Both Monitors Suddenly Stop Working

ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Both of my girlfriend's monitors suddenly stopped working this morning. They were working fine last night.

I tried fiddling around with both of them. One is an HDMI to HDMI. The other is 4k, with an HDMI to DP. One of them recognizes that it's connected, searches for the right input, only to come back no signal.

I could understand one monitor crapping out but not both at the same time.

Any thoughts?
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Small update. I just tried both monitors on another source: a Switch. And they wirl fine on both. So I'm thinking it's a problem with the computer itself. A friend of mine suggests maybe the graphics card.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
If they both plug in to the graphics card that's probably it. Before you get too freaked out, be sure to open it up and make sure it's seated correctly.

What kind of card is it?
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Dave said:
If they both plug in to the graphics card that's probably it. Before you get too freaked out, be sure to open it up and make sure it's seated correctly.

What kind of card is it?
Click to expand...
I opened it up and everything seems to be seated correctly.

Not sure what kind of card. Can't access any of that info.

EDIT: Update. Kitara's ex said it's an AMD Rx480.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

If both died at once AND they and their cables work fine on another source THEN yeah, it’s probably the GPU.
Check to make sure that it’s not actually the power supply’s fault with some kind of failure of the GPU’s aux power cables.
Also check to see if you can see the BIOS during boot. If you can, it might just be a setting. If you aren’t even getting the BIOS, though, then it’s probably a GPU failure of some kind (though no guarantee whether it’ll be the you-have-to-buy-a-new-GPU kind).

—Patrick
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
PatrThom said:
That’s…a fairly old graphics card, and also one that isn’t really meant for 4k-plus-another-monitor.
Click to expand...
The age might cause it to fail, running a 4K monitor off of it wouldn't, so that's not really relevant.

An RX480 is perfectly capable of doing 2D at 4K, and even video playback at that resolution. It might not play a lot of games at that resolution, but not everyone who is doing stuff on a 4K display is primarily thinking about games.

ThatNickGuy said:
It has a DP port, though, so it must be 4k compatible?
Click to expand...
PatrThom is just criticizing the card's ability to game at 4K.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

figmentPez said:
PatrThom is just criticizing the card's ability to game at 4K.
Click to expand...
Performance aside, I’m concerned about the amount of video RAM on the card being sufficient to support 4k + 1080p since that’s essentially 5 screens of 1080p simultaneously, and not all RX480s came with 8GB VRAM.
And to answer your question, Nick, DisplayPort has supported 4k since v1.2, which was circa 2010.

—Patrick
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
PatrThom said:
Performance aside, I’m concerned about the amount of video RAM on the card being sufficient to support 4k + 1080p since that’s essentially 5 screens of 1080p simultaneously, and not all RX480s came with 8GB VRAM.
Click to expand...
Would that have caused the video card to fail?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Yeah, Pez is on the right track here, obviously it WAS working previously, and now it's failed. If insufficient VRAM was a problem, it wouldn't have been working previously. While it is possible it is a driver issue, the age of the card makes me think hardware failure.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

figmentPez said:
Would that have caused the video card to fail?
Click to expand...
A card doesn’t fail due to lack of VRAM. It may fail to function, but it won’t die. Many video drivers will automatically supplement a lack of VRAM with system RAM (at a huge cost to performance, of course), but if, say, half the VRAM on the card were to fail all at once, there is the possibility that the card could continue to function BUT not at as high of a resolution or bit depth.

This is why I asked about the presence of a BIOS screen, because if you aren’t even getting THAT, then your card is just plain not working.

—Patrick
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

To elaborate a little more, this could even be something as simple as somehow accidentally switching the box to output to an onboard video port instead of the RX480 card. No hardware failure, but would match the symptoms. I have not yet heard anything that I would consider conclusive that the card has failed, only that things are not behaving as expected. Thus you begin troubleshooting steps to determine the actual cause rather than only doing ones that would support your initial guess.

—Patrick
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

If you're not confused, @ThatNickGuy , and are willing to troubleshoot, I'm happy to help over Discord or something. I can only imagine how a support conversation between two support people would go. Will it automatically be easier or harder than a usual support call?

--Patrick
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

So, a small update: I brought her computer over to a techy friend of mine's place. We tried different things. We tried putting the graphics card in a different computer. It didn't work. We tried putting a new graphics card in her computer. It didn't work. The on-board graphic card works, but only if there's no other graphics card installed.

So, my friend came to the conclusion that the slot on the motherboard is fried. Which means it needs a new motherboard.

Unfortunately, the motherboard in there is a proprietary Acer board, which means only an Acer motherboard would work, with that specific shape. He said it'd be easier to get a new motherboard, and a new tower to fit it.

The motherboard he suggested on a quick search is an i59400, with a Cougar MX3000 casing.

And again, unfortunately, both of us are kind of strapped for cash these days. She's living on her own now with her roommate moving out, and I need to work on paying off my credit card. So...ordering these parts might take awhile.
 
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