I’m having a frustrating issue with my gaming PC, and I’m hoping you can help me narrow down the cause.
For the last couple of weeks, my PC has been randomly crashing during gaming sessions (mainly when playing Cyberpunk 2077 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla). The screen will freeze, and then the system either crashes to a black screen or sometimes restarts completely. I’ve checked the Event Viewer, but the logs don’t point to anything obvious.
Here’s what I know:
Temperatures: CPU and GPU temps are fine, even under load. CPU stays around 60°C, and GPU hovers around 70°C.
Power Supply: I’ve got a Corsair RM750x PSU, so I don’t think power is the issue.
RAM: Running 16GB of G.Skill Trident Z DDR4-3200, and I’ve done a MemTest with no errors.
GPU: Running an RTX 3070, and I’ve tested it with FurMark, and no crashes there.
Software: All drivers are up to date, and I’ve tried reinstalling the GPU drivers with DDU. Windows 10 is fully updated, too.
What I’ve Tried So Far:
Stress testing the CPU with Prime95 – no issues after 2 hours.
Testing the GPU with benchmarks and stress tests – no issues.
Checking the PSU for voltage stability using HWMonitor – all readings look stable.
Reinstalling Windows – Didn’t help.
What Could Be the Issue?
I’m starting to wonder if it could be related to the motherboard or something else less obvious. I have an MSI B450 motherboard with a Ryzen 5 3600. Could the motherboard be failing under load, or is there a chance this could be a software issue (maybe some Windows 10 update conflict)?
Has anyone else experienced something similar? Any ideas on further diagnostics I can run to pinpoint this?
I had that happen on my 3600 a few years back. Usually there were no logs but sometimes there were, and they lead me to other people having the same issues and having had to RMA their cpu’s. Turns out there was some fault on the early 3600’s which was then fixed, so newer CPU’s shouldn’t have it anymore. Could be you are just unlucky in the CPU lottery like I was, or could be something else entirely.
I ended up replacing it with a 3800XT and never had those issues again.
If you can get another CPU, that would probably be an easy fix, but not a 100% guarantee ofc. Otherwise you can keep looking at the logs every time a freeze or a crash happens and hope it will eventually spit out something you can search.
Other people seemed to have those crashes and freezes all the time but for me it was weeks, sometimes months between them and I used my 3600 quite happily for about two years before swapping it out.
One possibility is that the motherboard could be failing under load. It’s also worth considering if a recent Windows 10 update might be causing conflicts. Storage problems might be at play, so try reinstalling games on a different drive. Additionally, make sure your motherboard’s BIOS is up to date.
Two hours of Prime95 is not a guarantee of anything, 24 hour minimum blend runs what I personally use before I consider a system stable enough for daily use. I’ve seen unstable memory subtimings not even generate an error until 12 hours in before, if voltages are right on the hairs edge of stability they can take an even longer time to manifest an error.
For the GPU forcing a crash is the wrong approach, most rendering errors won’t cause an outright crash, it just renders things wrong that might not even be visible to the mark 1 eyeball. You need a tool that does error detection on the rendered frames. The only currently maintained program I know of that does this is OCCT. The free version caps at an hour per run but that should be plenty. EVGA used to have an amazing program for this I swore by, but it was discontinued more than a decade ago and doesn’t run on modern cards/drivers.
It’s worth checking all the plugs and connectors inside your system, reconnecting the video cables, and making sure the GPU is absolutely fully seated in its slot. Yes PCIe slots have locking clips, but my EVGA 1080 Ti Hydrocopper had zero problems pulling a Houdini to slip the back corner out of the slot from a little case jostling. It didn’t error either, it would work right up until I saw a random black screen and the system hard rebooted. I wasted two days troubleshooting before finally cracking open the case and noticing the card was trying to make an escape. I’ve been paranoid about jostling cases (and checking for hardware causes) ever since.
This may help. Download Intel’s eXtreme Tuning Utility (XTU) and turn on the Automatic Overclocking. This stopped my PC from crashing, although this occurred mainly when the system was idle.
Is your memory OC? I had a similar issue on an old system with a R5 1600 and resolved it by lowering my rams speed. That system never had an issue outside of gaming or running a heavy load it. Once I adjusted the ram speed I never had the issue again.
Seems the problem was a defected memory controller on the CPU.