Random crashes while gaming

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TherealFrietsaus

PCHF Member
Sep 4, 2024
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Hey all, I need some help with figuring out what's crashing my PC, because I've tried everything I know and searched a lot on the internet, but haven't been able to solve it.
My PC randomly crashes when playing various games. This has been going on for about a year. The crashes are always the same: PC shuts down completely with no warning and does not reboot on its own. I need to press the power button, after which it immediately starts as if nothing ever happened. This does not happen with every game and it also does not necessarily happen when playing very demanding games. I will give a brief overview of some of the games that caused problems and how I dealt with it.

- Frostpunk: crashes every 30 minutes, or sometimes within a few minutes. Was able to fix this by turning all settings to low. No crashes anymore.
- Farthest Frontier: crashes every few minutes. Fixed it by setting my GPU max clock speed to -20% in my drivers.
- Black Myth: Wukong: First played it for about an hour and a half with no problems. Today I played it for half an hour after which it crashed. I rebooted and started the game up again and it crashed within a few minutes.

I haven't tried it in a while, but when this problem first occurred I was also playing Elden Ring (which is much more demanding than Frostpunk and Farthest Frontier) and did not encounter any problems with that. Currently the only game I play a lot is Rocket League, which has never had any problems.

To further understand the problem, I did some stress tests:
- in-browser stress test: gpu, cpu and combined. All 3 for 5-10 minutes, no crash.
- FurMark 2 stress test:
  • crash after 2-3 min
  • set max clock speed to -20%. No crash after 9 minutes of testing
  • set max clock back to 0. After 4 minutes of no crash, I added the in-browsed cpu stress test. Crash after 10 sec. The fact that adding the cpu caused it to crash, made me think that the problem is with the PSU rather than the GPU, but a brand new PSU was not able to fix the issue.
  • I noticed that when I start a stress test with a cool PC, the GPU wattage fluctuates heavily (average 120, lows of 100, frequent peaks of 170-200). However, after about 5 minutes, it stabilises to about 120, with very few fluctuations, possibly due to thermal throttle (though it reaches max temp almost immediately). When the clock speed is set to -20%, the wattage is stable at 120 from the get go.

Things I've tried: brand new PSU, including new cables to everything except peripherals. Updated drivers.

Specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzed 5 5600X
GPU: Gigabyte Radeon AMD RX 5700 XT Gaming OC 8G
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200 MHz, 2x8GB
MOBO: Gigabyte x470 Aorus ultra gaming
PSU: Corsair RM 850x (850 watt)

Any help in figuring out what's going on would be greatly appreciated!
 
Random crashes while gaming

Some clarity regarding your thread title;

Software such as Windows can crash and when it does crash you get a BSOD and when enabled a crash dmp is generated, programs or games when they crash can on occasion close to the desktop but the computer will still be 100% functional.

Hardware failure such as a weak power supply and/or overheating are not software related and when a computer for example suddenly turns off, freezes or the screen goes black etc the behaviour should be described as the "computer shut down unexpectedly" or froze etc and not as having crashed as the latter implies a software issue as opposed to an obvious hardware issue when described properly.

Having the correct info means that helpers will not be looking for a software issue when the problem is clearly hardware related.

As a starting point;

Make sure that Windows Power Plan is set to Balanced, , Ultra and High Performance are a form of overclocking that is known to cause stability and overheating issues, the setting should only be used for gaming type notebooks that have a discrete GPU that needs the extra power.

Restore the MBs default factory settings in the BIOS, they are sometimes listed as one of the following " factory defaults" "most stable" or on newer boards "optimized" please note that if you have both the "most stable" and the "optimized" options in the BIOS you should choose the most stable" option as in this instance the "optimized" settings are a form of overclocking that can cause instability.

Save the new settings, exit the BIOS, restart the computer, test by using the computer as you normally would, post back with an update once you have done this.
 
Thanks for clarifying the difference between crashes and shutdowns and thanks for your help in trying to solve the issue.
I have set the Windows Power Plan to Balanced (it was at high performance) and I have restored the BIOS settings to default settings.
After about 10 minutes of playing Black Myth: Wukong, it shut down in the same manner as usual.
 
You are welcome and thanks for the update.

Is the PC plugged directly into a wall socket, a power strip or a UPS.

What you describe it typical of something overheating and we will check this shortly but before we do let's see if any software is shown to be having issues at the same time as the PC is turning off.

Download MiniToolBox and save the file to the Desktop.

Close the browser and run the tool, check the following options;

List last 10 Event Viewer Errors
List Installed Programs
List Devices (Only Problems)
List Users, Partitions and Memory size

Click on Go.

Post the resulting log in your next reply for us if you will.
 
The PC is, and always has been, plugged into a power strip.
I have run the MiniToolBox program according to your instructions and have attached the output.
In terms of overheating, I can already tell you that since I've had this GPU the hotspot temperature has always immediately shot up to the maximum 110 degrees Celsius under load. For the first two years or so, however, I had no shutdowns, despite the temperature being 110 for hours on end.
 

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In terms of overheating, I can already tell you that since I've had this GPU the hotspot temperature has always immediately shot up to the maximum 110 degrees Celsius under load. For the first two years or so,

What has been telling you those figures.

We can see a clear and serious problem there but that must be put aside as I prefer to be straight to the point, are you running a non legit Windows 10 OS.
 
I used the AMD drivers to check the temperature.
Currently using non legit Windows 10. Used to be legit but an update gave me problems and after rolling it back it didn't accept my license. Decided pirating was the easiest fix.
 
We thank you for your honesty but it does unfortunately mean that even if we wanted to we cannot help you for legal reasons;

As per the PCHF Terms and rules that we each agreed to abide by when becoming a member;

3. Discussion of or promotion of sites offering cracks, warez, torrents, pornography or any other illegal material or any software created to download any of the above will result in an immediate ban. This includes nulled, copied or any other illegal software or operating systems.

Had you come to us before you installed the illegal OS we 100% would have resolved the issue for you.
 
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