Troubleshooting a PC Crash: Seeking Guidance on My GPU Predicament

Hello everyone,

I hope you’re doing well! I find myself in a bit of a pickle and would greatly appreciate any assistance you could offer. To give you a bit of background, I’m relatively new to the world of Computers, so I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now.

Recently, I celebrated my birthday by purchasing a pre-built gaming PC back in January, and everything had been working flawlessly—until today. Just yesterday, I connected a second monitor, excited to enhance my gaming experience. Today, however, while playing GTA V for the first time, disaster struck. About twenty minutes into the game, both monitors went black and shut off completely, leading to a frightening moment where nothing seemed to respond.

Upon restarting my system, I noticed a strange issue: everything appeared oversized and quite pixelated, and unfortunately, only one monitor was operational. This turned out to be the older secondary monitor, which, as you can imagine, isn’t ideal for gaming.

I consulted with my boyfriend, who is more experienced with technology, and he suggested trying different ports for the monitor connections. I tried this, and while my primary monitor came back to life, the secondary one still refuses to signal anything despite being properly connected. While I was ready to accept the loss of my second monitor, I was more concerned about the strange display issues.

My boyfriend pointed me towards a few troubleshooting methods, but much to my dismay, I discovered that my Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) appeared to be missing from the system’s settings. I even took photos of what I encountered, but the resolution settings won’t allow me to make any changes.

Here’s where I hit a wall: I don’t even own a screwdriver and am unsure how to open my PC case for a physical inspection. My boyfriend lives quite a distance away, making it impossible for him to assist me in person. In the hopes that the problem could resolve itself, I let the PC sit turned off for a few hours. Upon checking again, the issues persist.

I’m reaching out to the community to see if anyone has insights or advice on whether this is a simple fix or if I might have to accept that my GPU has bitten the dust and will require a costly replacement down the line.

I kindly ask that any feedback remains constructive—my boyfriend assures me I didn’t do anything wrong, and while I’m eager to learn, the situation has left me feeling anxious about whether