Sorta random GPU(?) crashes during certain games

lairiak · August 24, 2022

Bear with me, it's a long explanation.

I've had a peculiar problem with my computer for a little while now, but now I'm totally lost and I'm looking to multiple forums for a solution.

Recently, I had a window AC unit installed in my room, which has my computer in it. Ever since then, my computer crashes seemingly for no reason with certain games, even when the AC is unplugged. Most notably, the games being FF14 and CSGO. At first, I was thinking a possible power issue, but my PC is plugged into a surge protector, so I was thinking it would block any power spikes to prevent damage. I'm not an electrician however so please correct me if I'm wrong. This issue could be entirely separate and coincidental concerning the AC unit, but I figured I would mention it because it happened in the same time frame. Another thing to mention, I did have the AC unit plugged in the surge protector with my PC, however after noticing the issues, I moved it to a different outlet in a different room with an extension cord. It still crashes. The most I ever have the AC unit running for is 30 minutes, and never whilst doing anything heavy on the PC. Again, it's possible it's totally unrelated, but I want to give as much information as I can.

Step-by-step, this is what happens:

Open CSGO, queue for match
warmup ensues, everything is fine
USUALLY first or second round it slows down a bunch, playing a bunch of distorted sounds until it either freezes or crashes, sometimes with no BSOD. When it does BSOD, the error is VIDEO_SCHEDULER_INTERNAL_ERROR
Oddly enough, it won't do it again for the entire day. It crashes once, but then not again for the entire day.

- The same thing happens in FF14. I haven't tested any other game but I doubt the outcome will be any different.

This is what happened for about a week before writing this, so, doing some basic troubleshooting I used DDU to cleanly reinstall drivers thinking that was the issue.

However, that didn't fix anything. After doing that, it crashed watching a simple youtube video, no BSOD, but Event Viewer indicates it was a BSOD with error 0x00000116, or VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE. But it hasn't done that since. Very weird.

Here's a DMP of the most recent crash, a VIDEO_SCHEDULER_INTERNAL_ERROR crash: link

Here's a screenshot I took just today of CSGO after experiencing that slowdown and trying to alt tab out and back into it: Imgur

It looks like unloaded textures to me, but I'm not totally sure. I figured I should post that here though. Shortly after this happened, I tried to close CSGO with task manager, and my PC froze. So now we're here.

Things I've tried:

sfc /scannow in cmd (didn't find anything)
chkdsk (didn't find anything)
DISM (didn't work)
Reinstalling CSGO (didn't do anything)
DDU (mentioned earlier)
Cleaned out PC, reseated GPU and RAM - I thought this worked because I didn't have issues for a bit, but was unfortunately met with a crash today
Updated BIOS and Chipset Drivers

Other things I can possibly try (in no particular order):

DDU again, different driver ver.
Changing power settings in windows or NVIDIA control panel
For a last resort, replacing hardware
Anything you guys can think of down below

Specs:
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2060 Super (MSI model)
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600x
Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black
Motherboard: B450 Tomahawk

BIOS ver.: 7C02v1I1
RAM: 16GB 3200mhz Corsair Vengeance
HDD: 2TB Toshiba DT01ACA200
SSD: 250GB Samsung 960 EVO (my C: drive)
PSU: 850W Gold Certified GAMEMAX PSU
Case: MSI Gungnir 100

Thank you for taking the time and having the patience to read this all, I know it's a lot. I just don't really know where to turn to.

Bombastinator · August 24, 2022

Window ac units are famous for messing stuff up with EMI, RFI, and straight up power draw. Big electric motor that goes suddenly on and off on its own schedule. This sounds to me like possibly a sort of messed up heat thing. Maybe look at a temp graph and compare it to the fan curves. It’s like the thing is just on the edge of too hot some but not all of the time. This might be as simple as relaxing the fan curves a bit and giving it a bit more air earlier.

Edited August 24, 2022 by Bombastinator

lairiak · August 25, 2022

18 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Window ac units are famous for messing stuff up with EMI, RFI, and straight up power draw. Big electric motor that goes suddenly on and off on its own schedule. This sounds to me like possibly a sort of messed up heat thing. Maybe look at a temp graph and compare it to the fan curves. It’s like the thing is just on the edge of too hot some but not all of the time. This might be as simple as relaxing the fan curves a bit and giving it a bit more air earlier.

It's definitely possible that the AC messed with power draw from the PSU, considering that GAMEMAX PSUs don't exactly have the greatest reputation from what I've seen. But, I also have never had the AC just on, so it'd turn on and off randomly throughout the day. I'd always manually turn it on for 30 min, then turn it off. Though I'm sure that doesn't really matter in this case, if the AC is truly what caused these issues.

Unfortunately, there's not really a spare power supply I can try at the moment, unless I buy a new one which I don't exactly want to do if I don't know for sure...

However I think I can try and borrow a friend's GPU to test it in my system to see if I am having the same issues.

I don't **think** I'm having temperature issues but I'll definitely keep an eye on it, but so far, no abnormalities

Bombastinator · August 25, 2022

10 minutes ago, lairiak said:

It's definitely possible that the AC messed with power draw from the PSU, considering that GAMEMAX PSUs don't exactly have the greatest reputation from what I've seen. But, I also have never had the AC just on, so it'd turn on and off randomly throughout the day. I'd always manually turn it on for 30 min, then turn it off. Though I'm sure that doesn't really matter in this case, if the AC is truly what caused these issues.

Unfortunately, there's not really a spare power supply I can try at the moment, unless I buy a new one which I don't exactly want to do if I don't know for sure...

However I think I can try and borrow a friend's GPU to test it in my system to see if I am having the same issues.

I don't **think** I'm having temperature issues but I'll definitely keep an eye on it, but so far, no abnormalities

Heh. Gammax does not. It isn’t as bad as, say, Diablo, but it’s not great. I don’t know if gammax makes their own PSUs or not or to what degree it controls manufacture if it doesn’t.