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Posted here for new eyeballs:
For the past few months, my pc has been consistently crashing under heavy load, in graphically demanding games like Escape from Tarkov, Warhammer 3 etc. In normal use and less intensive games like Rimworld, no issues.
After about 15-20 min of gameplay, I get a full crash to a black screen with the pc powered off, and it refuses to post for several minutes regardless of what I do, at which point it often restarts on its own. The American Megatrends screen doesn't usually show up unless I cycle power, at which point it doesn't tell me anything useful either. (I had a similar issue around 5 years ago, but that was almost certainly CPU thermals, since the American Megatrends screen called out CPU overheating, and I've changed CPUs since then and don't get the same error)
The crash seems to be so total and abrupt that I can't find any useful logs to figure out wtf is going on.
I've run CPU and GPU stress tests on OCCT and furmark, and they only seem to cause issues unreliably.
It seems thermally related, since the problem is less severe when the AC is running, but unfortunately the AC is currently on the fritz exacerbating the issue, but fixing the AC isnt really a definitive solution is it?
I noticed >85° C temps on my Ryzen 5600x, so I changed the thermal paste just a few days back, and while temps dropped by 5-10 degrees, the crashing hasn't abated.
GPU temps hover in the 50s-60s range in Tarkov, which seems quite reasonable. It's a 3070 for what that's worth.
The other potential culprit is my geriatric 600w power supply, over 10 years old at this point, but why would it be thermally related?
I'm not running any OCs, and I've maxxed out my fan curves to help, not that it's doing much. My case has two extra blowers, and I even took off the sides to help with airflow.
Anyone have any idea as to how I can figure out what exactly is wrong? I can't really afford to replace my GPU, but I could consider buying a new PSU if need be.
This issue didn't plague me when I first built this current setup with the same components, but it's been several months and I'm losing my mind :(
What I've tried:
Switching GPUs with my brother's pc. Couldn't reproduce crashing.
Dusting pc
Repasting thermal paste
Checking for any OC (none)
Stress tests, which are unable to reliably cause crashes while games can.
I'd normally say power supply too, but there's a possibility there's a power-saving setting causing either your psu or mobo to be too slow ramping up supply to sudden demand during games, causing a crash. That would explain why it only happens in games rather than benchmarks. This has been a big problem with the new graphics cards, and I've even had it on my old system.
It's also by far the easiest thing to check, since you just need to google all the different power saving options and disable them.
But imo it's still likely to be your psu, which is good news because they're one of the cheapest and easiest things to buy and replace. And even if it was your mobo, you'd need to buy a new psu for a new rig anyway, so there's no waste in getting one now.
Sorry for the late reply. Ironically couldn't post earlier because I had my PC apart to add some M2 cards and scavenged fans.
No worries, a cursory check doesn't seem to show anything out of the ordinary, but I still suspect it's more likely to be the PSU myself given that the problem was sudden, and I have my power settings to high performance if anything.
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