This is a continuation of Video Card Fried in Third Mission
The replacement video card sent to me is a PNY GTX 1080 ti. However, while I started nervous about playing the game again and potentially ruining another, much better card, I’m now downright scared and ready to never load up WC3 reforged again.
I have played several missions with the new card on a single monitor (HDMI out to HDMI in on the monitor). When my second cable arrived I hooked up my second monitor (displayport out of the video card to HDMI in on the monitor). I have not been able to complete a single mission without my second monitor losing signal while WC3 is running. For comparison, I have spent multiple hours playing WoW and otherwise using both monitors with no issues whatsoever.
Livesay,
It’s not possible for the game itself to fry your hardware. Windows has several failsafes to prevent this. Now, gaming, or even a specific game can TRIGGER your hardware to run too hard, but there’s no reason why the failsafes shouldn’t activate to prevent a problem.
Your loss of signal, however, on the back of a fried card is not a good sign. Usually that means there’s something going wrong with a different piece of hardware - likely the Motherboard, Power Supply, or CPU. I would take the whole rig to a PC tech to have that investigated and resolved. If there is a deep seated hardware issue, you want that handled before it ruins something else on the PC.
It just doesn’t add up in my head. I can play WoW on high settings and my GPU’s activity is around 1-2%. When I load up WC3 Reforged it holds steady at around 50%. It seems nuts to me that WC3 Reforged would require 25-50 times the GPU resources of WoW. When the monitor loses signal, there’s no change in activity to the CPU, memory, disk drives, or GPU. It also seems odd to me that signal would drop at that amount of usage.
I mean, it’s possible that there’s something wrong with my computer, and it just hasn’t been exposed because the load I put it under has always been light until buying WC3 Reforged. But there are otherwise no signs of a failing PSU, no failures to startup, no shut downs, no restarts, no freezing, no noise, smell, or smoke; no signs of a failing CPU; no signs of failing motherboard, no lock ups or freezing, no blue screens, no beeps or lights. I have always kept everything clean. Nothing is overclocked. The previous GPU, a PNY GTX 760 had no signs of failure before suddenly and completely failing an hour after buying WC3 Reforged, after years of running WoW, HotS, Age of Empires II HD and DE, Skyrim, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Diablo III, and the original WC3 with a two monitor setup, as well as all the normal youtube, movie and TV streaming, video chatting, and everything else.
But the motherboard is an Asus Z87-A with an Intel i7-4770K and the PSU is a Rosewill Capstone 750W 80+ gold which were all purchased in 2013.
I had been planning on upgrading my C drive (currently a 120GB SSD that is basically just my OS with all my games on a 1TB HDD). I don’t know if that will have any effect on the whole situation, but if a new install on a 1TB SSD doesn’t fix it, I will try to have the motherboard and PSU examined. Finding someone I can trust in a small town won’t be easy though.
Hey, Livesay! WoW is more CPU intensive, so the GPU usage may be lower. The task manager if used to check the GPU usage may not be as reliable. If this is only happening with one game, driver issues are most often the common issue to cause the monitor signal loss. It may help to do a clean reinstall of the drivers using the DDU tool.
It may also be worth looking to test a different cable if there may have been something faulty with one of the transmission outputs or just testing the new monitor. If it seems fine when only one monitor is connected, too much power draw could be the problem.
If it seems to persist, a CMOS reset may help in this situation. This isn’t supported by Blizzard, but if you feel comfortable with doing so, it may be something to look into with discretion. Most newer motherboards just have a battery that can be taken out to reset the CMOS, but older motherboards have jumper pins that have a higher risk of frying the board if done incorrectly.
Hopefully, some of these suggestions may help out with a few additional suggestions. As mentioned before though, it is recommended to have a local technician to take a look into this.