Intermittent HDMI signal drop and I cant figure out why

[kizcat]

My spec is:

CPU: i5 6600k 3.5GHz
GPU: Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB GDDR5 RAM PCI Expess
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x 8GB DDR4 3000MHz
SSD: Crucial MX300 525 GB
HDD: Toshiba 3GB 7200rpm
Motherboard: MSI Z170A PC MATE
Networking: TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 N900 Wireless Dual Band PCI Express Adapter
PSU: Corsair Bronze VS 550w

Peripheral wise I also run an Oculus Rift, 2 sensor setup with touch controls. Wireless mouse+xbox control, wired keyboard. and the occasional memorystick/external HDD.

My issue is for months now I have had intermittent and seemingly random signal drops between my computer and any device it's plugged into for audio/visual output (via HDMI). The signal drop lasts approximately 1 second - ~10 seconds, and on the screen I am met by 'No Signal' briefly. But also affects the Rift if it's in use, causing the screen to freeze and the VR application to crash (very nauseating ) I have tried different HDMI cables etc...

I primary monitor was a TV (now broken maybe because of this problem) My HDMI on my TV now only gives a maximum resolution of ~640x480 for any device plugged into it (xbox1/360, and wont even recognise a laptop or my computer any more)

I am now using an older TV I was about to throw away, and experiencing the same issue between it and the computer. (again, no other devices seem affected.) -and this one hasn't broken....yet...

I have since noticed however that it seems to coincide with my freezer compressor kicking in/out, AND my boiler flicking on/off (These are both in my utility room). I have plugged the freezer into a mains socket from a different room and it seems to have eliminated that issue as far as I can tell (although it has been less than 24 hours at this point). But the boiler is still interfering.

It has been suggested in a different forum that it could be my graphics card failing, a resistor overloading occasionally or something. (I have had it less than a year) but I took that out and still had the same issue from the iGPU. I am now wondering if the PSU is unable to cope with the sudden brief change in load on my mains as the boiler/freezer do their thing. But again I have used a couple of online calculators and the wattage always falls into the low 400w's, with the CPU outputting 550w max.

Is there anything else it would be? or that I have overlooked?
It's only affecting my computer and any audio/visual device it's plugged into. (being rift or a tv/monitor)

If i plug my laptop into a TV as a second monitor I don't have these issues. And whilst this 'signal drop' is happening, the computer continues to function completely normally. ( I was streaming a game to my tablet to play from via steam and the dropout happened, but the game continued to play and function completely normally)
I should also add that everything is (now -yes it wasn't before <.<) connected to surge protectors. But it doesn't seem to help.

I am really stumped with this. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

(Also on a side note, the laptop I mentioned above is an Optimus V 15" I bought in 2014. still going strong! -although the battery is kaput) :sorcerer:

 

[ubuysa]

Any chance you could take the PC to a friend's house (in a different street) and run a test there to see whether the HDMI connection to his TV drops out? That would at least confirm or refute your mains surge idea (which is a good one I think).

I would think it's important to eliminate that before moving on....

 

[kizcat]

That's a good call. I'll have to do this early next week (because of work).

 

[kizcat]

So, after 4 hours of trying to reproduce the issue at a different house in a different area, I couldn't get it to happen at all. Which leads me to the conclusion that it's not an issue with any of my computers components.

 

[ubuysa]

So, after 4 hours of trying to reproduce the issue at a different house in a different area, I couldn't get it to happen at all. Which leads me to the conclusion that it's not an issue with any of my computers components.

That's very important information and tends to suggest it's noise on your mains. It's not impossible that something at your home is starting to fail (a fridge motor for example). If you can I would try unplugging devices and seeing whether the problem goes away. You could use a kind of binary search technique here; unplug or disconnect half of your devices and see whether you get the problem, if you do reconnect them and unplug or disconnect the other half. Hopefully one half will show a problem and the other half will not. Now unplug half of the half that failed and test again, keep reducing the half that fails by half until you locate the culprit.