Red flickering lines and dots appearing randomly on monitor-please help

[quicky008]

I've been facing a strange issue with my pc for the last 2 days-sometimes when i play a game for a while,red flickering dots and lines start appearing randomly on the monitor.This is really strange as i've never faced such issues with my pc before.At first i thought that this was happening as the display cable connected to the monitor might have become loose-so i removed the cable and connected it back again securely but that failed to resolve the problem.Strange flickering horizontal red lines still appear frequently while playing graphically intense games like DA:Inquisition,GTA V etc.My gpu is a GTX 960 and its barely 3-4 months old-i don't know whether the problem is being caused by it or not.Is there any way i can determine and isolate the actual cause of the problem?Is the issue being caused by a faulty gpu or something else entirely?

My system config is as follows:Core i5 3450,12 GB DDR3 RAM,Zotac GTX 960 4 GB,Corsair VX 450 PSU

 

[DK_WD]

Hi [MENTION=33037]quicky008[/MENTION],

Based on your post, it might be a hardware issue or it could be some more possible reason for the issue like compatibility and drivers issue. I’d like to check with you, did you make any current changes in PC? How offend error occurs? Could you give me some more details about that? For the meantime, I suggest you some basic troubleshooting steps that may help you to solve the issue.

1) Remove the Overclocking, if exist.
2) Update the Motherboard drivers and then after reinstall the latest video card drivers.
3) Try different PCI slot to make sure that the problem is with the slot or with the MOBO.
4) Try a different GPU to make sure that the problem is with the device and not with the PC. You could probably try this first if you know of another computer to try out right now.

Good luck and keep me posted.

 

[quicky008]

^Hello there,thank you for replying.My system is not OC'd and all the latest drivers are installed-it was running just fine even a few days ago.I've observed that the red dots sometimes appear even when i leave the pc idle after gaming for an hour or so, while performing routine tasks like browsing and watching videos.I'll be testing my system with another gpu shortly to determine whether the fault lies with the gpu or the pc itself.However can you tell me something-do the appearance of these visual artifacts somehow indicate that the problem might be occurring due to a faulty PSU?I read somewhere that a defective or malfunctioning psu can cause display corruption thereby leading to the appearance of flashing lines,dots etc on the screen.Is there any test i can perform to check whether my psu is functioning properly or not?

I checked the voltage levels using hwmonitor and asus AI suite 2 and found them to be within acceptable ranges-but does that mean that my psu is totally ok?

 

[DK_WD]

Hi [MENTION=33037]quicky008[/MENTION],

Based on my experience, problem can occur due to many reasons. As a techie, we will never know the cause of the problem is PSU or RAM, but if you feel the issue is due to PSU so I'd suggest you to try some basic troubleshooting steps.

Unplug the PSU, connect the green wire with any of the ground wire, using a paper clip. With a load attached to the PSU fan, power on your PSU. If the PSU starts, and the load works, then PSU is fine.

For MOBO test, unplug all the components, including the RAM and other peripheral devices. The MOBO have only CPU attached to it, start the PC. You should get beep codes, signalling no RAM module, if your motherboard is fine. This way you can rule out your motherboard being damaged too.

 

[topgear]

^^ But that PSU [ paper clip method ] is not even near accurate for PSU load testing and other voltage parameters - it's only okay for basic testing whether a PSU just works or not.

Anyway, coming to OPs issue - I think most probably it's the gpu but can be also the monitor / PSU - as games are not crashing midway or OP is not facing any BSOD I doubt it to be the monitor. IF op's motherboard has onboard display ports like vga, dvi op can remove the gfx card and test the monitor and the pc with that.

As for my experience I've seen graphical corruption because of faulty processor, PSU, gpu heating and driver.