Issue with PC displaying black screen and frequent restarts despite replacement of components.
Issue with PC displaying black screen and frequent restarts despite replacement of components.
For some time now, my PC has been experiencing problems, especially when gaming, but it restarts during browsing in Chrome.
Current configuration:
CPU: Ryzen 7 7700
GPU: AMD RX 7800 XT
RAM: Kingston Fury KF560C36BBE 16GB 1x1 6000MHz (set to 4800MHz in BIOS at default)
SSD: Samsung 980 1TB
MOBO: ASUS TUF Gaming B650-PLUS
PSU: be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 750W
OS: Windows 11 Pro
I made several changes over the past months, including swapping components, to check if the issue would improve.
Previous hardware:
GPU: PNY RTX 4080 16GB VERTO
RAM: Kingston Fury Renegade 16GB 1x1 6000MHz
SSD: Kingston NV2 1TB
MOBO: ASUS PRIME B650-PLUS
I also sent the PSU for return and replaced my monitor with a new single unit, using different cables.
Initially I encountered a sudden black screen and audio failure. The Event Viewer indicated the NVIDIA driver wasn’t responding, so I replaced it with an AMD 7800XT and reinstalled Windows.
After a month, the same problem returned, but this time it displayed “AMD Ryzen Master drive failed to start system cannot find file.”
I submitted various PC components for replacement over several months. Each attempt took about a week before the issue resurfaced. Temperatures were normal.
My attempts included:
- Installing older GPU drivers
- Updating chipset and BIOS drivers
- Reinstalling Windows 11
- Switching power supply
- Using different cables for monitor and PSU (after RMA)
- Changing monitors
- Running fresh Windows 11 Pro installations
- Adjusting driver settings
- Disabling automatic driver updates in Windows 11
- Installing only Windows Defender antivirus
- Accessing dump files via WhoCrashed after a new GPU
The latest hardware, along with a fresh Windows installation, helped identify the problem.
Could anyone review this?
Where did you obtain the OS installer source?
Updating BIOS driver
+
MOBO: ASUS TUF Gaming B650-PLUS
Current BIOS version?
RAM: Kingston Fury KF560C36BBE 16gb 1x1 6000mhz (configured to 4800mhz in BIOS by default)
Have you activated X.M.P in BIOS?
If using DDU, clear all GPU drivers—Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and not just the installed GPU. During driver reinstallation, use the newest version and run it with elevated privileges, such as right-clicking the installer and selecting Run as Administrator.
Hi, thank you for your message!
I used the USB installation media from Microsoft's site. I didn't repeat the same file multiple times.
The new MOBO I'm using is version 1811 x64, and it hasn't been updated yet. I updated my older MOBO, but nothing changed before this one.
XMP/EXPO is turned off by default in BIOS.
I also didn't mention that I tried DDU.
I just played Dragon's Dogma 2 again and the black screen came back. It didn’t restart right away; first I saw a sudden black screen while the game was playing, then the audio got really distorted as if stuck in a loop. After about 5 to 10 seconds, my PC restarted, but there wasn’t a dumpfile this time. Checking the Event Viewer gave me this critical message: the system rebooted without a clean shutdown. This could mean the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly. The source was Kernel-Power. I’m using Windows 24.3.1, ran DDU in safe boot, and executed the file as administrator. Please review this at your earliest convenience!
The crash occurs once daily at the moment, slowly increasing and resuming once a day after installing new components or reinstalling W11 (possibly due to coincidence). I suspect the issue might be related to my PSU not being compatible with my GPU. It's a multi-rail PSU. I was considering using two separate PCI cables from the PSU to the GPU, but my PSU lacks sufficient slots for that. This is the be quiet! pure power 12M 750w PSU I've been using. The highlighted blue area is the PCIe slot I'm using for the 7800XT, which requires two 8-pin connectors. I'm using the included PCI cable. Can you believe it? Is it possible that the PSU can't manage the power spikes from the 7800XT (or the 4080 when it used PCIe 5.0)? I'm just brainstorming and hope someone can offer some advice. Thanks!
Another update:
I experienced no problems for about a week while playing Dragon's Dogma 2. The system ran with maximum settings at 1440p, except for Tree quality and shadow. After setting those two to max, the system became very unstable and kept crashing. I didn’t see any dump files.
Looking at Event Viewer shows Critical > The system rebooted without a clean shutdown. This could be due to the system stopping, crashing, or losing power suddenly. Event 41, Kernel-Power is the only critical entry found before the crash.
Anyone have an idea? Thanks.
Your experience with your setup is quite alarming. I'm facing exactly the same configuration:
Processor: X570 Aorus Pro v1.0
CPU: Ryzen 7 3700x
RAM: Corsair Vengeance CMW16GX4M2C3200C16 4x8G
GPU: MSI RTX 2060 Super Armor OC
Power Supply: Seasonic X-Series 850W (14 years, reliable)
Since last summer I switched to BIOS Update + Windows 11 + M.2 SSD Samsung 980Pro + two additional RAM sticks (previously only 2x8GB). My PC began crashing about once a month. I've tried all possible fixes—restoring the BIOS, downgrading it, using stock DDR 2133Mg memory (without overclocking), and even replacing the PSU with a Quiet Pure Power 12M 1000W.
The day after replacing the PSU, after just 10 minutes of playing WoW, it crashed again. For Fornite games, it crashed roughly every ten months.
Now I'm in Phase2—swapping CPU, more RAM (7800x3d), hoping to resolve the problem. Then in Phase3, the GPU was replaced.
Since upgrading to F38 around April 20th, my PC ran smoothly for three weeks without crashes. But after reading your story about R7 7700 and still facing the same issue... I'm extremely disappointed. If the problems persist, I won't use AMD again until the price-performance gap widens by at least 40-50%.
My main hopes for a stable system are that the GSKILL RAM I bought is recommended by AMD itself, and that the RAM models listed in the Asus Prime x670-P MB are compatible.
What's your current situation?
After rechecking the changes you made—PSU, MB, RAM, GPU—I start to suspect it might be an SSD M.2 Samsung 980Pro or a combination of both, possibly paired with Windows 11 due to DirectStorage support.
GL HF,
TSO
Hi again,
In the past 2 days I've tried even removing the 2 RAM sticks I've bought last summer, since they were same SERIAL but different versions 4.31 (first set bought) and 4.32 (second set bought). But the issue still occured.
In the end, since I am still waiting on the DDR5 rams for the new platform, I ended up entering the community-support channel in the Gigabyte discord server.
There, after not even 2minutes, a great guy named @Sythen opened my eyes regarding the issues I'm facing.
The manifestation of "both monitors going to black screen, but sound and functionality continuing to work" mean that the video card goes into protection mode.
While I've checked the GPU temperatures and they were always lower then 80degrees C, it seems that I've not taken into consideration another indicator in HW Info, called "GPU Hot Spot Temperature", and that was reaching 106degrees C.
At @Sythen's recommandation, I have imediately made a thermal paste replace on the GPU, and after that, MIRACLE, the "GPU Hot Spot Temperature" didn't raised to more then 86degress in MAXIMUM LOAD.
The existent thermal paste was all dried up and was braking in tiny pieces.
After that, at least for the time being, there were no more crashes. Also, before, the GPU was throttleing badly and the maximum Power usage was ~130W, but after changing the paste it went up to 180W with lower temps and fan speeds.
I need to mention that in 26 years of experience and multiple PCs owned, I have never got the need to replace the thermal paste on the GPU, and so rarely did on the CPU. But that is mostly due to replacing the GPU mostly at every 2-3 years. But the current MSI 2060 Super Armor OC I got in 2019, so .... it still does good for what I use it at.
GL HF
Br,
TSO
Hi kel_sceptic,
I just saw the notifications.
I was using a Kingston NV2 SSD (1b) before the Samsung, but it had no difference. So I don't think that's the culprit. I wanna say it's definitely the GPU but I had a PNY RTX 4080 before and it gave me weird green screen crash/restarts with Nvidia driver being the main issue in event viewer.
My PC has been stable ever since I changed CPU voltage from auto to 1,4 (weird right?). The only time it still occasionally restarts is when I turn on Instant Replay in AMD's driver. Right now I think it's either CPU or GPU ( bad luck on both cards maybe ).
Right now I'm just waiting on the new Nvidia cards either 5080 or 5090.
Also on your second post,
I also have never replaced the thermal paste on the GPU. But I'm glad it's working out for you! Please keep us updated to solve this mystery crash