iI you are using amd and an asus mobo make sure to turn off Cool'n'Quiet in the bios. The probelms with black screens sounds as if the video driver installed is wrong, somehow. IMHO it is best to install video card drivers from the maker of the card. Therefore, if I buy a nvidia asus card, go to the asus site and download their driver from asus, instead of going to the nvidia site and downloading it from them.