The most cursed PC to date

[ImperialLeader]

I think I have the most cursed PC at least I have used to date. I built a PC in 2022 it was an all-AMD build and I thought it would be a solid experience for a 1440p experience. Little did I know that I would be having a near-endless battle of constant fear and troubleshooting to prevent this thing from suddenly just up and dying on me. Today was the day that nearly gave me a heart attack when I was playing and streaming Helldivers 2, the GPU just died out of nowhere.

Now normally I would do a forced restart (I have that button on my PC) and it would boot right up, however, when I did that today it just did not boot for a solid 5 or more minutes as I recall which is a new problem that I do not want to have since I am broke. A little info about this PC, I was used to this thing constantly BSODing almost every month, and occasionally the boot drive won't be detected at all but for those the problem fixed itself (which is the bad fix cause I don't know what caused or even fixed it). This one was a full-on dead with no POST I could see, and I am pretty sure you can tell my mood then. After panicking for a while, I decided to do a Q-Flash even though I did not think it would work, but somehow I managed to get it to boot thanks to that! Once again I did not see any reason as to why this had happened and all I saw once logging in was that my hardware settings had been changed which was weird since I already had up-to-date drivers as far as I remember.

I am not sure what this PC will do next time and I dread the day it suddenly cost me a kidney to fix, but well, not much I can do, and guess all I can do is pray and patch this PC up so that it stays alive.

[191x7]

Specs? Other troubleshooting steps you've done?

[ImperialLeader]

I have a Ryzen 7 5700X, Gigabyte RX 6750XT OC, 16x2 Corsair Vengeance 3600 MHz CL18, a Kingston NV2 TB (boot drive) + 2TB Team Group MP33, and a Corsair RM850x PSU.

 

As for troubleshooting steps, well I try to check online whenever I get BSOD for the error codes despite the absolute glitchy look and all tends to go for the GPU drivers which I can't do anything since I kept it up to date when all my searches tend to say to try to update it. For the sudden failure of the boot drive, I checked the boot drive's health and such which came up with nothing. As for this recent problem, I talked to a friend and he said it might be from the GPU as usual and the drivers, asking if I have up-to-date drivers which I do. Tried checking Event Viewer and realized I barely could figure it out (I am not sure what I was expecting). Although I was researching this recent problem and I remember from one of the random posts and I saw was something about the bios and trying to reset it which made me do the same thing.

[TatamiMatt]

1 hour ago, ImperialLeader said:

I have a Ryzen 7 5700X, Gigabyte RX 6750XT OC, 16x2 Corsair Vengeance 3600 MHz CL18, a Kingston NV2 TB (boot drive) + 2TB Team Group MP33, and a Corsair RM850x PSU.

 

As for troubleshooting steps, well I try to check online whenever I get BSOD for the error codes despite the absolute glitchy look and all tends to go for the GPU drivers which I can't do anything since I kept it up to date when all my searches tend to say to try to update it. For the sudden failure of the boot drive, I checked the boot drive's health and such which came up with nothing. As for this recent problem, I talked to a friend and he said it might be from the GPU as usual and the drivers, asking if I have up-to-date drivers which I do. Tried checking Event Viewer and realized I barely could figure it out (I am not sure what I was expecting). Although I was researching this recent problem and I remember from one of the random posts and I saw was something about the bios and trying to reset it which made me do the same thing.

So the hardware settings were changed, by this do you mean BIOS settings? This will reset on a Q-Flash so this is normal behaviour.

 

Also helldivers has a specific issue with AMD GPUs where it will crash if it overloads the GPU, basically dont let the GPU get to 100% usage or crashing is extremely likely

[ImperialLeader]

9 hours ago, TatamiMatt said:

So the hardware settings were changed, by this do you mean BIOS settings? This will reset on a Q-Flash so this is normal behaviour.

 

Also helldivers has a specific issue with AMD GPUs where it will crash if it overloads the GPU, basically dont let the GPU get to 100% usage or crashing is extremely likely

I am not sure what hardware settings changed since the prompt just says "Hardware systems changed please reboot etc. etc.".

Also, that is quite problematic but is that GPU crashing or just the game?

[Bjoolz]

18 hours ago, ImperialLeader said:

I am not sure what hardware settings changed since the prompt just says "Hardware systems changed please reboot etc. etc.".

It will always say that after a BIOS flash/CMOS reset. 

 

Let's see if the dump files from the BSODs give us any clues. Go to C:\Windows\Minidump and check if you have any minidump files. If you do, go back to the Windows folder and copy the Minidump folder itself to the Downloads folder (You can use the desktop if you don't have OneDrive syncing files). Zip the copied folder and attach it to a post. Please follow the instructions to the letter as Windows doesn't like you messing with files in this location.

[ImperialLeader]

WARNING: this will be a long and confusing post of the same black screen that happened today (well yesterday to be exact since it is 12:50 AM here) and my mess of a RAM troubleshooting. TLDR is on the bottom. If you read the whole thing D1-4 are the RAM Slots (decided on D1-4 to make it easier). I'll bolden D1-4 and italic the Sticks to make it easier to read a bit.

Okay after another crash and quite possibly 3 hours of gut-wrenching troubleshooting, I can safely say that my GPU was maxing out during a session of Helldivers 2. Another thing about that is that I thought my RAM sticks might have been corrupted or something because when I did the RAM troubleshooting, both sticks did not work when I left only 1 in their current slots D2 & D4, and when I put them in (both stick D1 & D3 slots) the same thing happened.

What gave me pause was that leaving Stick 2 in D1 did not Boot and when I used Stick 1 in the same slot, it turned on then off then 2 more rapid on-off cycles. Learning about AM5 DDR5 timings that people had, I knew this was related to the RAM timings which I did not think was also a thing for AM4, so it was weird for me. Thinking it was just a timing issue I put both sticks in their original slots (D2 & D4) after it booted, and it was black screen again. Now I thought it was Stick 2 that was the issue so after removing Stick 2 from D4 it did not boot. Removed Stick 1 as well and put Stick 2 to D1 (now this was because I thought D2 & D4 were dead and Stick 1 was good) it booted without any issues. Remember earlier when I put Stick 2 in D1, Stick 1 was working properly instead of Stick 2 after putting in D1 so this stumped me. Somehow both sticks magically worked even when I had them both on D1 & D3. Now I did one last test for D2 & D4 to see if I would need to RMA the motherboard (since it's still under warranty), and then everything worked fine! D2 & D4 worked and both sticks worked, the frequency was back to default but that was an easy fix.

TLDR: I had a 3-hour troubleshooting to get my PC up with magical RAM sticks that worked at random during troubleshooting, and confirmed that my GPU was maxing out during Helldivers 2 now I need to know ways to cap it at 80% or something without any OC (OC not working for GPU for some reason) after I tweak the game settings. I hope to keep at least the quality good since I do streaming/recording as well. Monitor res is 1440p at 75Hz.

[TatamiMatt]

1 hour ago, ImperialLeader said:

WARNING: this will be a long and confusing post of the same black screen that happened today (well yesterday to be exact since it is 12:50 AM here) and my mess of a RAM troubleshooting. TLDR is on the bottom. If you read the whole thing D1-4 are the RAM Slots (decided on D1-4 to make it easier). I'll bolden D1-4 and italic the Sticks to make it easier to read a bit.

Okay after another crash and quite possibly 3 hours of gut-wrenching troubleshooting, I can safely say that my GPU was maxing out during a session of Helldivers 2. Another thing about that is that I thought my RAM sticks might have been corrupted or something because when I did the RAM troubleshooting, both sticks did not work when I left only 1 in their current slots D2 & D4, and when I put them in (both stick D1 & D3 slots) the same thing happened.

What gave me pause was that leaving Stick 2 in D1 did not Boot and when I used Stick 1 in the same slot, it turned on then off then 2 more rapid on-off cycles. Learning about AM5 DDR5 timings that people had, I knew this was related to the RAM timings which I did not think was also a thing for AM4, so it was weird for me. Thinking it was just a timing issue I put both sticks in their original slots (D2 & D4) after it booted, and it was black screen again. Now I thought it was Stick 2 that was the issue so after removing Stick 2 from D4 it did not boot. Removed Stick 1 as well and put Stick 2 to D1 (now this was because I thought D2 & D4 were dead and Stick 1 was good) it booted without any issues. Remember earlier when I put Stick 2 in D1, Stick 1 was working properly instead of Stick 2 after putting in D1 so this stumped me. Somehow both sticks magically worked even when I had them both on D1 & D3. Now I did one last test for D2 & D4 to see if I would need to RMA the motherboard (since it's still under warranty), and then everything worked fine! D2 & D4 worked and both sticks worked, the frequency was back to default but that was an easy fix.

TLDR: I had a 3-hour troubleshooting to get my PC up with magical RAM sticks that worked at random during troubleshooting, and confirmed that my GPU was maxing out during Helldivers 2 now I need to know ways to cap it at 80% or something without any OC (OC not working for GPU for some reason) after I tweak the game settings. I hope to keep at least the quality good since I do streaming/recording as well. Monitor res is 1440p at 75Hz.

A few things ive found stopped the helldivers issues (i had a lot)

 

Cap the game to either 60/75FPS, your preference

 

Turn the GPU clock speed down (i can walk you through this if youre unsure)

 

Also could you let me know what voltage the GPU is running at?

 

Finally increasing the power limit will help as you can run the GPU harder without letting it get to max util% (which ive found is the main reason for crashing, can also run you through this)

[ImperialLeader]

13 hours ago, TatamiMatt said:

A few things ive found stopped the helldivers issues (i had a lot)

 

Cap the game to either 60/75FPS, your preference

 

Turn the GPU clock speed down (i can walk you through this if youre unsure)

 

Also could you let me know what voltage the GPU is running at?

 

Finally increasing the power limit will help as you can run the GPU harder without letting it get to max util% (which ive found is the main reason for crashing, can also run you through this)

I think I have the game capped at 75 and as for the GPU voltage, I checked while I was on the ship and it was at max 1200mV and the GPU clock speed was at 2688 MHz with a 92% utilization I would like to know how I can tune the GPU since auto tunning from the profiles given in the Adrenaline Software does not work at all. edit: okay I found how to manually tune it myself just need to know how much should i set these settings.

[ImperialLeader]

Ok so what I did for Helldivers 2 profile now is to set the power limit at +15% and GPU clock speed at 90% adding that I changed a bunch of settings in-game to drop usage to around 50-60% even during missions. The biggest change was dropping from Native sampling to Ultra Quality which dropped a lot of usage with minimal impact. Did a whole hour with no crashing so I think for Helldivers 2 it should be fixed as of now. If there is something I missed or I could add in I'll probably edit this post.

[ImperialLeader]

On 5/15/2024 at 4:06 AM, Bjoolz said:

It will always say that after a BIOS flash/CMOS reset. 

 

Let's see if the dump files from the BSODs give us any clues. Go to C:\Windows\Minidump and check if you have any minidump files. If you do, go back to the Windows folder and copy the Minidump folder itself to the Downloads folder (You can use the desktop if you don't have OneDrive syncing files). Zip the copied folder and attach it to a post. Please follow the instructions to the letter as Windows doesn't like you messing with files in this location.

Is there a program I could use, so that I can read them myself since I can't keep posting here or anywhere whenever there is another BSOD after all?

 

[Bjoolz]

6 hours ago, ImperialLeader said:

Is there a program I could use, so that I can read them myself since I can't keep posting here or anywhere whenever there is another BSOD after all?

 

In the Microsoft Store, you can get WinDbg Preview for free. Other "easier" tools like Bluescreenview and Whocrashed are honestly bad.