Flickering pixels and sort of screen tearing

[Dominic22]

I need some drastic help from anyone possible. I am a fairly tech savvy person and my girlfriends pc is having a problem with flickering pixels and it's almost like screen tearing but it's very hard to describe. Almost like broad lines in any kind of direction and color flashing around the screen. This drastically happens when she is playing the Sims 4. I have updated the gpu, swapped monitors, swapped cables, I even plugged the monitor into the dvi port in what I'm assuming is the motherboard but I'm not completely sure without looking inside. What else could I be missing or try? It just makes no sense to me what else it could be. Any help is definitely appreciated. 

[Photoray002]

Hello @Dominic22

Can you explain in more detail what you mean when you say you upgraded the GPU?

Did you install a new Graphics card or did you mean you updated the driver?

And when you say you used the video port on the motherboard, that is the wrong one.

You need to plug the monitor into the port on the graphics card.

It will be like this photo...

[Dominic22]

Yes sorry I updates the driver for the gpu and I had the pc plugged into the hdmi on the graphics hard and I was thinking the dvi port was integrated graphics but I see now it is not. I was basically trying to run the pc on integrated graphics so I could see if the problem still persisted. 

[Photoray002]

The integrated graphics will be disabled when a PCIe graphics card is installed.

When you upgraded the driver, did you do a clean install?

Run a program called Guru 3D driver uninstaller.

It will remove a lot of the remnants of the old driver. Then manually search the system for any leftover files or folders of Nvidia and delete them. Then install the new driver.

If the problem persists, run the UEFI Diagnostics to check for a possible hardware failure.

To do this, turn off the machine. Then turn it on and rapidly tap the F2 key until the diagnostics menu appears. Do not boot into Windows first.

Run the extensive test for everything. Let me know if you find an error.

HP How to use Diagnostics

[Dominic22]

Thank you, what do you think I should try first? I have the gpu already out as I am inspecting components. Should I set it up without the gpu installed and run integrated first and see if it does it still? 

[Photoray002]

Well, you can if you wish. It wont hurt anything.

[Dominic22]

Well I did that and the problem was no longer present. It's definitely something graphics related I guess now it's time to run diagnostics 

[Photoray002]

If diagnostics does not find any errors, do the clean driver install method I mentioned and see what happens.

[Dominic22]

So I ended up running the extensive test finally and my hard drive short dst check failed error code 94QKHX-93498U-9XPGRA-60QB03. I just find it so hard to believe the hard drive is failing the pc is only 6 months old. I'm assuming that HP wouldn't just ship out a new warranty hard drive? I'll have to send the whole pc in? 

[Dominic22]

Also I'm not a computer genius but when I removed the gpu and ran off of dedicated graphics the problem did not persist anymore so I feel as if the hard drive is not my problem as far as my original complaint. But as I said I'm not sure being I'm not a computer technician.