I'm dealing with a weird GPU situation and I'm hoping to see if anyone else has experienced something similar. Here are my specs: CPU is a Ryzen 5 5600, RAM is Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 MHz (2x8 GB), and my GPU is an ASUS TUF GTX 1660 Super, which I suspect is the culprit. My PSU is a Corsair 550 Watt, good quality but I can't recall the exact model. For storage, I'm using a random Samsung NVMe SSD.
The issue started when I was playing Sonic Adventure in a Dreamcast emulator. I tabbed out during a video call, and my whole system froze up. Oddly enough, my mouse still moved, but nothing else worked. I thought it was a fluke at first. A few days later, my PC wouldn't POST and was stuck on the VGA LED. I managed to restart it, so I ran a stress test with OCCT and it came back fine with no errors.
After moving cross country and being without my system for a few weeks, I powered it up again and got a black screen with the fans running full speed, even while idling—very strange! The Reliability Monitor flagged a livekernelevent 145. The next day, I had a weird desktop issue and while rebooting, the screen went black but then recovered, showing a livekernelevent 117.
Just yesterday, I tried tweaking some settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel to "Prefer Maximum Performance" to see if that helped, and it was smooth for a while. But then, another black screen with full fans happened. Now Windows isn't displaying anything after booting, though the BIOS logo shows up. I can tell Windows is running since the num lock key works, but nothing appears on screen.
This is such a bizarre situation—seems like the GPU is crashing only when idle, and stress tests seem fine. Any advice on troubleshooting or if you've had a similar issue would be greatly appreciated! Rest in peace, my 1660 Super, I think it's on its way out. Also, an update: turning off Fast Startup appears to have helped with the black screen issue temporarily, but I think the GPU is definitely failing.
1 Answer
Have you tried restarting Windows Explorer through the Task Manager? It can sometimes resolve odd issues like this, even if you can't see anything on the screen. If that doesn’t work, I'd recommend using a Windows Recovery USB to perform Startup Repair—it might get you back on track! Another thing to consider is your Power Supply. If it’s failing or isn’t providing enough juice to the GPU, that could definitely lead to black screen issues, especially at idle.
I can't access Task Manager without a picture, so I think it's more of a hardware issue. I plan on messing with safe mode and likely using DDU tomorrow to clean out the drivers completely.