How to find out reason for crash?

[Yo Whats Up]

My pc often crashes during games like every few hours. I can't figure out the reason why. I think my cpu overclock is stable. But obviously stress tests like prime95 require more voltages than real games, so stress testing is pointless. And my thermals are generally in the 80-90s range cuz i like my fans quiet, i can get the temp to 70c and below easily but i don't like jet engines, i'm on speakers so no headphones to help me muffle the fan sound. I have determined that if the PC and monitor completely turn off instantenously, then it's a psu crash. But in my case it's not, cuz the game freezes and the speakers get stuck on this RRRRRRRRRRR sound until I restart. Sometimes there is a blue screen but the blue screen freezes as well so you can see like the unhappy face but no actual msg for the reason. Rarely there is a msg sometimes like WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR, but this happens very rarely, and idk how to fix that. I really don't think my oc is that high, it's only 4.2 ghz at 1.25V, i've seen people pushing way more with this cpu at this voltage. How can i figure out why it's crashing? Event viewer is useless:

 

 

[Hinjima]

1 minute ago, Yo Whats Up said:

My pc often crashes during games like every few hours. I can't figure out the reason why. I think my cpu overclock is stable. But obviously stress tests like prime95 require more voltages than real games, so stress testing is pointless. And my thermals are generally in the 80-90s range cuz i like my fans quiet, i can get the temp to 70c and below easily but i don't like jet engines, i'm on speakers so no headphones to help me muffle the fan sound. I have determined that if the PC and monitor completely turn off instantenously, then it's a psu crash. But in my case it's not, cuz the game freezes and the speakers get stuck on this RRRRRRRRRRR sound until I restart. Sometimes there is a blue screen but the blue screen freezes as well so you can see like the unhappy face but no actual msg for the reason. Rarely there is a msg sometimes like WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR, but this happens very rarely, and idk how to fix that. I really don't think my oc is that high, it's only 4.2 ghz at 1.25V, i've seen people pushing way more with this cpu at this voltage. How can i figure out why it's crashing? Event viewer is useless:

 

 

list your entire PC specs please.

[Yo Whats Up]

1 minute ago, Hinjima said:

list your entire PC specs please.

I'm too embarassed

[Hinjima]

1 minute ago, Yo Whats Up said:

I'm too embarassed

Good luck then.

[RONOTHAN##]

Just now, Yo Whats Up said:

I'm too embarassed

Low specs aren't anything to be embarrassed about, most of us have had a low spec system at one point in our lives or another, and if you want help we need to know what system we're dealing with to know what's even possible to try. 

 

 

[jaslion]

6 minutes ago, Yo Whats Up said:

I'm too embarassed

Then we can't help you

 

List them to get help.

 

They are computer specs who cares.

[Yo Whats Up]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Low specs aren't anything to be embarrassed about, most of us have had a low spec system at one point in our lives or another, and if you want help we need to know what system we're dealing with to know what's even possible to try. 

 

thanks that makes me feel better

 

specs are intel i7-4770k, amd vega 56, 32gb ddr3 1600mhz, corsair rmx 650w

[Hinjima]

6 minutes ago, Yo Whats Up said:

I'm too embarassed

Try to remove your OC, see if that helps.  Not all CPU's are the same, you might gotten unlucky with the silicon.

[Hinjima]

Just now, Yo Whats Up said:

thanks that makes me feel better

 

specs are intel i7-4770k, amd vega 56, 32gb ddr3 1600mhz, corsair rmx 650w

Thats not even half bad, still decent for 1080p.

[jaslion]

6 minutes ago, Yo Whats Up said:

thanks that makes me feel better

 

specs are intel i7-4770k, amd vega 56, 32gb ddr3 1600mhz, corsair rmx 650w

Remove oc it's probably not stable. Especially on such an older chip the tim between cpu and heatspreader of the cpu can have deteriorated too much

[RONOTHAN##]

12 minutes ago, Yo Whats Up said:

thanks that makes me feel better

 

specs are intel i7-4770k, amd vega 56, 32gb ddr3 1600mhz, corsair rmx 650w

I'd be a bit concerned about the CPU overclock, it's not that aggressive for a 4770K, but there are some chips that can't do that (I own a 6700K that won't do 4.3GHz at all for instance, regardless of voltage, and those chips did clock about as well as Haswell did), and if it can't pass Prime95 I'd be a little skeptical of its stability (Haswell was before temps got so insane that Prime95 did actually make sense as a full stress test). First thing I'd do is disable it and see if you still randomly crash, especially since that WHEA error is most commonly CPU instability. 

 

Next thing I'd check is memory stability. RAM dying isn't common, but it's not unheard of and is likely to cause all sorts of random blue screens. Run something like Memtest86 or TestMem5 and see if it's stable or not. 

[Yo Whats Up]

But i see people doing like 4.4ghz on this voltage on the forums, did i really hit the bottom of the barrel chip? This must be so unlucky...

 

I also did some undervolting on my vega but after like 20 mins in Tomb Raider Dox Demo it runs fine, so it's prob not that right?

 

Also my cpu sometimes reaches like 95-100c mostly when i'm not watching the temps cuz i set fans manually in speedfan and if my cpu reaches max usage which is not hard nowadays it can really reach some high temps, i bought it in 2014 and it was great at the time but now it's really time for upgrade... But like can the temp reaching 100 be the sole reason for the crash? Also i fiddled with the cache voltage, could that be the reason it's crashing? And is there a way to tell if it's the core or cache voltage that's the reason for the crash? Also, if it crashes only once every few hrs it must mean that it's almost stable right? Like, i could live with 1 crash a day but not multiple.

 

Also, if i run memtest86 during the night, when i wake up where can i see the result?

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Yo Whats Up said:

But i see people doing like 4.4ghz on this voltage on the forums, did i really hit the bottom of the barrel chip?

That's what we want to figure it out. This was back when the silicon lottery was huge, so it's not out of the question that you've got a chip that can't do that, plus with the temps your reporting and the fact that those chips were very temperature sensitive it could just be you don't have enough cooling for 1.25V. 

 

8 minutes ago, Yo Whats Up said:

Also, if i run memtest86 during the night, when i wake up where can i see the result?

Yes, the result screen will show up and stay till you close it. Unless you have a cat that will sit on the keyboard it should be there when you wake up. 

[r00tb33r]

But without overclock it doesn't crash once in a few hours?

 

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination.

[Damocles Ti]

Here's my experiencing with overclocking troubleshooting:

• Memory is the issue:
  • Audio crackles
  • Certain apps become unresponsive
  • Aida64 memory fails within an hour (could also be CPU)
  • Windows Memory Diagnostic/Memtest64 (technically an unstable overclock can pass these, but these will show defective modules)
  • Applications crash with logs indication GFP or some type of address access violation
  • Windows boots with Access violation or "Bug Check" restarts where you can check the minidump to confirm if it's memory
  • The screen freezes dark but not black screened, looks like a very dark high-contrast deep-fry meme (This can also happen with GPU memory)
  • Browsing the web with chromium causes elements like videos to stop working or the page to give an "Aww snap" error
• CPU is the issue:
  • The computer blue screens and likely says some kind of watchdog timer
  • The computer completely offs itself and restarts (very common)
  • The computer freezes still in place like a hang
  • Applications crash on launch
  • Applications crash the whole computer when running hard
  • Prime95 gives you errors for rounding numbers
  • WHEA errors, usually you can look up the event ID to figure out exactly what it is (could be a memory controller, cache, system corruption, power, drivers, etc)
• GPU is the issue:
  • Games stutter or freezes but otherwise the desktop environment can be escaped to
  • Driver crashes, game closes itself, and the desktop recovers
  • The game runs, but you see artifacts, weird squares everywhere or the screen looks weird with missing textures or vertical lines (GPU memory)

These are just my opinions and experiences, may not be entirely applicable to your setup