PC shuts off when trying to load COD, fortnite, or apex legends.

[Newton Pens]

Specs are:

CPU		AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard		MSI B450-A PRO MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard
Storage		Timetec 35TTFP6PCIE 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card		MSI Radeon RX 6600 MECH 2X 8G Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card
Case		Zalman T6 ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply		Corsair CX550F 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

 

Built a couple of PCs last December for myself (blender) and son (to game on).

Same exact parts on each computer, but I have 64gigs of ram and he has 16.

 

His computer started crashing when trying to load  COD black ops cold war, fortnite, or apex legends (so far).  Did internet 'research' and thought, maybe PSU. 

Swapped mine in for his, nope.

Bought new 750 watt today.  Nope.

Swapped in more ram.  Nope.

Swapped GPUs.  Nope.

Swapped CPUs.  Nope.

 

I did a direct x test today and it said all was fine.

I used Firmark and pressure tested the gpu and did a cpu test and all that turned out fine as well.

Well, when I did the firmark cpu pressure test, the pc shut down, but the intel cpu tester said all was well.

So I have no idea.

 

So what the f'in hell is up with these stupid games that they won't run on this stupid computer??

Also updated to newest gpu and cpu drivers.

Trying uninstall and new install of cold war just to see, b/c cold war USED TO WORK.  

He was playing it yesterday just fine, then downloaded apex and that killed everything.

All of this is through Steam.

 

Is the only thing I'm missing a windows update or clean install?
Should I throw Linux on his PC instead of windows?

 

This has been an all day deal and I'm so stuck I'm ready to throw his computer in the trash (no not really, but I'm really frustrated).

 

Thanks for any help, or pointing to good resources, or anything.

Shawn

 

[Shimejii]

Its Honestly just trying its best to prevent you from playing games that will make your life worse. Id say its doing a hell of a job of protecting you.

 

On a more serious note, it sounds like either  storage issue like its running out of space, it doesnt know what to do and shuts down (COD is a huge game, as well as other games)  so double check the storage drive.

 

Other then that if its not a driver issue causing it, or something conflicting with the Direct X stuff, sounds like it may need to be tested piece by piece and see what keeps failing.

[Newton Pens]

Thanks for your reply.

 

The 1 tb ssd might not be enough??  Dang...

I did a direct x test today and it said all was fine.

I used Firmark and pressure tested the gpu and did a cpu test and all that turned out fine as well.

Well, when I did the firmark cpu pressure test, the pc shut down, but the intel cpu tester said all was well.

So I have no idea.

[Brooksie359]

Honestly the newest gpu drivers are hardly ever the most stable drivers. I have had more game crash issues resulting from me updating my drivers than I have had not updating them. I typically try not to update drivers for this reason. If it isn't broke don't fix it mentality is what I have when it comes to gpu drivers. 

[Newton Pens]

7 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly the newest gpu drivers are hardly ever the most stable drivers. I have had more game crash issues resulting from me updating my drivers than I have had not updating them. I typically try not to update drivers for this reason. If it isn't broke don't fix it mentality is what I have when it comes to gpu drivers. 

Do you think rolling back to older gpu drivers will do it?

How do I do that?

[shawn newton]

Does anybody think a clean windows install would work?

[Brooksie359]

8 hours ago, Newton Pens said:

Do you think rolling back to older gpu drivers will do it?

How do I do that?

Honestly I have not used an AMD card so not sure how their drivers work. For nvidia I can usually go to their website and look at different drivers and download the one I want. 

[Newton Pens]

5 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly I have not used an AMD card so not sure how their drivers work. For nvidia I can usually go to their website and look at different drivers and download the one I want. 

thanks I'll go look.

 

 

another thought I had, was, what if it's the ssd that's causing it?  seems like a stretch, but it's a cheap one, and maybe something on it isn't communicating with the mobo?

I'm grasping at straws at this point...

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, Newton Pens said:

thanks I'll go look.

 

 

another thought I had, was, what if it's the ssd that's causing it?  seems like a stretch, but it's a cheap one, and maybe something on it isn't communicating with the mobo?

I'm grasping at straws at this point...

That seems very unlikely to me. Doesn't sound like the behavior you would see with a bad ssd or bad connection between the ssd and the motherboard. Honestly it sounds to me like driver or software issues or potentially ram issues. I would try running the ram at lower speeds and see if that fixes anything. Sometimes unstable ram can cause game crashes but again that usually would cause a full system crash at some point but not always. Ram issues can cause quite a few issues and often times are very hard to diagnose so I always keep them in mind in situations where I am unsure of what the problem is. 

[Newton Pens]

28 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

That seems very unlikely to me. Doesn't sound like the behavior you would see with a bad ssd or bad connection between the ssd and the motherboard. Honestly it sounds to me like driver or software issues or potentially ram issues. I would try running the ram at lower speeds and see if that fixes anything. Sometimes unstable ram can cause game crashes but again that usually would cause a full system crash at some point but not always. Ram issues can cause quite a few issues and often times are very hard to diagnose so I always keep them in mind in situations where I am unsure of what the problem is. 

 

this happened with his original 16gb ram and my 64gb ram sticks.  I swapped EVERYthing around, one piece at a time, until the only things left to swap were ssd and mobo.

In bios, everything is left bone stock.  I didn't overclock or speed anything or change anything (b/c I don't have a clue how to do this w/o potentially messing something up).

 

I just did a clean windows install (re-install?) and he's downloading cod now.  The weird thing is, it worked long enough for him to play 12 hours, and when he installed apex legends (he wants to play online with some of his school buddies) it borked everything.  He uninstalled apex and cod still didn't work.  

 

The more I read online, the more it seems like COD cold ops black war just doesn't work sometimes, regardless of pc specs....

boooooo.

[Newton Pens]

all the gaming is through Steam by the way.  Most of the 'help' web pages were if playing through blizzard or whatever the other one is.

 

Also - we can't even get into a splash or loading screen.  I click PLAY in steam (or from desktop link) it gives us a "your game wasn't shut down properly last time.  safe mode, normal, ignore" popup, and then before we have a chance to think about which button to click (sometimes less time than that) the computer restarts.  

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Newton Pens said:

 

this happened with his original 16gb ram and my 64gb ram sticks.  I swapped EVERYthing around, one piece at a time, until the only things left to swap were ssd and mobo.

In bios, everything is left bone stock.  I didn't overclock or speed anything or change anything (b/c I don't have a clue how to do this w/o potentially messing something up).

 

I just did a clean windows install (re-install?) and he's downloading cod now.  The weird thing is, it worked long enough for him to play 12 hours, and when he installed apex legends (he wants to play online with some of his school buddies) it borked everything.  He uninstalled apex and cod still didn't work.  

 

The more I read online, the more it seems like COD cold ops black war just doesn't work sometimes, regardless of pc specs....

boooooo.

Might be an issue with anticheat on apex picking up a background program by accident and causing the game to not run. I know sometime they will even pick up msi afterburner or razer synapse as cheat programs and fail to run the game. 

[shawn newton]

59 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Might be an issue with anticheat on apex picking up a background program by accident and causing the game to not run. I know sometime they will even pick up msi afterburner or razer synapse as cheat programs and fail to run the game. 

and that would force a full pc restart?  seems odd...  still downloading cod on the fresh windows install, so will comment here what happens when it's done...

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, shawn newton said:

and that would force a full pc restart?  seems odd...  still downloading cod on the fresh windows install, so will comment here what happens when it's done...

Software errors can cause system crashes. Also the issue started with apex so it wouldn't be unreasonable that anticheat was responsible. 

[shawn newton]

okay - new windows install, new cod download/install.

didn't download ANY other games or any other software or anything.

 

aaaaaaaaaand

 

it still crashes.

[shawn newton]

So is this just a situation where the game just doesn't work on some computers for no real reason? From all my reading that's all I've come up with. 

 

Thanks. 

[Newton Pens]

In case anybody searches and finds this, the problem is the SSD.

 

Attached a screenshot with bad sdd on bottom, and the one the game works with on top (though Amazon sent me 500gb instead...)

So problem sorted.

[Newton Pens]

okay so one more update.  when I said it was the hard drive - that was my assumption.  I built two PCs with the same mobo, cpu, and gpu.  I had 64gb of ram, he had 16.  I had 500gb m.2 ssd, he had 1tb.  

My kid couldn't play a ton of games on his computer b/c they would crash it.

So I had him install the COD game on MY shop computer and it worked fine.  Oh!  Must be the ssd, I thought.

NO.

Put in a new Samsung ssd from bestbuy this morning - god that thing was SO much faster - I didn't expect that - but still, the games they crash the PC.

So fuck.  

He's upset.  I'm upset.

Let's just move the hard drives around and see if it's the mobos.

Bam.  Worked like a charm.

 

Why?  What the hell?

What is the problem here?  Definitely hardware.  Something busted or messed up, but not messed up enough that it won't work with most other stuff.

Hrm....