Overwatch 2 crashes and restarts my PC exactly once a day

Service_Code_30 · August 22, 2023

I am having a strange issue with Overwatch 2 which has been ongoing for months. I built a new PC in January 2023 (specs below) and have been having this issue with Overwatch 2 ever since. Here are the very specific conditions of this issue:

My entire PC will crash (just goes to blackscreen) and restart on its own 0-10 minutes into my first game (after matchmaking)
Sometimes it doesn't crash at all in a given day (crash happens ~80% of the time I play OW2)
The crash will happen ONLY in the first game I play. After the restart, the crash will not occur again no matter how long I play that day.
If the crash does not occur within the first game, it will not crash for the rest of the time I am playing that day
This issue only exists in Overwatch 2
Otherwise, the game runs great (~200 FPS, 1440p)

This issue has been going on like clockwork for months. It is so consistent that I have to do a quick-play match every day before I start playing comp. I kept a detailed log of the issue for a while because I thought it may be related to a specific time of day, but it isn't. Also of note, my system is dual boot (Win10 / Nobara Linux). Recently, with the release of OW2 on Steam, I decided to give it a try on Linux. Lucky for me, it runs great, however the issue followed me to Linux.

Digging into the event viewer on Windows, this error accompanied every crash:

On Linux, after the crash and restart, It shows this error on the screen during boot for a few seconds, (the CPU # is different every time):

Some googling revealed other people with similar problems, but none fit this exact description or contained as much detail. Plus, the solutions often make no sense. People often suggest out of date drivers, or another program running interfering with the game (i.e. antivirus, afterburner, etc). I don't believe this to be the case since the issues is not unique to one operating system. I keep both of my OS's and GPU drivers up to date on a regular basis. The only common program I always have running is Discord, but I doubt that is the problem. The other thing I heard a lot is "check your temps". It is not my temps. I play far more demanding games for extended periods of time and none of them have this issue. I have an on screen display running most of the time and my temps are stable. If it was temp issue, I would expect throttling, not a hard restart. Ive tried numerous troubleshooting steps to no avail. I gave up on the issue for months, now I just accept my fate and wait 5 mins for my PC to crash every day I want to play OW2.

My conclusion is that it is some very specific conditions that this game puts on my system which does not cooperate with my exact hardware configuration. Faulty CPU? Maybe, but why only in this game in such a specific pattern? OW2 Bug? Maybe, but why do so few people have this problem? I'm truly at a loss.

PC Specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT (20GB VRAM)
RAM: 32GB DDR4 3600Mhz (XMP on)
MOBO: Msi B450M PRO-VDH MAX
PSU: 850 W

Sawa Takahashi · August 22, 2023

Probably unrelated but can you try lowering RAM XMP to 3200 MHz ? It may help, or not. Just curious.

real_salad · November 2, 2023

I have been having similar issues, whereby OW2 will crash once per day.

I have been attempting to diagnose the issue, without much luck. My specs are:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
RAM: 64GB DDR4 3200 MHz
MOBO: Asus Prime B40M-A
PSU: 850 W

Posting here to see if there are any updates.

real_salad · November 6, 2023

Rejoice! I have found a solution for my system at least.

I disabled Virtualisation Based Security in the BIOS (which is called SVM mode in my mobo) and have since been able to successfully pass the tests I was using to crash reliably before - watching a replay as you suggested, and running the Starcraft 2 stress test map both work fine.

I also installed AMD Ryzen Master software, the installation process for this may have updated CPU drivers / firmware.

I am unsure exactly why bios level virtualisation would cause these crashes, but changing this and I have not had any crashes yet - will update this thread if I do. @Service_Code_30 I know this thread is old, but if you are still having issues you can try this - if you need virtualisation on (for example if you run Docker on Windows) then this fix might not apply.

Also of note: doing a CPU stress test was also reliably causing my system to crash - I was convinced this was a GPU issue, however crashing during a CPU stress test would indicate otherwise.