Crashing problems with GT710

I have a problem with my new card. While playing games, especially Tomb Raider 2013, after some time my PC crashes and gives me that ": (" error screen, after which it boots really slow for some reason. Sometimes it takes some time to start the damn game because it gives me that "Windows is searching for a solution" error and most of the time I have to restart the stupid PC to fix it. Even sometimes when I'm not playing games and do a lot of things at the same time I get a black screen for a moment.

What could be causing this? My PSU is only 270 W, could that be the problem? I should also mention that before I installed the card I accidentally dropped it. :@ The gold connector was covered though and I don't think any important components on the card got hit. Any ideas on why this is happening? Can I somehow fix it?

Hi BicycleRow.
The mfg.'s specs indicate that it requires a 300 watt power supply. So that may be the reason for your problem.
EVGA - Product Specs - EVGA GeForce GT 710 2GB (Dual Slot, Passive)

BTW, the searching for a solution feature was abandoned my MS long ago.

The GT 710 is rated at 25W. The s5130at was sold with a GT220 (and the 270W PSU), so the GT 710 should be perfect in that box, at least in the context of power consumption.

(The 300w PSU requirement is pretty generic. It doesn't*depend on what CPU you have. For example, your E7400 is rated at 65W. A high-end CPU like an I7-3970X is rated at 150W. That's extreme, but 125W isn't uncommon.)

I can't guess what the problem might be. Which nVidia drivers are you using? Are you prepared to try a clean install of Windows 10? (That's a pain, but it can fix errors due to a corrupt OS.)

I'm using the latest NVIDIA drivers.

I don't think the OS is corrupt. Before I installed the card a few days ago there was absolutely no problem with it, everything was fine. I'm afraid that I might have damaged a little bit the card when dropping it. It probably wouldn't work then but I don't know. I also dropped (lol, yeah I'm not very good at holding things apparently ) a small metal plate on the motherboard... :X

BicycleRow said:

I'm using the latest NVIDIA drivers.

I don't think the OS is corrupt. Before I installed the card a few days ago there was absolutely no problem with it, everything was fine. I'm afraid that I might have damaged a little bit the card when dropping it. It probably wouldn't work then but I don't know. I also dropped (lol, yeah I'm not very good at holding things apparently ) a small metal plate on the motherboard... :X

You can have a corrupt OS that doesn't manifest itself most of the time. Or not.

I'm not skilled at diagnosing graphics cards. They don't seem to fail much. If your GT 710 isn't obviously damaged, and you bought it new, you could RMA it and try your luck with a replacement.

I see that you have quite a few posts on this subject around the Web. I hope that the effort you're expending on this old PC (2009) is worth it.

RoadBlaster said:

If you RMA the GT710 why not get a GT 730 passive 2GB Vram, as it may be a graphics performance problem & they don't cost much, also do not hear many complaints about the GT 730 Crashing - you can even play GTAV happilly all day.

I wouldn't bet on the E7400 and GT 730. I might as well buy me a Haswell system without a dedicated GPU and the Intel HD 4400 or Intel HD 4600 will blow away the GT 730.

You dropped your card so we have no idea whether this was 5 cm, or 2 m on to a hard surface.

It won't be a PSU problem, that card is very low power consumption.

It might have detached the Heat Sink such that the GPU and/or memory chips now over heat, the time factor suggests something like that.

You can check that by using some temperature sensing application at least for the GPU. Something like GPU-Z.

Helmut said:

You dropped your card so we have no idea whether this was 5 cm, or 2 m on to a hard surface.

It won't be a PSU problem, that card is very low power consumption.

It might have detached the Heat Sink such that the GPU and/or memory chips now over heat, the time factor suggests something like that.

You can check that by using some temperature sensing application at least for the GPU. Something like GPU-Z.

It fell on my chair, which is a soft surface but not very soft, from around 30 cm and there are no visible damages.

I often monitor the temp. with MSI Afterburner and when I play Tomb Raider it reaches around 60 C, when I'm watching YT videos it stays at around 36-40 C. Edit: I just noticed it reached 45 C on a YT video at 1080p60fps... I guess that's not good?