Pink artifacts on screen.

Orpheus

Orpheus

Bronze Level Poster
Hey guys,

For a long while now I've had some weird pink artifacts/flickering dots showing on screen when watching videos or playing video games.
I didn't look too much into it at first and it never got to a critical point where the computer is unusable but I always wondered why this happened in the first place.
Is it a defect with the graphics card from the get go ? Or is it more software related ?

Do you think I should eventually send it to PCS for review ?

Thanks for your answers.
 

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TomBerry

TomBerry

Bright Spark
To me it looks like it's a GPU issue here, please could you post your full specs? Will be worth giving PCS a call when they're next open to let them know about this :)
 
Orpheus

Orpheus

Bronze Level Poster
Hi there :)

Here are my specs :
MONITOROctane Series V : 15,6" IPS 144 Hz 72 % NTSC Full HD (1920 x 1080) + G-Sync
CPUEight Core Intel® Core™ i9-9900K (3,6 GHz) 16 Mb cache
RAM32 Gb Corsair 2666 MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16 Go)
GPUNVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2080 - 8 Go GDDR6 RAM - DirectX® 12.1

It's a bit worrying, even though it doesn't prevent me from using the laptop or playing games for hours, I just don't understand where this could come from. It's been like this pretty much since I received it in December 2019.
 
Orpheus

Orpheus

Bronze Level Poster
Not sure if this gif will work but hopefully you can see how these artifacts behave a little bit better.

 
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Orpheus

Orpheus

Bronze Level Poster
Yeah I still have until december of this year to get replacement parts.
What worries me is if they don't see these, or can't reproduce them as they're not always present.

As for overheating, the maximum the card reached was 90°C for a few seconds, never more than that. It was obviously thermal throttling at that point so I opened the laptop, repasted both CPU and GPU, removed the dust out of the heatsink and now I'm around 62°C in games, stable for hours.

GPUs are meant to sustain these kind of high temperatures right ? Especially if it's only for a few seconds ?
The temp limit is at 86°C before it throttles, but I've never played for hours at those temps, just seconds in benchmarking scenarios.

EDIT : I don't think it's the screen, I'm currently plugged in via mini Displayport on my LG 27GL850 and I can see those pink fireflies as well.
 
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Orpheus

Orpheus

Bronze Level Poster
Thanks for the answers guys !

Just contacted PCS via email so I could send some photos and videos of the issue instead of trying to explain it on the phone.

Hopefully they don't just answer with "RMA" lol..

Could undervolting trigger GPU artifacts ? I'm asking because I'm running with undervolted CPU and GPU at the moment.

EDIT : Some more pictures. Funny thing is, when I try to screenshot these and paste the screenshot inside Paint, the artifacts are still moving inside the screenshot !
 

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TomBerry

TomBerry

Bright Spark
Definitely a GPU issue here then :) Due to it being a laptop GPU it will most likely have to be sent back as an RMA, although, can't 100% guarantee this. No idea about the undervolting question here though
 
D

DarkPaladin

Enthusiast
I had an old HP laptop that had similar artefacts (eventually it became so severe that the laptop would just crash) after I accidentally dropped the laptop when doing chores. I don't know for certain, but my best assumption is that it's likely a hardware issue. You mentioned you're still under warranty so I'd strongly advise contacting PCSpecialist as soon as possible and organising an RMA.

Edit: I also had occasional artefacts when I first received my current PCSpecialist laptop back in 2019. I dismissed it at first but then my games would have complete colour palette swaps or would simply go black (thread posted 2 years ago in my profile shows this). Just adding this to reinforce that organising an RMA would be my best recommendation here.
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
The max temp of the 2080 mobile is 88c apparently, so 90c would be in overheating limits. If it was operating at those temps for any period of time it would make sense if it's artifacting.

You can tell if it's the GPU or the screen, take a screenshot, if the artifacting is present on the screenshot you know it's the GPU. Also if the artifacting is happening outside of windows on the BIOS, then you know it's a GPU issue.

Last thing you can try is to uninstall drivers with DDU and then reinstall.

Also, have you repasted since you owned it or cleaned it? That will need to be done around once a year to keep temps within normal limits.

It does sound like a hardware issue, but you should be covered by warranty for the most part, may have to pay shipping depending on which warranty you chose.
 
Orpheus

Orpheus

Bronze Level Poster
Hey guys !
Thanks a lot for the great answers :)

So I contacted PCS and they agreed that it's definitely a GPU problem and invited me to send it back to them.
However they did say that their technicians are currently extremely behind schedule and it would take approx. 5 weeks or more to be repaired, but that timeframe would be better in the next few months. That's a big issue for me as it's my main working PC.

I saw on their website that they also offer to send replacement parts via mail, and since my GPU is MXM format that would be a possibility, but they unfortunately refused because it's "too fragile" to send it on the mail.. which is an odd answer. That would have spared me 5 long weeks of waiting. Don't we have good ways to protect merchandise during shipping nowadays ? :ROFLMAO:

Last thing you can try is to uninstall drivers with DDU and then reinstall.
Click to expand...
The PCS guy I was talking to also recommended to do a fresh driver installation via DDU, which I did - but the problem is still there.

Also, have you repasted since you owned it or cleaned it? That will need to be done around once a year to keep temps within normal limits.
Click to expand...
Yes, I did repaste both CPU and GPU with Noctua NT-H2, as well as removing any excess dust from the heatsinks radiators. As a matter of fact I did that very recently after witnessing very bad temps in Final Fantasy XIV - no matter what I did as far as undervolting goes, the GPU would always reach 86°C after a few minutes, hitting its temperature limit and downclocking itself. It never happened before in that game so I knew it was time to repaste, and indeed the GPU paste was dry and spread to the sides of the die.
Apart from repasting it, I take very good care of it and dust the components and fan blades as much as possible, every 2 to 3 weeks.
I'm currently under the gold warranty.

If it was operating at those temps for any period of time it would make sense if it's artifacting.
Click to expand...
But.. not every GPU behaves like that right ? Hitting a certain temperature for a short amount of time happens sometimes, I'm just surprised it starts going crazy like this, artifacting all over the place. It's a bit disappointing at that price.
If I was running that card at 86°C for years I would understand the damage, but being in this state after a few minutes ?
But again like I said, I've been seeing those pink artifacts pretty much since I bought that laptop, so maybe something was wrong from the get go.
 
Orpheus

Orpheus

Bronze Level Poster
Quick follow up question as I'm preparing to send the laptop back to PCS : should I include my undervolting parameters with screenshots and what not or is it irrelevant to them ? On one hand I'm afraid they're going to believe the artifacting is my fault when the issue was already there before I even installed Afterburner, on the other I kinda want to be fully transparent with everything but I'm unsure.

What do you guys think ?
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Orpheus said:
Quick follow up question as I'm preparing to send the laptop back to PCS : should I include my undervolting parameters with screenshots and what not or is it irrelevant to them ? On one hand I'm afraid they're going to believe the artifacting is my fault when the issue was already there before I even installed Afterburner, on the other I kinda want to be fully transparent with everything but I'm unsure.

What do you guys think ?
Click to expand...
You should remove any undervolt, you'd need to do that for testing also.
 
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