PC Crashes when Gaming

[Tirant]

Hi All!

 

I built my buddy a PC back in Novemberish (parts list) and he's been having trouble with it since it was first built. Basically, after playing 3D-intensive games for an indeterminant amount of time (sometimes hours, sometimes a few minutes), the game will crash (hard crash with no errors, crash with errors, or BSOD). So far we have tried many games: BF1, Overwatch, GR: Wildlands, Diablo 3, etc., and the story remains the same: game runs great when all the sudden the GPU jumps to 100% usage and crashes. Other than gaming, the machine seems to be rock solid with no crashes that I am aware of, and none of his parts are OC'd, minus the factory OC on the GPU. One specific thing we tried was limiting Overwatch to ~75FPS, and this seems to have fixed that specific game, but not with others.

 

I verified his Windows 10 x64 install using chkdisk and also troubleshooted his GPU drivers multiple times during the RMA process. I originally thought this was an issue with his GPU (all the errors pointed to "graphics card stopped working", etc), or something related to power draw since he was using a used 530ishW PSU (some off-brand thing I had lying around), but the GPU RMA instructions indicated that it was working correctly (basically just checked voltage jumps are within certain thresholds, so I did my best to verify and it looked fine). When the GPU was RMA'd, the new one was still having the same issues, so a couple weeks ago we put in a new 500W PSU and we're still seeing the same behavior.

 

Anyways, the only obvious things I haven't done at this point are reinstall the OS and replace the CPU/MB/RAM, but those are all trickier to do, so I wanted to ask here first before diving into that hornet's nest. Maybe there's something I'm missing? Thanks for any help/suggestions!

 

 

 

--

I had also considered that if the PSU was bad for some reason (I got it from a buddy who upgraded to a modular one, and he didn't say anything about having problems with it), that maybe it damaged the first GPU and maybe now has damaged the replacement, but I don't really know. The machine turns on fine, and runs fine, and only has issues when gaming, and the PSU load should be well within limits (6500 CPU /w 10 series GPU)

 

I also tried using his original GPU in my PC, and had a few of the same "graphics card stopped working" errors, something that I don't experience with my own card.

[Robert27]

check event viewer and there you will see the error code then you can search that up to see what went wrong

 

 just a tip

[Tirant]

11 minutes ago, Robert27 said:

check event viewer and there you will see the error code then you can search that up to see what went wrong

 

 just a tip

Yea, I did all of that when originally debugging it. I will have to double check it next time I go over to his house for the specific errors, but I recall seeing graphics device stopped working messages.

 

One message I saw specifically:

Quote

Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered

 

[Droidbot]

Sounds like a faulty PSU, can you try and get your hands on another PSU to check? 

[Tirant]

18 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

Sounds like a faulty PSU, can you try and get your hands on another PSU to check? 

That's what we tried a couple weeks ago. Brand new EVGA 500W, same problem

[Robert27]

It's graphics card issues from nvidia you should try-> "reducing my CORE and MEMORY clock speeds by 100 MHz each."

[Tirant]

7 hours ago, Robert27 said:

It's graphics card issues from nvidia you should try-> "reducing my CORE and MEMORY clock speeds by 100 MHz each."

I'll give it a shot. I tried that with the other card and it didn't work, so I'll see if it at least helps with the replacement one.

[Robert27]

On 7/23/2017 at 8:01 AM, Tirant said:

I'll give it a shot. I tried that with the other card and it didn't work, so I'll see if it at least helps with the replacement one.

oh okay good luck.. did it work ?

[Tirant]

10 minutes ago, Robert27 said:

oh okay good luck.. did it work ?

Buddy has been working, so I'll try today.

[righteousbae]

I've had a similar issue. Sometimes I can do games for hours on end with no issues, but with some titles it'll crash within minutes, I think (at least with my system) it might be a mix of thermal throttling and the cpu just fainting, since I did a clean install every driver I could think of but it still occurs. 

[Robert27]

1 hour ago, Tirant said:

Buddy has been working, so I'll try today.

okay let me know

[Tirant]

I made the changes and we'll see if the behavior changes, but...

 

I'm looking through his event logs for the past month, and I noticed quite a few crashes (BSODs), all except the second 0x3b were when he was gaming with me. I also wanted to add that the past few nights we've been playing Diablo 2 when this has happened, so hardly a demanding game graphically and memory-wise. It looks like it could be either RAM or a driver issue (based on the errors), so I can test the RAM (I originally tested it when I put it in, but you never know). I'll also run DDU and wipe his GPU drivers, but I'm not sure if this is caused by another driver, because the dump reference some USB drivers (see screenshot below).

 

0xfc

0x7f

0x3b (twice)

0xd1

 

[Robert27]

16 hours ago, Tirant said:

I made the changes and we'll see if the behavior changes, but...

 

I'm looking through his event logs for the past month, and I noticed quite a few crashes (BSODs), all except the second 0x3b were when he was gaming with me. I also wanted to add that the past few nights we've been playing Diablo 2 when this has happened, so hardly a demanding game graphically and memory-wise. It looks like it could be either RAM or a driver issue (based on the errors), so I can test the RAM (I originally tested it when I put it in, but you never know). I'll also run DDU and wipe his GPU drivers, but I'm not sure if this is caused by another driver, because the dump reference some USB drivers (see screenshot below).

 

0xfc

0x7f

0x3b (twice)

0xd1

 

jesus to be honest never seem a computer with some many bsod crashes honestly. even mine when it was first build had a few crashes here and there that with only a few tweaks could be fixed. it does look like a driver issue to me.

 

 

ntoskml.exe http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2733602/bsod-unexpected-kernel-mode-trap-ntoskrnl-exe.html

 

 

 

[LabRat]

see if you can find a "free" driver update utility and update all your drivers ( motherboard, etc. )

then go to windows updates and seek out platform updates.