Dual monitor and GFX card question

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So I haven't had much luck maintaining a dual monitor set up and I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. I seem to burn out my GFX cards about once a year. Now I make sure I have installed a power supply with the proper wattage, and I believe I'm connecting all the correct cables.

I thought it might be a cooling issue? But I kept my case open over the last two failures, so I don't know if I need to enhance it even more?

I'd give specs, but it seems to occur regardless of tower or card (both ATI and NVidia were my last two).

The last failure happened this weekend. My screens just frozen...when I rebooted...black screens. Only the onboard video card worked.

Any advice appreciated.

Have you been using the same monitors in all these cases? It's possible that one (or even both) of them is out of spec and slowly frying the card.. This would be very rare, but I don't think it's impossible.

Also, are you using the same motherboard every time? Perhaps the motherboard is slightly off.. this too would be very rare, but not impossible.

And, it is technically possible for a bad PSU to fry video cards, but realistically only if you're using a video card that requires a PCI-E power connector, and even then, it would be.. very rare.

Back to the 'bad monitors' thing, I've got one monitor that, when plugged 'solo' into recent ATI cards, causes them to lock up without fail after an hour so. If it's plugged in as part of a two monitor setup, there's no problem. And, with that monitor, I've never been able to get vsync to work at all. It's actually a more expensive monitor for when I bought it, and at any rate I don't think it would have occurred to me regardless that that was the issue..

Computers are great when they work, but when they have weird issues, they truly can be weird.. Often the only way to figure out what's wrong is to replace/remove parts bit by bit until the problem stops. Unfortunately, in your case, it takes a year to find out if you've solved it.

If you're worried about cooling issues, ATI's Display Setup thing (whatever it's called now) has a temperature monitor, and I'm sure Nvidia does too. Typically though, with GPU cooling issues, the card will just simply crash after a little while in a game.. it would be pretty obvious. And modern GPUs can go up to 100C or so before becoming unstable.

ATI's new cards run their fans at minimum untill 60 degrees or so and their rated highest temp tolerance is above 100, mine never goes above 70-74

that being said bad cooling over long time and repeated shutdowns due to said can kill a card slowly, they have some redundancy built in so when they run out it will start to give weird pictures and eventually fail.

do you overclock or have an auto clocking motherboard?
if so the pci-e bus may have increased in clock speed, this will kill a card as well over time, sometimes instantly (in extreme oc cases)

also having your case side off may not improve cooling at all, it depends on the chassis, i run a full 5 degrees higher without my side on,


anyway specs and your bios setings would be helpfull, then you should be able to see if there is over voltage on one of the rails or if there are clock issues.

Thanks for the feedback. My main monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster T240 24" flat screen (connect via DVI). It's only 2 1/2 years old? It's seen one pc tower die in that time (and two GFX cards). The other monitor is an older 15' Dell flatscreen with only VGA connector. I usually buy off the Best Buy shelf and then swap out parts. My latest is a Gateway. Last PC was a HP (motherboard failure I think). But I'll have to get the specific specs for my newest PC later....

The PSU I installed is called something like Cooler Master? I haven't heard anything bad regarding them.
The GFX card that just died was the PNY NVIDIA 9600gt. It's a little old, but my last PC died shortly after this purchase, and I'd been without a PC tower for about a year and a half. So this GFX card was hardly used. In fact, I guess total usage time for the card was about 6 months

I don't overclock either. My computer knowledge pretty much stops at swapping out hardware.

here's a question. What happens if one DOESN'T have enough power from the PSU? Does that cause a failure, or does the card simply not work?

a cooler mater PSU should be sufficient even if its run at its peak capacity,
withuot adequate power the card either wont start up or work sligthly slower, depedning on card and how big a discrepency there is.
usually having too little power will not damage anything.

your bios settings would be helpfull. especially if the pc was purchased assembled,
many modern motherboards have an automatic overclock, if that is on and it doesnt lock your pci pclock it will bun off a gpu,

it does sound a bit odd though, do you have frequent pwoer spikes wher you live?

Another thought....

I ALWAYS ensure before I buy a monitor/card setup that I know what my resolution (monitor) is and what the card is designed to handle.

If you exceed what a card is designed to handle, it will still do it, but you are putting it under loads it was not designed to handle.

With flat screen displays, this is critical as they only really look good at their default (max) resolution. CRTs are more adaptable.

I've been running dual displays at the office for years. Card wear-out always was the result of a cooling fan bearing failure...and that can be fixed with an aftermarket fan for most makes and models. Never had an outright hardware failure.

Also, I attribute many hardware faults to a poor-quality PSU.

I hate paying extra $$$ for stuff, but I've learned years ago to shell out the $$$ on a high-quality PSU. Instability on the 12v line = hardware failures. It's like having dozens of mini-power surges throughout the day. Sooner or later, it causes problems, and the system will fail under load a lot sooner because of dips in the power supply. Do your research and buy a make that has an established reputation for solid construction and stability under load. Most PCs with cheap power supplies have way more capacity than needed (800w for a 400w system) because after 50% load anything could happen. A quality PSU can go to 90% load with no stability issues.