[MindGrenadius]

I've recently started encountering an issue when booting... I will get the BIOS splash, then the Windows 8 splash, then what I would describe as artifacts... 2-3 seconds of strange repeating shapes, then a blank screen. Rebooting, for now, solves the issue. But it seems that every second boot it will do this strange artifact business.

System specs are:

ASRock H55M USB3 board
8gb RAM
i5 760
GTX 660ti

All stock.

The newest piece is the 660ti, about 3-4 months old. Haven't really had many issues with it... I just moved house, I wouldn't think anything I did would have affected it.

Any ideas on what it might be, or what I should do? I still have my old 6850 if I need to RMA...

 

[Bit_reaper]

How does the graphics card work otherwise? If is not artifacting/crashing when gaming I doubt is the culprit. Its hard to say without further testing but the symptoms you describe sound like a motherboard on its last legs.

 

[MindGrenadius]

I ran MSI Kombustor for a few minutes and some 3DMark11, no artifacts nor crashes, or anything unusual at all. Actually ran a few degrees cooler.

My board is coming up to 4 years old, it wouldn't surprise me. If it is, I hope it just lasts until Haswell... I'd hate to upgrade twice haha. What would you recommend to test it?