PC keeps crashing

[Gapi]

My PC was built in 2019 and has been working without issues up until last year, when my drivers began to constantly crash (PC screen going black, had to force shutdown). I tried updating, downgrading drivers to countless versions, repasting the GPU but nothing helped, until I updated from Windows 10 to 11. The latest Windows 11 drivers seem to have kinda fixed the issue of the drivers crashing... Whenever I boot the pc up I always get a notification from the AMD app that the drivers crashed & reset default settings, but they didn't really crash? 

 

Now it doesn't crash during regular use anymore, but whenever I play a demanding game it shortly crashes the pc (no black screens this time, just straight up shuts down in an instant). Going to Event Viewer, it was showing errors with the gameinput service, issue with 2 versions after installing windows 11. Ok, I delete the old version and nothing changes - my pc still keeps crashing except now the event viewer just doesn't say anything.

 

Could it be an issue with the power supply? It should have enough wattage, I even underclocked the GPU... After so many recurring issues with the GPU recently, could there be something wrong with it?

Could it be overheating? GPU (5700 XT) temps range from 60 to max 80°C which is fine I think, the CPU (5 3600) temps are pretty bad though... 70°C at idle and up to 85°C under load. I have repasted both very recently, I believe the bad temps are mostly due to horrible case airflow, as they drop 10-15°C when removing the side panel.

 

Sorry for the essay, but considering I have barely anything to go on as to why it's crashing right now, I thought I'd give as much context as I can.

 

This is my pc: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9m7Dfd

[emosun]

run the machine with a single ramstick installed and see if it has any effect , try each stick alone in the machine.

[MineManiack]

Sounds like a RAM, GPU hardware, Power Supply or Software issue. Easiest thing to do first is to try putting only 1 RAM stick into the PC and check each one you have sepratly. Put 1 RAM stick, stress test, put another, stress test. Then you can try installing Windows and the drivers on another drive or a flash drive (slow but will work for a quick test). Then, there is the power supply, you can try replacing it if you have another one. After that, it's GPU hardware, self explanatory. How are your temps? Are any other parts of the PC having any problems? Any overclocks? Try reseting your BIOS, that can help sometimes. My Intel Iris XE had weird issues like this, where if the GPU driver crashed for any reason, it started repeat crashing and making the whole screen into a CRT (1 pixel collum skips) until I did a cold boot. It was just some strange BIOS + Official driver issue, I updated both and it fixed itself somehow.

[Gapi]

2 hours ago, emosun said:

run the machine with a single ramstick installed and see if it has any effect , try each stick alone in the machine.

2 hours ago, MineManiack said:

Sounds like a RAM, GPU hardware, Power Supply or Software issue. Easiest thing to do first is to try putting only 1 RAM stick into the PC and check each one you have sepratly. Put 1 RAM stick, stress test, put another, stress test.

I tried taking off the side panel, crashed instantly, disabled xmp, crashed instantly. Then putting 1 stick at a time and for the first three I'd play for a fair bit and it didn't crash. 4th stick and amd drivers completely broke, had to uninstall them in device manager, tested some more with drivers uninstalled and I got it to crash with every stick...

 

Also the drivers broke again in between with a different stick and I had to uninstall them again, even though I never installed them?? So I can't really pin the drivers breaking on the 4th stick either. It has happened randomly on its own many times before, but not this frequent...

 

After reinstalling the newest drivers it kept instantly crashing (when loading into game) with every stick. Restarted the pc 20+ times, couldn't really figure out a pattern in it. RAM might or might not have something to do with it, but I couldn't find an outlier in a specific stick. My testing might not be the most reliable, but it's been crashing so reliably & instantly before, so it not crashing the first three times with one stick in is odd.

 

I want to think it is RAM since the timeline would also line up - I bought an additional 16gb about 1.5 years ago, which would be when drivers have started acting up... But since it also crashed with the old sticks, it doesn't make sense.

[emosun]

3 hours ago, Gapi said:

it doesn't make sense.

no it does the ram tests were more just hopeful in terms of it being a cheap fix.

take the gpu out and try a different one or run it with the integrated graphics if it has it. 

a graphics driver will crash consistently even after an os refresh if the hardware becomes unresponsive to the driver. since you eliminated the os/drivers/ram being the problem next best guess is the gpu itself.

 

[Gapi]

On 4/13/2025 at 4:22 AM, emosun said:

no it does the ram tests were more just hopeful in terms of it being a cheap fix.

take the gpu out and try a different one or run it with the integrated graphics if it has it. 

a graphics driver will crash consistently even after an os refresh if the hardware becomes unresponsive to the driver. since you eliminated the os/drivers/ram being the problem next best guess is the gpu itself.

 

Don't have a spare gpu at the ready for testing. The crashing & freezing has gotten way worse over the last day. Now it doesn't even have to get to full load to crash (more often now the screen just freezes and I have to force shutdown). Crashed at idle when the pc started as well. The pc sometimes doesn't even output a signal when booting, with a red light on the mobo next to VGA, starts working again after a couple force shutdowns & restarts. Another new thing I noticed right before crashing the audio begins to stutter.

 

So there is most likely something wrong with the GPU. Tried undervolting it, didn't help. I might just order a new one & I can always return it if the issue isn't fixed.

edit: Another odd thing, most of the time it crashes instantly under load, but sometimes it just doesn't at all, no matter how long I play for - until I restart the PC then it goes back to crashing. So basically most of the times it crashes, but on some launches it just randomly won't? Explains the inconsistencies with the ram testing, don't know what it means though.