Darken the screen, the crowd roars. (A lot more to unfold)
Darken the screen, the crowd roars. (A lot more to unfold)
This situation began roughly a month and a half ago. I assembled my computer four months prior, and everything functioned normally until recently. Soecs: RTX 3060 Ryzen 5 5600x with 16GB RAM, EVGA GA 650W power supply, a 1TB Sabrent Rocket SSD (this article will be extensive because it covers the entire narrative). I was playing flight simulator, a game that demands a lot of processing power, when suddenly the screen went black. The machine didn’t shut down, and the fans spiked to 100%. I wasn’t sure why, but it seemed like overheating. It occurred a few times more, and then I believed I’d resolved the issue by resetting the CMOS. But a week later, it happened again. That time, I was using Discord and only three browser tabs open, and my temperatures stayed normal. After further attempts at troubleshooting, I brought it to a local repair shop. They had excellent reviews and were very helpful. We discussed the problem briefly, and they pointed out something unusual: the SSD’s disk usage could reach 100%. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it didn’t cause a crash during my visit. Still, it was puzzling. Could something in my home be contributing to the issue? Maybe the HDMI cable, the surge protector, or the power cables? Since they couldn’t find any faults there, I tried recreating the problem at their facility. I encountered the flight simulator again; sometimes the GPU 3D would spike near 99% usage, but temperatures remained stable. It didn’t crash again. (This incident happened when I had just three open tabs.) I tested many other things to trigger a crash, but it never occurred. (Note: the machine failed once with only three tabs open.) I returned home with a free service, and my drivers were all up to date. Here are some details I received: - Crashes might have been linked to a Windows system update (unlikely). - 100% disk usage is clearly problematic. - High GPU 3D usage also seemed harmful. - Could be a software issue, perhaps a virus? (Running a free scan.) - What should I do about constant 100% disk usage? It still appears during startup. Could it be related to the SSD having only 90GB left out of 1TB? - I haven’t explained everything, but I’ll continue asking questions once someone replies. Thanks in advance to all of you!
Build began experiencing comparable problems about two weeks post-assembly, which turned out to be faulty RAM causing instability and crashes. Occasional no-video POSTs and a few crashes were reported. After four months of troubleshooting, the issue was fixed by using recommended RAM from the manufacturer's QVL for the specific motherboard and processor combination.
Remember that any replacement used for troubleshooting might not yield results if it isn't included in the QVL list and could also create problems.