Faulty PSU, GPU or both?

[Yanta]

I use Corsair PSU's exclusively, most of them being the HXi series. I have a 750w unit that might be faulty.

 

The PC it was in would drop power in Runescape and DOTA - but would be fine with things like Prime95, Furmark and memtest running for hours.

 

I watched as my son was playing Runescape and sure enough, it dropped power every 7 - 10 minutes.

 

But after swapping out his PC with a spare I couldn't initiially reproduce the problem. Then I played DOTA and went to the dashboard. Sure enough, 10 seconds later it dropped power and rebooted. And it would do it every time.

 

After a 4 or 5 tests the PC would boot up with a black screen. I removed the GPU, cleaned it and re-applied thermal paste, put it back in the PC and it booted up with artifacts. Clearly the GPU is now faulty.

 

But with power drops, my first inclination is faulty PSU.

 

Could the PSU be faulty and killed the GPU?

 

Is the dropping of power and rebooting symptomatic of a PSU issue or a GPU issue or both?

 

I've ordered a new GPU which cost A$900 given they are rare as hens teeth at present. I'm fearful of putting it in the PC in case the PSU is what killed the original card - but I don't have a spare PSU, and now I don't have enough money for a new PSU (~ A$250)- Besides which the PSU is only 4 years old.

 

I also don't have a PSU tester.

Edited March 8, 2021 by Yanta

[Vegan]

I loathe the idea of finding a video card these days as they are indeed scarce

 

 

The artifacts definitely are VRAM related

 

 

Unlikely the PSU would hurt the video card, they are usually rock solid