Aurora R7, AW2518H, GeForce GTX 1080, not working

---

Can anyone please explain why the monitor is losing signal, and how I can connect the monitor to the dedicated graphics card without losing signal?  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thank you!

---

This system only supports display over onboard graphics, or discrete video card, but not both at the same time.  Plugging in the GPU is supposed to disable display over onboard graphics.  It sounds like, for some reason, that is not happening on your system.  In other words, onboard is being treated as primary (and disabling the GPU display).  When troubleshooting, I'd suggest only having 1 monitor connected.  

As to how to fix? I don't have a simple answer. I wouldn't suggest for you to disable onboard graphics at this point, as that might result in you having no working display, and may require a more advanced fix than getting this to work properly.  

If you lose signal only after windows loads, it might be software related.  Are you able to load the system with the monitor connected to the motherboard, and the GPU also installed but not connected to a monitor?  If so, I'd suggest you could probably start by reinstalling the Nvidia drivers, from nvidia.com, and select custom/clean installation like shown below. 

One simple test you could do is to go inside device manager while monitor connected to on board video and check whether pc detects the discrete video card properly.  If all installed correctly under display inside dev mgr you should see the GTX 1080 without any error. If the GTX is not listed properly there, follow @r72019 advice first uninstall all nvidia program already installed then reinstall latest driver downloaded from nvidia. Also make sure the power supply’s 8 pin gpu connector is plugged into the motherboard gpu pwr header next to top PCIe slot. 

@Kidsmom 

@redxps630    Also make sure the power supply’s 8 pin gpu connector is plugged into the motherboard gpu pwr header next to top PCIe slot. 

I am getting a lot of use out of this pic lately

(click photo to embiggen)

Thank you so much for the advice.  Sorry it took so long to reply, but nothing worked because the graphic card needed to be replaced.  We got it taken care of by Dell Support, so thank you again for your recommendations.