Is it even possible to have a difference in potential inside a computer case? Everything should ground to the case and PSU. Sidenote: I have an Antec 1200 that I can't use the front USB ports on because they short out and crash the system entirely. It has a physical ground wire and I've tried mounting it in several places to no effect. I just unplugged them and don't use those two ports as I really don't care if they work or not.
Could even be something as silly as a left over screw under the motherboard or 1 of the hex feet in the wrong location, so yeah, he should remove the board & test outside of case...
The reason for me not testing this out of the case is that my previous motherboard was in this exact same case and had no resemblance to this problem, ever. I have removed the motherboard from the case about twice before starting this thread, and could not find a problem anywhere. Also, it doesn't do this every time, so I will need to use the Motherboard outside the case for a while to see if this makes any difference. This is a big schlep, because then I'd have to remove the RAID 0 Array and everything, it would be laying on the floor. I am very sure it's not the board that is shorting, since I am very, very cautious and wary when installing any kind of hardware in my case, unless I made the same mistake three times. I don't think this is in any way related to a short circuit on any port / header as this will DEFINITELY not cause the GFX card to behave badly. I'd rather get problems with the other USB devices that are attached rather that the GFX card. Also, short-circuits are usually detected by the chipset and you would get a notification that there is a short circuit or the port has malfunctioned or something like that. I suspect that the motherboard might be faulty. Anyone who has done ARM / Embedded programming will know that USB is interrupt driven. I suspect that inside the chipset something is causing the PCI-E to get interrupted as well, which causes the Graphics card to stop responding. I might be wrong, but I just cannot think of anything else. I cannot see the relationship between the USB ports and the Graphics card in any way and yet, something is proving that there is - but what? If it was a grounding issue, then I would've heard it through my speakers / amplifier that is permanently on and connected to my PC. I sometimes go visit my parents and then I take the whole PC with me, it also does this at their house, so I seriously doubt its faulty mains wiring. This is really a ghost which I think will only get caught if I try to get another board to test this with or another Graphics card. I do have an extra, very old card, I might just as well try it out to see if it resolves the problem. It's at my parent's house, so I will have to wait before I can test it with that card.
Well check if the usb isn't shorting anything check voltages on psu rails check contacts on a pci e where your card is and any other connectors do a calculations how much power do concume your hardware and if the psu is capable of supplying the needed power. And check if your house is relly have a properly grounded main socket. Do you little did any modifications to your pc upgrading hardware or something ?
Turns out that replacing the graphics card itself resolved the issue. The card seems to be doing this in another PC as well, it would go blank when you touch the case. Just glad the issue is resolved now.
I am glad you finally find the culprit. Detail explanations matter a lot in some cases to help you narrow down the cause of the problem.
Yes, that is off-course true. However - I really don't understand this at all, so I cannot explain details as to why this happened, since this is something I have never ever encountered in my whole life before. All info I could give was the specs of my PC, and what exactly is happening. Unfortunately I had to wait until now as I got another unused card from someone to test for the week. I swapped it from the two PCs (the other one's not used that often), but it did the same thing in that PC, so now I know what it was, but I still don't know what the heck happened. I suspect that one of the ground traces on the PCB of the card may be faulty, I know that not all grounds on a circuit board are tied together. There is a huge difference between Ground, Virtual Ground, Analogue and Digital Grounds. The shorting USB port story just simply never, ever made sense to me. If it was a USB port shorting, then why did it happen on all the ports? Why did it happen if I used an extension cable and used only the other end of the cable? The PSU stories also never made sense. I've nailed the culprit, but really don't know why the lady became a b34ch.
I am not trying to blame you but stating why it is important to explain issues with detail, which, in your case is not expedient because of the nature of it. If you look closely to all comments posted on the thread to help with finding the cause of the problem you would see that they are mostly speculations(things very common with computer repairs - until a problem is narrowed down to the point of origin). Despite saying that, you have done a good job to be able to trace it to the graphics card. Technically, it is a very sound procedure you took and I don't know why the lady has to be less appreciative of your effort. Well, sometimes people want magic to happen and it is not always like that with computer troubleshooting and fixing.
No, no mate, no need to explain. You misunderstood, I'm not saying you're blaming me. I was just explaining why I had suspicions on some things people were saying. But yeah, I didn't really expect wonders, I was just wondering if there were other people who had similar issues with their PCs. I am glad its fixed now. Otherwise I would've gotten a new PSU, new Case and maybe a new mobo and then I would've still had the same problem. But now its all good.
Oh, okay! Thank you for the post. However, I would like to know the kind of graphics card you replaced it with. Nvidia is a reputable graphics cards manufacturing company unlike AMD products which usually develop faults within a short period of time.