New components, all (only) games crashing

[gabezz]

Hey everyone, I'm writing on behalf a friend, his english isnt great.
His setup:

Processor: i7-8700(non-k)

Mobo: Gigabyte z370 aorus K3 (bios version F3)

Memory: G SKILL 16 GB RIPJAWS V 3200MHZ CL16

Boot/windows SSD: Samsung EVO 850

Psu: EVGA W1 600W(yes , white, not even bronze)

Graphics card:. Rx 480 Sapphire Nitro
Windows 10 Enterprise 64 bit


The CPU/motherboard/ram have recently been swapped, before that he had a 4th generation Intel I3, every component was the same before.
Before the new parts he barely, if at all had any issues, other than World of Tanks crashing once or twice(due to probably AMD issues back then).
No overclocking, regular usage, mostly gaming on an 1680x1050 screen, connected through a HDMI cable.

Fast forward until a week ago, when he got the new parts, assembled it neatly in a new pc case. He called for my help, we started some monitoring programs, HWInfo64, cpu-z, gpu-z etc.
Thermals, voltages all looked okay, we ran unigine benchmark and furmark stress testing for a while on the GPU, everything seemed okay. Cpu keeps turbo up at all times comfortably.
Ram runs on XMP out of the box, no issues there.

Except when he started playing World of Tanks or PUBG, they would relentlessly, and randomly crash. Often sooner than later. In both games, though in PUBG a lot more, artifacts appeared, weird hue outlines, briefly flashing black artifacts, white artifacts over textures. In either game, lowering the graphics settings made most of the artifacts go away, but the crashing persevered. No other application or usage on the PC results in errors or crashes. He tried operating the system with just one ram stick at a time, same errors in each case. XMP on or off, no difference. I started suspecting the PSU, more than the GPU. For kickers he played Crusader Kings II for an hour, a thoroughly not demanding game, and it had no artifacts or crashes at all. He will try to get a better , gold rated 600-650W PSU in a week or two, regardless if the current one is responsible for the errors or not. No BSOD, no system freeze, no system crash. Just games, and simply a crash to desktop besides artifacts. Neither stress test or benchmark programs produced any artifacts though. Any help, advice, insight or help would be appreciated, thank you.


Update: After checking, testing everything, getting a new PSU as well, the actual fault lied with the GPU. My friend RMA'd it. Thank you everyone for the help.
 

[johnukguy]

Try different drivers for the GPU. It could be the PSU, as you suspect but I'm thinking that the artifacting and other issues are down to the GPU ultimately. If you can, try with another GPU too and see if that gets rid of the problems too. If the different driver version solves it, then it's software most likely. If a different GPU solves it, then the present card is likely faulty and needs to be RMA'd if still under warranty.

[Firecheetah13]

If you have MSI Afterburner installed, look for RivaTuner and put it in silent mode. You may or may not have it, depending on what you installed with MSI AB, but if you did, there should be a little blue screen icon, which is RivaTuner. Click on it and there should be a "Silent Mode" slider.

[gabezz]

Just now, johnukguy said:

Try different drivers for the GPU. It could be the PSU, as you suspect but I'm thinking that the artifacting and other issues are down to the GPU ultimately. If you can, try with another GPU too and see if that gets rid of the problems too. If the different driver version solves it, then it's software most likely. If a different GPU solves it, then the present card is likely faulty and needs to be RMA'd if still under warranty.

Thank you! We tried 3 different AMD drivers , one, a year old and two from recently. Everything remained the same, sadly. We will try to see if he can swap the gpu out for another one, or maybe throw the iGPU in for a test. I really think it's the PSU since the problems only manifested since he installed the new parts a week ago. Before that 0 errors whatsoever, for a year. Though something could've happened to the GPU while installing it into the new mobo/case, but I know they were extremely careful with everything.

[gabezz]

1 minute ago, Firecheetah13 said:

If you have MSI Afterburner installed, look for RivaTuner and put it in silent mode. You may or may not have it, depending on what you installed with MSI AB, but if you did, there should be a little blue screen icon, which is RivaTuner. Click on it and there should be a "Silent Mode" slider.

We didn't install Afterburner yet. May I ask what the importance or function of silent mode is?

[Firecheetah13]

Just now, gabezz said:

We didn't install Afterburner yet. May I ask what the importance or function of silent mode is?

At least in PUBG, for me, I was having a lot of issues after reinstalling Afterburner. Basically, RivaTuner monitors your framerate among other statistics while in game. By turning on silent mode, the program is basically turned off.

[johnukguy]

This might be redundant but have you guys checked that the power connectors to the card and the card itself are all seated firmly and everything is all the way in? 

[gabezz]

3 hours ago, johnukguy said:

This might be redundant but have you guys checked that the power connectors to the card and the card itself are all seated firmly and everything is all the way in? 

I'll tell him to thoroughly check that when I get a hold of him.

Edit: He checked it, says everything is fast and tight. He will take the GPU to a third friend of ours tomorrow, and put it in his system, see if it acts up.

[gabezz]

On 4/15/2018 at 4:34 PM, johnukguy said:

This might be redundant but have you guys checked that the power connectors to the card and the card itself are all seated firmly and everything is all the way in? 

They tried it in another computer with a similar PSU but less consuming components. They still had artifacts. So at this point it's 80% that it's the GPU. He will still order a new gold rated PSU just to be sure, but I don't understand how the GPU suddenly malfunctions after a simple PC upgrade.

EDIT: New gold, 650W PSU didn't help. Still artifacts, crashes..but an odd thing discovered as well, higher than reasonable VRAM usage. Even during browsing, 4GB VRAM is used out of 8gb.