My PC starts normally with a Gigabyte RTX 3050 installed, but the display cuts out after roughly 3–4 minutes. The fans and RGB remain powered, and the monitor detects an input, but the screen stays blank. The system sometimes reaches the Windows lock screen before failing, while other times it enters Windows Recovery. The issue began after the graphics card was repaired by a service center. My system uses an MSI B650M motherboard, Ryzen 5 7600X, 32GB of Crucial DDR5-5600 memory, and a Cooler Master 650W power supply. The RTX 3050 draws power from the PCIe slot and has no external power connector. I tested both DisplayPort and HDMI, different wall sockets, and running without the UPS. When I remove the GPU and use the CPU's integrated graphics, the computer works reliably for long coding sessions. The service center tested the card in another system with a Heaven benchmark, and a shop tested the card and motherboard together with a different power supply, reportedly without problems. The original 800W Clarion PSU was considered low quality, so I replaced it with the Cooler Master unit, but the problem remained. Could this be caused by a graphics driver, BIOS or PCIe compatibility issue, Windows corruption, or a fault that only appears with this particular system?
3 Answers
Try performing a completely clean NVIDIA driver installation rather than relying on the generic Windows driver. Download the current driver from NVIDIA, boot into Safe Mode, use Display Driver Uninstaller to remove the existing display drivers, then install the NVIDIA driver with the clean-install option. Since the display fails during driver installation, that failure itself is useful evidence that the problem may be hardware-related rather than just a corrupted Windows installation.
A Windows reset may help if the driver or operating-system installation is damaged, but it should not be the first assumption. Before reinstalling everything, check whether the screen also goes blank in the BIOS setup or in a Windows installer environment. If it only happens once Windows loads the full driver, compare results with the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. If it fails outside Windows too, focus on the GPU, PCIe slot, motherboard firmware, or power delivery rather than software.
Because the PC runs normally on integrated graphics, test the RTX 3050 in the same computer after resetting BIOS settings to default. Update the motherboard BIOS, set the PCIe slot to Auto or Gen 3 instead of forcing a newer generation, and make sure the primary display is set correctly. Also try another PCIe slot if the board has one. If the system still loses video as soon as the NVIDIA driver loads, the card may have an intermittent fault even if it passed a short benchmark in another machine.
I attempted to install the graphics driver once, but the display went blank during the installation and Windows would not boot normally afterward. I sometimes managed to reach the repair screen, so I am considering resetting Windows and trying again.