Why does my monitor lose signal during games and require a restart?
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MellowPine47
Whenever I play games, both of my monitors suddenly go black and stop responding. I can still hear the game or other audio, but I can't get the display back or interact with the computer, so I have to restart the PC. I'm using an NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti on Windows 11. I've already tried updating the graphics drivers and checking the monitor cables, but the problem continues. Has anyone dealt with this and found a reliable fix, or does it sound like the graphics card may be failing?
Answers
Check every display connection, the GPU power cables, and the card’s seating in the motherboard. Even though both monitors go black, a loose GPU connection or power problem could affect both displays at once.
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Since you’re on Windows 11 and newer drivers didn’t help, the issue could still be driver-related, Windows-related, or a failing GPU. It may be worth testing a known-stable NVIDIA driver version with a clean installation before replacing the card.
MellowPine47: I’m using Windows 11, and I’ve already tried installing newer drivers, but the black screens still happen.
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Look at Windows Reliability Monitor by searching for “View reliability history.” Check the entries around the time of a crash for display-driver failures, hardware errors, or unexpected shutdowns. A similar issue can happen when the GPU stops outputting video even though the computer is still running; in my case, replacing the graphics card fixed it.
MellowPine47: I checked Reliability Monitor, but I didn’t see anything obvious that lined up with the moment the screen went black. Were there specific errors you found when this happened to you?
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MellowPine47: I checked the cables and connections. Since both monitors lose signal at the same time, I don’t think the monitor cables themselves are the cause.