Can't fix game crashing

[Wohaaa]

Quick thing of note: It's not a problem I've been having, it's something a friend of mine has been having. I can't work on it instantly and I've tried my best to help but it just doesn't want to get fixed, so I'm fully open to suggestions.

 

I'll get straight to it. As of quite a while now my friend has been playing Final Fantasy 14 Online and a few other things with their machine. The machine is really good.

i7 9700k,

Asus Z390-E Gaming Motherboard,

Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 x 2 3000/3200 Mhz ram (They can't remember what it is. But it doesn't really matter. XMP was off. I'll explain later as to why.)

MSI RTX 2060 Super Gaming X (These names are getting cringe at this point)

Corsair RM650x PSU. 650 Watts and 80+ Gold

Samsung 960 EVO NVMe 1TB SSD

Seagate Barracuda 4TB HDD

Case I've forgotten but they put it under the AC so it gets fresh cool air. Don't have to worry about air flow that much.

 

So the problem: Sometimes when playing Final Fantasy 14 (FF14) the computer just freezes completely and has to be restarted entirely to be functional. When this happens, the fans on the graphics card also go to 100% fan speed.

This is a problem I also had with Team Fortress 2 a while back but it was years ago so I don't remember how it got fixed. TL;DR is at the bottom.

 

But things started getting bizarre. Normally, restart and go about on your day like nothing happened. But sometimes the computer would turn off then refuse to turn on for no reason. They just tried to turn it on later or use the reset button and just random things (not messing with the insides though) until it finally booted again. I had volunteered to help out to try to fix this issue. So, as usual, first we test out the hardware. I guided them on basically everything as a step by step basis. First running a stress test on the GPU via Furmark to see if it wasnt throttling or overheating or anything. Temperatures never got above 67 degrees on full load. CPU stress test via AIDA64, temperatures never got higher than 71 degrees. RAM, Storage, and Power Supply weren't tested separately but they were all functional. Or at least, I thought so.

I told them that there's nothing to worry about and everything seems functional. They went on about their day to play some more FF14 until the crash happened. I had told them to tell me exact details of the crash and also to send a picture of the insides of their computer. There wasn't much to the crash. It would freeze, nothing would work, GPU fans went to 100%, had to be restarted by holding down the power button. First thing I noticed from their computer though, 2 sticks of RAM but it wasn't spaced apart so it wasn't dual channel. I referred to the manual of the mobo to check which slots to put it in and then for some reason it refused to boot. Then we tried just one stick of memory. It booted. Then we tried that one stick in another slot. It booted. Then the second stick. It didn't boot. So you'd think there was something wrong with that. But then that first stick was also put in. It booted. Then the first stick was taken out. It booted. Much much more happened and I don't want to bore you but all you need to know is: All 32 gigs of ram were detected and functional. But it was very unpredictable. There was no pattern.

I told them once again to try playing FF14 and it crashed again. I assumed it could've been storage. The machine wouldn't boot. So I told them to unplug their hard drive. It booted. Tried FF14 again. Crashed again. It would boot but I told them to plug their hard drive back in. It booted.

I then assumed it could've been BIOS. First I got them to reset the CMOS battery using the jumper, and using the manual for reference, then we checked that everything was proper settings...we found Multicore Enhancement turned on. Some of you might know about it but it basically overclocked your CPU for you for extra performance, but the voltage was often higher than necessary. I got them to turn it off alongside every single overclock that might've been there by default. They don't know overclocking so it's all default stuff. Tried FF14 again. Crashed again.

At this point I considered a windows reinstall so I told them to back up all their data (despite having 5 TB they're only using 140 gigabytes of it at the moment) on an external drive and to do the Reset Windows option which I think was done by shift clicking Restart on the sign in options. Everything was reinstalled and the stuff which was necessary was just downloaded again. Then they tried playing FF14 again. And it still crashed.

So we tried updating the BIOS from the website of the motherboard and then changed the settings again to turn off all default overclocks and XMP as well. It still crashed.

So we tried updating Drivers of everything available from the motherboard's website. Chipset drivers, Intel Management Engine...or something (not Xtreme Tuning Utility. I know that much. Just forgot the name of this one in particular). Everything the motherboard's site had to offer for updating that wasn't an accessory like winrar or cpu z ROG editin, we updated. It still. Crashed.

While this was happening I noticed that they had a 1440p 144hz monitor but were using 60hz on it so I told them to try 144hz and the reaction was "ok yeah thats smooth".

So just today I got them to run a full system scan of MalwareBytes and of BitDefender. MalwareBytes upon first install has a 14 day premium trial and BitDefender has a 30 day trial. There wasn't a single malware or virus threat. From both. Which astounds me.

 

TL;DR: I've tried everything I know of to try to fix an issue in a machine but it just doesn't seem to work so please just give me suggestions to try out. But I'd prefer if you read the above to see what I've already done.

 

Over a decade in building machines as a hobby and this has just brought me to my knees. Never in my life have I struggled to solve something regarding computers this much. What I've mentioned thus far has just been a headache of mine. I don't see a pattern. What's causing it. And why in that one game. They've said it doesn't happen in any other game either. And I hate even more that I had this issue a few years ago but no clue how I solved it. So I'm open to suggestions. Currently I'm going to try plugging the GPU in the second PCIE lane, having another look at the BIOS, and well if you've seen the picture then I guess it's necessary a bit: Re building the entire machine, and during that, check for bent motherboard pins.