RTX 3080 Suddenly started crashing

[Hobbles]

First, my PC specs:

CPU: Ryzen 5 3600X

Cooler: Fractal Celsius+(I think) 240mm AIO

MOBO: Gigabyte X570 AORUS Elite Wifi

RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB DDR4-3200

Storage: 1 WD blue 1TB M.2 SSD for OS and other stuff, Then I have some 4 TB WD HDD for bullk storage.

GPU: Gigabyte AORUS RTX 3080 XTREME WaterForce

Case: Fractal Meshify C

PSU: EVGA SuperNova 1000 G3 80+ Gold

OS: Winodws 10

 

So I had this PC for about 5 years, totally fine until now. In the last couple weeks, I have had games start crashing and closing. My PC is not hard locking or anything, it is just the games (multiple) that have started crashing. I also stream and record. The streams have been crashing as well. Streamlabs OBS presents an error about NVENC encoding slower than expected (sometimes) before disconnecting the stream. Games do not seem to produce an error code every time, but one I get often is from Detroit become human within about 5-10 minutes of gameplay saying "VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST". Other games might last an hour before they crash.

 

Things I have tried already.

I have tried streaming with no gameplay, still crashed the stream. I have tried gaming without streaming, still crashed. I have tried OBS instead of streamlabs, still crashed. I have ran a virus scan with Avast and ran a scan with superantispyware with nothing found. I have turned off my computer and back on. I have used DDU to uninstall NVIDIA  drivers and reinstall the newest only. I haven then used DDU again and rolled back to a working driver from 2024. I have tried closing other applications (MSI afterburner, jellyfin, discord, etc).

 

When the crash happens, I was only seeing like 30-50% usage as well, so it doesn't seem like it would be a power issue (at least to be inexperienced eyes). I checked temperatures with GPU-Z and they all seem 40-70 when gaming. I did run furmark and it seems to run pretty stable, but I noticed something that seemed strange. GL runs normally, but VK does not have the furry donut. It only shows the scanner looking thing.

 

Could this be an undetected virus, a windows 10 update, a PC part going bad, or something different?

 

I attached the furmark picture, and a GPU-Z sensor log of starting DBH, playing through until it crashes. This time it took longer to crash but it did.

 

Then one other thing, I have played a game or two that seemed unaffected, or maybe I have not played them long enough to crash it. One example it Risk of  Rain 2, I played for a bit before the stream crashed out, but the game did not. Not sure if eventually it would have or not.

 

Thanks in advance everyone. I would prefer not to clean install windows, but I know it may be another thing to attempt.

GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt

[BuggedCookie]

Hello my answer might not be right and I'm not a professional but I did heard that newest NVIDIA Drivers we're causing problems to some people, which I did experiment myself in the past and some videos talking about this problem a fairly recent from 1 month ago to only a few days...

Apparently in some games the newest drivers (572.XX) causes crashes on some games

So I guess it might be worth checking this !

Hope you find a solution!

[Hobbles]

16 minutes ago, BuggedCookie said:

Hello my answer might not be right and I'm not a professional but I did heard that newest NVIDIA Drivers we're causing problems to some people, which I did experiment myself in the past and some videos talking about this problem a fairly recent from 1 month ago to only a few days...

Apparently in some games the newest drivers (572.XX) causes crashes on some games

So I guess it might be worth checking this !

Hope you find a solution!

Thanks for the reply, I did mention that I tried an older driver (566.14, which I should have said specifically) in the post.

 

Also, adding in that I am currently trying to run games with XMP disabled as I saw one person had issue with that. I will update if I see a change, but in the meantime everyone, I still am looking at options

Edited April 12 by Hobbles
I did not add the specific driver number

[Mumintroll]

I think I read that VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST points to something wrong with the Vulkan part, perhaps with the GPU drivers or the game itself if it use Vulkan instead of DirectX.

 

There's a problem with the 572 driver versions, but I've read a few that still got problems after a DDU and installing an older driver. I think JayTwoCents mentioned it in a video when the earlier 572 drivers came out.

 

With the Nvidia driver installer, you could try to select the option to do a clean driver install, and also without the Nvidia app. Perhaps that helps.

 

I doubt it's a hardware problem.

[Hobbles]

50 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

I think I read that VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST points to something wrong with the Vulkan part, perhaps with the GPU drivers or the game itself if it use Vulkan instead of DirectX.

 

There's a problem with the 572 driver versions, but I've read a few that still got problems after a DDU and installing an older driver. I think JayTwoCents mentioned it in a video when the earlier 572 drivers came out.

 

With the Nvidia driver installer, you could try to select the option to do a clean driver install, and also without the Nvidia app. Perhaps that helps.

 

I doubt it's a hardware problem.

Yeah, I saw the vulkan thing. I downloaded and installed the older driver itself and not the nvidia app, I will check on the J2C video and see if he said anything that may be useful as well. It also crashes the streaming stuff though which I don't think is vulkan related. Streamlabs gave an error about the NVENC not performing correctly,. and I believe OBS gave an error about FFMPEG or something. It is other games too (not all so far, but multiple), but detroit become human is generally the fastest crash and the only one that gave me an error code. It also happened with Warzone but we all know that is a pile of garbage so I brushed it off initially.

 

I turned off XMP, and so far I have not crashed DBH, but will be testing more later today and try to stream again and see if I can repeat crashes without XMP enabled.

 

I will keep everyone posted, thanks for the replies so far. I REALLY hope it is software or non-GPU hardware since everything is tariffed and scalped lol

 

Also, I will see about finding DirectX games and see if they crash too specifically if XMP disabled doesn't solve it

Edited April 12 by Hobbles
Added last sentence

[Hobbles]

Quick update:

XMP disabled, I still got a crash. Moving on to testing some DirectX specific games and see if it is just vulkan related. I will try DDU again and look at potential other ways to completely get rid of 3080 572.xx drivers. I am about to also do updates on BIOS, and other Mobo related drivers.

 

If none of that seems to work, I will likely resort to clean windows 10 install, unless others have potential solutions.

[Hobbles]

I tested some games. One was CS2 which was unplayable due to lag and jitter whether I played Direct3D or Vulkan. It said I had ping of 700 which had never happened before. Left 4 dead 2 had more jitter in Vulkan than Direct3D slightly but was still playablke. Other games in both Vulkan and Direct3D seemed fine

 

New symptom, One of my monitors can no longer be detected for some reason. I tried different ports and different cables that I know work but got no result. I updated BIOS and other items but everything is still broken. I am doing my last resort and going to clean install windows. If that does not work, I am under the assumption that my GPU is slowly dying.

[Hobbles]

On 4/13/2025 at 2:09 PM, Hobbles said:

I tested some games. One was CS2 which was unplayable due to lag and jitter whether I played Direct3D or Vulkan. It said I had ping of 700 which had never happened before. Left 4 dead 2 had more jitter in Vulkan than Direct3D slightly but was still playablke. Other games in both Vulkan and Direct3D seemed fine

 

New symptom, One of my monitors can no longer be detected for some reason. I tried different ports and different cables that I know work but got no result. I updated BIOS and other items but everything is still broken. I am doing my last resort and going to clean install windows. If that does not work, I am under the assumption that my GPU is slowly dying.

I clean installed windows 10, DDU, install 566.36 driver as clean install without NVIDIA app. I am trying to play games but Streamlabs is still crashing, more games are crashing with D3D (Valheim), and firefox browser tabs are crashing. So I don't know that it is driver since (I would hope) a windows clean install and DDU would get rid of driver issues. I would venture to guess RAM or OS SSD? I did a mem test through windows and it said there was a rram issue but did not say anything specific or helpful. I will run a hard drive/ssd check as well.

Edited April 16 by Hobbles
clarification