Possible RAM or CPU issue? Screen Flickering (I've Tried Everything Else!)

I'm literally copying and pasting this from a different forum where I sought help. This problem has stumped quite a few people, and no one is sure what I should do next. I'm hoping CHF can figure this out!

This will be a lengthy post. I want to make sure I specify as much as I can. First I'll explain the issue, then I'll explain the almost comical number of things I've done to try and fix it, and then I'll list off my specs. I really hope someone can help me solve this... it's been more than a year since this issue started!

The Problem

My screen will occasionally freak out, usually when I'm seeing a video or an animated/ video advertisement, especially on Facebook, YouTube, or Politico. The screen will go nuts, flashing like a strobe light, and the image will be scattered all over the place. Sounds pretty straight-forward, right? Well, it's not.

Also, probably unrelated, but my mouse won't stay zoomed in shooter games, like BF3, BF4, Fallout NV, and some others. I'll right-click and hold, but it zooms in and back out and won't stay steady. It's super annoying, but not as bad as having to hard-reboot my machine every few hours because the screen goes nuts, so I figured I would address that later in a different thread, but maybe it's related? I don't know.

What I've tried

Here's a list of all the things I've tried, in the exact order I tried them in. None of these things worked. It's quite frustrating!:

- Tested on another monitor, with a different HDMI cable
- Tested on that other monitor with a DVI cable
- Tested on an LED TV with a different HDMI cable
- Hard-limited the refresh rate to 75
- Hard-limited the refresh rate to 60
- Uninstalled and reinstalled the video card driver
- Updated the video card firmware
- Completely wiped my SSD and reinstalled Windows 7
- Tried wiping the SSD and reinstalling the OS again, because why not

(This is the part where I started getting angry and throwing money at it)

- Replaced my Sapphire HD 6950 with an XFX R9-280X
- Replaced my PSU (upgrade from 600w to 1000w)
- Replaced my motherboard
- Bought a new 256 GB SSD to replace the old one (the old one is still in the system, as game storage)
- Upgraded to Windows 10

I'm at the point where I feel like I've exhausted nearly every option, and spent a small fortune in the process. The only options I have left are either replacing my CPU or my RAM, neither of which really need an upgrade right now (or for another two years probably). What the heck am I missing?! What could this possibly be? Is it software? Firmware? Hardware? I don't want to replace the CPU just to learn it was the RAM, or vice-versa, you know?

My Specs:
(I'm including literally everything, right down to the peripherals, because why the heck not. It could be anything at this point, so I don't want to leave any stone unturned!)

Case (probably irrelevant): Corsair C70
PSU: Raidmax RX1000AE (formerly a Corsair 600w)
Mobo: Asus Sabertooth 990FX r2.0 (formerly an ASRock 990FX Extreme4)
CPU: AMD FX-8150
RAM: 16 GB G.Skill Sniper Series 1866
Video Card: XFX R9-280x Double-D (formerly a Sapphire HD 6950 OC edition)
Storage 1: 256 GB Crucial M4 SSD (OS, some games)
Storage 2: 256 GB Kingston SSD (games)
Storage 3: 2 TB WD Black HDD (games, nonessential software)
Storage 4: 2 TB WD Green HDD (work stuff, documents, photos, music, etc.)
Storage 5: 2 TB WD External HDD (backups)
OS: Windows 10 64-bit home premium

And a bunch of other (probably irrelevant) stuff:
Monitor: 27" Acer LED @ 1080p, currently unlimited (probably 75 Hz)
Keyboard: Logitech G510
Mouse: Logitech G500
Stick: X52
Printer: Epson XP-410

 

Hi. I will have to think about this one. FX8150 is just ordinary. What temps is your hardware reaching under full load?
Is the bios showing correct amount of ram and speed? Sometime the speed has to be set in the bios.
Does dropping the resolution help at all?

 

The CPU can reach into the mid to upper 30's (Celsius) at full load. The video card is usually in that area as well, unless I'm playing a super-intense game, like GTA V or Battlefield 4, in which case it can reach into the upper 40's. My fan controller unit gives me almost the same readouts (usually within 5 degrees of the bios readouts), and it beeps if I hit 50c, but that's extremely rare and only ever happens on really hot summer days.

I'll have to restart my machine to see the BIOS but I'm pretty sure it's all accurate. I'll take a few photos of the bios and share them here, but it's all accurate to the best of my knowledge

 

Sorry for the bump, I'm not seeing an edit or modify button anywhere.

I went into the BIOS and it's all set properly. My RAM is at 1866, and everything else has default settings. I tried to take pictures of my BIOS but my camera couldn't handle it, but I'll try again later with my girlfriend's phone or Kindle.

 

Not necessary to take pictures of the Bios. I believe you. As long as it recognises the ram speed.
Did you try dropping the resolution as a test to see any improvement?
I'm wondering if your CPU is bottle necking.
All a process of elimination.

 

Hi, firstly I want to say welcome to Computer Help Forums, and secondly a big thank you for the full description of what has been done up till now and the description of the computer, it saves us a lot of time and messing about.
As well as what Dougie is asking, have you had a look at the voltages? especially just after it going wrong. I know you have a new PSU, but have a read of what I say below.

A long time ago I remember a member, on a different forum, was suffering similar problems on an XP computer, yes that long since!
However it turned out that the member was living out in the countryside and some miles away from the nearest town, also at a point near the end of the mains electrical supply line.
If a near neighbour on the same supply line turned on something big, like an electric oven, or even an electric shower unit, the mains voltage dipped so low that the PSU in his computer just couldn't provide enough voltage to the rest of the components, hence why the computer went ape on him.
The member bought one of those uninterruptable power supplies which helped, however the last we heard was that he was going to get in touch with the power company.

A clue that this might apply to you is if there is a noticeable dip in your lights at the time the computer goes daft.

Nev.

 

Sadly that also isn't likely the culprit. My girlfriend and I have lived in our apartment here in Binghamton NY since '09, when I had a Sony Vaio desktop, which was too old to play modern games (but still works fine to this day... Sony knew how to build a tower!). I replaced that with a prefab machine in 2010, and replaced that one again in 2012 with my current home-built machine, moving the 2010 PC into my living room to serve as a sort of Netflix/ Hulu/ Minecraft PC. Both of those older towers, plus my girlfriend's gaming machine, her laptop, and the laptops of friends, all work fine. This seems to only be my machine, which leaves me wondering if perhaps its my CPU or RAM (since I've replaced everything else at this point).

This problem started in early 2014, about a year and a half ago. My downstairs neighbor had tripped the circuit breaker in her apartment, so she went into our building's basement and started randomly flipping switches. My machine was the only one in the apartment that was on at the time, and it was at full-load, in a game, when that happened. I was able to power up the machine again and everything seemed fine, but then, about two weeks after that, this problem started. There was also a driver/ catalyst update for my HD6950 a few days before the problem began as well, but I've since eliminated the possibility of that being the issue (unless the driver somehow damaged my CPU or RAM, which I don't think is possible.

I'm guessing it had something to do with that nitwit downstairs flipping circuit breakers at random. My machine is on a surge protector (I've tried replacing that too, thinking maybe she broke it somehow) but maybe the CPU or RAM were damaged somehow?

Also, I'm testing the resolution drop right now. It hasn't happened yet but it usually happens pretty randomly. I'll also try increasing the resolution beyond 1080p to the maximum setting to see if it happens up there, too. I can also try them on my girlfriend's 27" monitor, though I think I can safely rule out the monitor completely at this point because it works on other machines without incident.

I greatly appreciate you guys trying to help with this!

 

Thanks for the extra input. Dropping the res takes some load off the CPU as you prob know. I was interested whether there was an improvement.
That CPU benchmarks performance isn't that good. About 60% compared to the CPU's I run, and thought dropping the res may be an indicator.
I haven't seen 8GIGS of low latency ram max out let alone 16GIGS. I presume your Paging file is set to suit. Does your Girlfriend play high end games. Exactly the same Games with no issue? IMO a good Rig just the CPU the weak link. Whether the CPU is contributing don't know until there is an improvement in times it goes before your system starts acting up by dropping the res.Then bump up the res and see if the problem is more prominent. Can you try a diff wall plug as well?
May seem odd questions, just trying to get to the bottom of this if possible.

 

The flickering happened on a lower resolution, though it did seem to take longer to get there than usual (not sure if that was because of the change or what I was doing, though). I also tried increasing the resolution, but there was no notable change. Went back to 1080p and within seconds, it happened again. This time, though, I captured it on video, so you guys can see exactly what's happening:



Sorry for the lower quality and poor camera work, lol. I tried to get all the edges into the video. Also, EPILEPSY WARNING! Not kidding, this will give you a headache if you watch too long, hence the video being only 30-ish seconds long.

I don't know why I never thought to try this, but I can yank the 6 gigs of lower-quality 1333 RAM out of our living room PC and put it into this machine, and see if this still happens. That might safely rule out the RAM completely. Sadly, I don't have another CPU to test (and also, I'm not sure if I'd want to screw around with replacing the CPU multiple times; I'm not sure how Microsoft will handle hardware changes after the Windows 10 upgrade).

My girlfriend plays mostly the same games I play; Fallout, GTA, Battlefield, Minecraft, etc. Her machine is almost the same as mine, with a slightly cheaper ASUS 990FX motherboard, 16 GB RAM (but 1600), and a 6-core AMD 6300 as opposed to my 8-core 8150. Her video card is also a step below mine, an XFX R9-270X. She has to play some games on slightly lower settings but she still has excellent performance across the board, and never has these issues.

This doesn't usually happen when gaming, though it has happened a few times while playing Minecraft, when I alt-tab to see where in the world I am on our guild's interactive map (on a website, using the Dynmap mod). It's happened in every browser, too; Explorer, Edge, Firefox, Chrome, and even the Steam web browser.

 

That image looks like the card could possibly be running low on wattage supply. How have you hooked up the power to this card? It max draws 250watts.
On lower res it should take longer for the card to give these problems.
Just checking.
It takes 4 molex to feed enough power with 2 adaptors like shown.
Is yours hooked up with 2 of these adaptors?

 

It's all hooked up properly, the PSU is 1000 watts even. I tried other cards, but those are doing the same thing.

 

Everything else has been ruled out now and if you can do that RAM swap that should rule out the RAM as well.
It is very rare for a CPU to go duff, however your explanation of the neighbour flicking the trip switches on and off just might have been the trigger.
The only thing after the RAM check is the CPU and as Dougie said, the benchmark checks show that it isn't all that good a CPU so if replacing it, go for something better. Dougie is the best to advise on which CPU to replace it with, as he does build some top end rigs.

Nev.

 

Replacing it is my biggest concern, because I'm not sure what I could use that would really be much of an improvement over the 8150. I can't use a 9xxx series FX CPU because I don't think my motherboard can handle the 220W chipset, so it would probably need to be an 8350 or 8370, right?

 

Sorry I am so late to the game here its been a busy week for me. I have been gritting my teeth reading this and all I can think about is you going from a poor quality psu which was no doubt worn out to a worse quality new one. When you have a poor quality maker, and you cannot do much worse than Raidmax though I will think on it and see if I can find a worse one just for argument sake, what most users do not seem to realize is throwing wattage at a problem that the psu can never reach, is sort of like pissing into the wind if you will forgive my frankness. CWT is making the low end Corsair psus today and RaidMax are pretty much made by Andyson and Hec, bottom of the barrel makers. I would bet a good quality Seasonic or XFX 650 watt unit, which is more than you really need for that system, will solve your issues.
There is another way to look at this as well. We all know that psus degrade and when they do they frequently damage existing components by not being able to provide proper power for the demands.
Along with replacing the Psu I would also replace the video card by rma-ing it because I would just bet both psus had their way with that as well. Unfortunately they also damage hard drives too so replacing all 3 of those at the same time I would bet fixes all this. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news here but I can't help but think some of your replacement compaonents which has been in the right direction has also scarred some of the new parts as well.

 

That PSU gave me concerns the moment I read what brand it was. I am ruling out damage to the card as Matt has tried other cards still with the same issue.
Yes Rich. Shivers run down my spine when I read what PSU was in this Rig. I did say in an earlier post it looked like it could be a power issue.
Rich, a 650watt is not good enough for the watts needed. 750watt mininum recommended.

My recommendation is an FX9370 which your board supports without a bios upgrade and will give you a 19% increase in performance.
A Coolermaster v212 with an extra heatsink fan to create a better cooling draft (I run this setup on every build)
A higher 9xxx chip than the FX9370 you start getting into water cooling. The modest performace increase I would stay away from the FX9590
The FX9370 @ 4.4GHZ can be safely OC'd if desired and $209 from Newegg.

Read Press release from ASUS. Your board definately can run the 9xxx series chip.

http://rog.asus.com/261142013/cross...ssors-with-existing-990fx-based-motherboards/

From the look of that card I can't really tell whether the card is low on power (cheap and nasty PSU)
or whether the weak CPU is bottle necking. The CPU is definately the weak link in your Rig. Only by process of elimination will you find the culprit. It's how far you are prepared to go and $$$$

 

I'm running my girlfriend's RAM in my machine right now and so far, I haven't been able to duplicate the issue. I'll try getting the machine heated up with some GTA V and see if that affects it, but if I spend all day doing this and can't make my issue reoccur (which has been happening every few hours this month when I'm working and looking at lots of news sites at once), then I'll rule the CPU out and replace the RAM.

It's weird about the PSU, it was really highly rated on Newegg when I bought it and two different people suggested them when I asked if Raidmax was a good company (one had a Raidmax case that he loved, the other had a PSU). But if you guys think it's bad I'll look at replacing it with my next paycheck after I sort the RAM out. My CPU will have to wait though. I planned on upgrading my video card in the spring or summer so I'll probably upgrade the CPU at the same time.

I'm going to do everything I can to crash this machine now. I'll play Minecraft in a window while opening literally 20 or more websites that are known to cause the issue, and maybe have a few FreddieW videos running in windows too. If that doesn't test whether the RAM is shot, nothing will lol. I'll report back in if it proves to be the RAM, in case anyone else ever has this issue, so one way or the other, I'll be back tonight or tomorrow

 

Confirmed: It has to be the CPU. It took most of the day to get it to break, which was odd, so I decided to try and load up BF4, get everything up to peak load, and try again. I didn't even get that far, though. I opened BF4, and the Battlelog screen in the Edge browser made the screen freak out before I even got into the game. I feel confident now that it has to be the CPU causing the issue. So, I want to replace the CPU and get a new air cooler for it, and then I'll replace the PSU as soon as possible.

What do you guys think of the Zalman CNPS9900MAX-R CPU cooler? Can that keep an FX-9370 running? I really dig the look it has (that nuclear reactor look, glowing red, mixed with the orange case lighting in my C70... that'll look pretty sweet) and the reviews are rock-solid, but will that keep a 9370 cool?

 

Good hsf, you will be happy with that one.

 

That's a good HSF with a good reputation. I'm sure it will cool the FX9370.
I use G.Skill ram and never had a stick go bad on me.
I would definately replace the PSU when you can.
The system will be pretty demanding and the higher wattage PSU the better.
The PSU is one of the most important pieces of Hardware.
What PSU's are rated at don't always deliver what they claim so a stronger wattage PSU is a wise move than what one calculates.

 

I noticed our power bills dropped when I upgraded to the 1000w psu rather noticeably, so I'll probably go with another 1000w psu (and then I could maybe crossfire later if I ever decide to try that, however unlikely that is). Does Corsair make a solid 1000w psu? Or should I just go with an XFX and play it extra safe?