner so I can play ED. Great. But I have two cards and SLI mode so let's bring them online per the heat issues. Frontier never supported this a lot so no improvement in FPS. It worked well even balancing out graphic card CPU usage and neither card going past 70C heat. Another great.

Then I went to the Nvidia settings telling it to use my Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz 6 Core(s) to process graphic commands. It worked great dropping out the graphic card CPU to zero and running a lot cooler. Next I went to 3440x1440 borderless and ran the game. All was well then the game and computer froze. Another force PC power down then restart. It didn't work and could took a few restarts. My Republic of Gamers Rampage IV gaming motherboard bios reported that the fans for the Intel CPU failed. Given that the Intel CPU is cooled with a Corsair Hydro Series liquid cooling system maybe I need to check it out to see if I still have liquid. Not sure how to do that.

So my experiences when a graphic card shuts off protecting itself with heat. Maybe it will help others. Some replies might suggest just purchase the latest greatest computer. Be the first response to this thread and I'll be impressed who quickly makes the post! But many players have real lives and don't have the funds to pull this off. It's that darn thing about, marriage, kids, giving up a sports car per hauling around a family, figuring out how to pay for college and having an amazing life. I applaud these players more than any player I often meet in ED and will never shoot them when they show up!

Thanks to the Corsair Hydro monitor watching all my PC temps including the hard drives typing this post nothing is over 40C. Maybe Frontier should take a look at graphic card heat issues. Moderators move this post to whatever sub-forum you feel appropriate. I wasn't sure where to put it.

Regards to All

 

[Vardaugas]

I'm using a Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 and I have to turn in debug modus in the Nvidia control panel on to turn off overclocking of the card or the driver will randomly crash and not recover, forcing me to reboot the computer. Despite updating to the newest drivers. Been like that since forever. Nvidia just can't sem to get it to work or does no longer care to upgrade the software to the newest standards.

 

[Leadfoot]

Having three dogs who like to lay near the PC for warmth plus still an idiot smoking I decided it was time to clean up the PC once again. Dog dust and smoke tar makes a wonderful substance to block all the PC filters and attach to the five large fan blades in the PC build producing cavitation and less cooling. It's a Navy thing. Again this post is about my mistakes helping others.

FYI, one odd thing I found out about is the use of nylon stockings as filters. Cut and stretch them over each fan intake, holding in place with duct tape (exhaust fans obviously won't need them). I've never needed to do that myself (don't have pets, don't smoke, just have dust) but I understand it works pretty well. Just replace them once per month and you should be fine. FYI, my CoolerMaster has two intake fans (bottom front and side) and they have their own filter that you can remove, rinse out and restore.

The only issue you might have with this solution is buying the nylon stockings. You can always tell the lady at the check-out that it's for your computer.

 

[Midian Cabal]

FYI, one odd thing I found out about is the use of nylon stockings as filters. Cut and stretch them over each fan intake, holding in place with duct tape (exhaust fans obviously won't need them). I've never needed to do that myself (don't have pets, don't smoke, just have dust) but I understand it works pretty well. Just replace them once per month and you should be fine. FYI, my CoolerMaster has two intake fans (bottom front and side) and they have their own filter that you can remove, rinse out and restore.

The only issue you might have with this solution is buying the nylon stockings. You can always tell the lady at the check-out that it's for your computer.

On Amazon no one knows that your PC is a transvestite.

 

[Hooplah]

...The only issue you might have with this solution is buying the nylon stockings. You can always tell the lady at the check-out that it's for your computer.

My Thermaltake Level 10 GT Full tower gaming case game with removable filters does exactly what your nylon stocking suggestion works. But if I take too long to get around to cleaning them or your nylon version the will clog up.

 

[babelfisch]

70°C is normal for GPUs, considering the other card is 30°C higher under the same conditions it's probably the card and not the game. I'd try to replace the heat paste between chip and the heat sink. It's an old card.

 

[Hooplah]

70°C is normal for GPUs, considering the other card is 30°C higher under the same conditions it's probably the card and not the game. I'd try to replace the heat paste between chip and the heat sink. It's an old card.

True, heat absorbing paste doesn't have an infinite lifetime especially if it went past it's design parameters. The chemistry breaks down for the next event.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I used nicotine chewing gum to get off it. During a feverish cold. Basically I was quite exhausted with hours of pointless effectless coughing. A day in fever delirium helped combat the detox symptoms too.
Worst would be sitting in front of computer where I smoked most, but it wasnt so bad. I bet you can do that too. Maybe try to catch a cold to get it going too?

 

[Hooplah]

I used nicotine chewing gum to get off it. During a feverish cold. Basically I was quite exhausted with hours of pointless effectless coughing. A day in fever delirium helped combat the detox symptoms too.
Worst would be sitting in front of computer where I smoked most, but it wasnt so bad. I bet you can do that too. Maybe try to catch a cold to get it going too?

Getting off the subject...I have an excellent medical plan with a case of nicotine patches to get off smoking. But I don't have the mental discipline to use them.

 

[Hooplah]

Avatar + Post = Creepy.

Fall in love with a gal and welcome to creepy things you would never do! I missed your Avatar point. Perhaps let's get back to the topic helping other ED players.

 

[Hooplah]

Back on topic. Playing this game for years I have reached what many might consider the "end game". I am triple Elite, have 10 billion credits, have 31 highly engineered ships and maxed out the materials in case another interesting ship shows up. I have tons of experience playing this game in many play styles. So what now?

ED is a big game and there are many missions I haven't tried. Actually I did most of them but C&P came along and I quit doing them. Maybe being a criminal is a way to go and the heck with C&P. But at this point I want to meet other players and help them out a little. Not to get bored I'll work on PvP on the positive side versus so many see the worse on the negative side. Being a member of the Inara Ghost Legion is a good place to start. Beiing a member of the original Mobius group on the PC I guess that most of them are not playing the game anymore or if they are went to Solo mode. 20,000 members and no one is ever there when I play for many hours.

But I just tried a Solo mode cargo Python run with two simple missions and my graphics cards couldn't complete them. That is not good when I want to share my space with other live players requiring more computer power. I'm missing something on the computer build.

I'm an expert with some ED game play and a fool with a lot of others. But for now I don't trust my computer to take care of going past the "end game" on the PC. Maybe I should go back to my PS4 account but they often have issues since the latest update.

Regards

 

[babelfisch]

Back on topic. Playing this game for years I have reached what many might consider the "end game". I am triple Elite, have 10 billion credits, have 31 highly engineered ships and maxed out the materials in case another interesting ship shows up. I have tons of experience playing this game in many play styles. So what now?

ED is a big game and there are many missions I haven't tried. Actually I did most of them but C&P came along and I quit doing them. Maybe being a criminal is a way to go and the heck with C&P. But at this point I want to meet other players and help them out a little. Not to get bored I'll work on PvP on the positive side versus so many see the worse on the negative side. Being a member of the Inara Ghost Legion is a good place to start. Beiing a member of the original Mobius group on the PC I guess that most of them are not playing the game anymore or if they are went to Solo mode. 20,000 members and no one is ever there when I play for many hours.

But I just tried a Solo mode cargo Python run with two simple missions and my graphics cards couldn't complete them. That is not good when I want to share my space with other live players requiring more computer power. I'm missing something on the computer build.

I'm an expert with some ED game play and a fool with a lot of others. But for now I don't trust my computer to take care of going past the "end game" on the PC. Maybe I should go back to my PS4 account but they often have issues since the latest update.

Regards

You can get a new GPU for 200€ which will run the game better than your 680. It's definitely better for our environment when you use components as long as possible but the card is 7 years old and apparently broken so it might be time for an upgrade.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Sounds like a dying card to me.

I would consider replacing those two with a decent single card.
SLI isn't really that supported these days because it's often more economical and reliable to buy a really good single card, than two not so good one.

You can probably pick up a GTX 970/980 cheap, or a 1070 for less cheap.

 

[aRJay]

FYI, one odd thing I found out about is the use of nylon stockings as filters. Cut and stretch them over each fan intake, holding in place with duct tape (exhaust fans obviously won't need them). I've never needed to do that myself (don't have pets, don't smoke, just have dust) but I understand it works pretty well. Just replace them once per month and you should be fine. FYI, my CoolerMaster has two intake fans (bottom front and side) and they have their own filter that you can remove, rinse out and restore.

The only issue you might have with this solution is buying the nylon stockings. You can always tell the lady at the check-out that it's for your computer.

Just say your associated with the banking industry or that you are a politician.

 

[Hooplah]

Avatar + Post = Creepy.

I agree. Going for humorous doesn't always work. I edited the post. Sorry

 

[B1rdy]

[...]

Have you checked the GPU fan is actually running? Is the heat sink really clean? Considering the temps spike really high as soon as you load the game it might be even that the cooler has not sufficient contact with the GPU.
You CPU should be fine for ED, especially paired with a 680, which is heavily limiting it anyway most of the time.

 

[Hooplah]

With more testing it looks like the heavily used card 0 has fan or maybe thermal paste failures on the card CPU. Nvidia Inspector doesn't even display the fan speed. Going SLI using both and card 0 runs longer but eventually overheats. Only running the lightly used card 1 and heat stays ~80C with card CPU at 97-100% in a station and 60C heat with card CPU at 40% in space. Interesting that these values didn't increase heat running 1920x1080 windowed versus 3440x1440 borderless.

So I figure that the filters and fan blades were clogged and the card ran too long overheating finally failing. Regularly cleaning the PC would probably have prevented this. Anyway the PC was built 6 years ago so maybe it's time to do a "gaming PC' search at NewEgg. Then read for hours about Intel iCore i7 versus i9, RTX 2080 Ti etc. One might go with a cheaper PC but will it last 6 years? Will ED still be here? Will I care? Decisions, decisions...

 

[leeG]

If you’re just using one of your video cards for the game and not using SLI, why not remove the suspect card completely? Tide you over until you decide on a new system.

 

[Hooplah]

If you’re just using one of your video cards for the game and not using SLI, why not remove the suspect card completely? Tide you over until you decide on a new system.

Right. I'm not using it for now. There is no power issue leaving it in. Still I pulled it to disassemble, replaced the CPU thermal paste and a more thorough cleaning of the heat sinks and fan blades. The paste was somewhat brittle so replacing it should help. I don't lose anything giving it a try.

Meanwhile the other card is fine with the desktop and the Forum doing 36C and 30% fans. Running ED, Forum and two websites the computer CPU is at 21% and RAM usage 14%. The graphic card memory (4GB) is only 47%. I could probably just install a newer graphics card and we'd be OK. The issue seems finding one will deal with the heat. Installing a card costing $1350.00 in a 6 year old Windows 7 computer doesn't seem to be a smart investment.

 

[MickyG1982]

With more testing it looks like the heavily used card 0 has fan or maybe thermal paste failures on the card CPU. Nvidia Inspector doesn't even display the fan speed. Going SLI using both and card 0 runs longer but eventually overheats. Only running the lightly used card 1 and heat stays ~80C with card CPU at 97-100% in a station and 60C heat with card CPU at 40% in space. Interesting that these values didn't increase heat running 1920x1080 windowed versus 3440x1440 borderless.

So I figure that the filters and fan blades were clogged and the card ran too long overheating finally failing. Regularly cleaning the PC would probably have prevented this. Anyway the PC was built 6 years ago so maybe it's time to do a "gaming PC' search at NewEgg. Then read for hours about Intel iCore i7 versus i9, RTX 2080 Ti etc. One might go with a cheaper PC but will it last 6 years? Will ED still be here? Will I care? Decisions, decisions...

1440p with a 2gb GTX 680 really is asking a lot of that card, even in SLI. Remember, at this point even the GTX 1050ti will outperform it by 5-15% under most circumstances. The GTX 1050 in my laptop will give it a run for its money too. Neither of those cards are capable of anything meaningful at 1440p.

That said, if you are still happy with the rest of your system then your best bet would be to change the GPU. A single GTX 2060 or 1660 would be a very good match for the rest of your rig and the resolution you want to play at. All that extra VRAM will mean you can game at high, or even ultra settings rather than the mid/low settings you'll be stuck with now.