Computer dying in weird way, help needed!

[MagusGothica]

Not sure exactly where to post this, but I figured this was probably a good place to start. Computer builds wouldn't be a good place, since I'm not asking about what to build, seeing as how I've already built it.

I built my new system like, three months ago. Matter of fact, almost exactly three months ago. 'Bout this time last August. About a month ago it started having this weird problem. It would randomly start to die, right in the middle of me playing WoW. But it would die in a way that I've never seen before. The only thing that actually died was the connection to the monitor. The monitor would suddenly just lose signal and go black, for no apparent reason. Everything else would be on. The hard drive would still be spinning, the fans would still be going. But the sound output, and monitor signal, were gone. The power button ceased to have the ability to turn the PC off, the only way I could figure out to fix it was to unplug the tower and reboot. Upon reboot, it'd function just fine for awhile, and then keel over again. When this problem started, it would only happen while I was playing WoW, but over the last week it's been periodically dying in the exact same fashion during simple things like casual Internet surfing on Facebook, YouTube, etc.

This issue has totally killed my WoW playing time, which sucks, I've got plenty of stuff I want to do... achievement farming, gearing up, collecting Transmog gear... But I'm raging at the fact that I can barely trust my computer to function properly long enough for me to get anything done, without dying while I'm in the middle of something.

Main suggestion I've had is graphics card issue. I figure that's virtually impossible, it has to be, because it hasn't been long enough for any hardware degradation or damage. I'm pretty sure it's cooled well enough, I've got five fans in my tower. Maybe six... don't recall. Too lazy to look in the back. I figure it might be some kind of driver issue. I saw a failed video driver update in my Windows Update history. Is anybody familiar with this kind of computer death, and more importantly, how to fix it? I'm pretty sure it's not dusty, or anything like that. One of my buddies that used to be a military computer tech came into town a couple weeks ago and opened up the case to take a look, and one of the first things he did was to take a can of air to everything, just to be sure. And I doubt I was shipped faulty hardware, I ordered everything from Newegg. I've been a customer for awhile and I've never had a problem with anything I've gotten from them (until now). But yeah, if anybody is familiar with this particular issue, and knows how to fix it, that'd be lovely. I built this system to prepare for SW:TOR and I'd be pretty pissed if my computer didn't end up being reliable enough to play it. I dropped 1500 bucks to build it, and I won't have that kind of money again anytime soon. I used a 2K bonus from work to build it, and without bonuses, all my money from paychecks goes to bills and such, so odds are I probably won't even be able to muster up enough to even replace the graphics card. I'm hoping I can fix the issue without having to replace something.

If you have any questions about the problem, any details I may have missed, I'll answer the best I can. I didn't actually build the system myself, my Army buddy did, and he told me what would probably be best to order, so I'm not exactly sure what parts are in it, which brands/models etc., and I'm not too terribly tech savvy about hardware and stuff myself. But I'll answer as much as I can. I'll do my best to monitor this thread closely over the next couple days.

[teerzo]

i have the same problem its been happening for at least 6 months now, i just take out my graphics card and put it back in
and put my pc case on the side, seems to be the graphics card overheating or stalling
(i think those dodgey nvidia drivers fucked up mine awhile ago)

[Blazefury5]

Is the video card fitted in securely? , Have you tried plugging the monitor into another desktop? Do a test on the Drivers -> video card fit in -> monitor -> cables

[Flatspriest]

Do you have a big enough power supply? Generally, if you have a good vid card, you need a larger power supply to properly run it with the rest of the peripherals inside the computer.

[Deleted]

Did you do any temparature measurements (with afterburner/Hwmonitor and such)? Maybe the problem is just heat, even though you have sufficient cooling (badly connected heatsinks, sometimes happens to a GPU). If any component is broken, you could just RMA it, since the PC's just 3months old.

[dicertification]

Maybe some info on your hardware?

Where you bought it doesn't matter, there is always a chance to get faulty hardware. But without knowing what you have it really limits how much we can help you. Your computer is crashing, not just turning the monitor off.

Have you completely removed your drivers and done a fresh install with the most recent ones off their website?