Issues with drives or NVIDIA drivers (unclear which one) and frequent crashes?
Issues with drives or NVIDIA drivers (unclear which one) and frequent crashes?
Hello,
I’m experiencing frequent crashes whenever I play games on my system. This issue began with a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD. I reported the problems and had it replaced twice. After that, the latest NVIDIA drivers worked better.
On my system I see:
CPU: 7900x
CPU cooler: Thermalright Royal Pretor 130
Motherboard: Asus Strix B650e-f
RAM: 32GB DDR5 GKSill Flare X5
Storage: 2TB Samsung 990 Pro, 1TB SNO 770, 1TB WAVLink 880T
GPU: RTX 4070 ASUS TUF
Power Supply: Corsair RMX850
Case: Lian Li 216x
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro 24H2
Monitor: Acer Nitro 1440p 170Hz/MSI 24 1080p
My PC remains stable when using PBO and with GPU overclocking. I can run Cinebenchr24 for about 30 minutes, stream on two platforms on Obs, and launch any application without issues. However, once a game starts, my PC crashes unpredictably—sometimes it’s different each day.
Yesterday I played and streamed for two hours on Twitch, but today I can’t even run a single game for more than five minutes. Last night I spent two hours downloading and reinstalling GPU drivers and doing a BIOS update. The 990 Pro shows no errors in the Windows Update or error-checking tools, or during DISM checks from the command prompt.
It seems the problem has been ongoing for over a month. I’m exhausted and just want to play games. If anyone has suggestions on how to identify or fix this, please let me know. I’ve also tried lowering settings, turning off DLSS and RelaxFX, using an SSD with an SN850 as my OS drive, but the crashes persist. Reinstalling Windows four times per drive helped only temporarily.
I’m hoping for a solution so I can enjoy gaming again.
Test: remove the graphics card and Nvidia drivers, then run igpu only. This will help determine if the issue relates to the graphics card, Nv drivers (possibly needing deeper troubleshooting), power problems, or the card itself. I strongly suspect it's not the m2 drives.
Install the newest mobo chipset from Amd as well, if you haven't already—especially after a clean OS install.
If you're using the pro version of Windows, disabling automatic driver installation is straightforward. The home version is slightly more complex but achievable. Usually, you should disable this feature as soon as possible after installing Windows to prevent it from installing unstable software without your knowledge.
I wanted to make a note of this. I upgraded my RAM to run at 6000mhz after getting the PC two years ago. The 7900X normally only supports up to 5200mhz, which I verified on the official AMD site while searching for drivers. Now it works smoothly and starts up much faster. It's surprising how long I had issues with RAM speed over the past two years. Thanks for the feedback. A good lesson learned: always check the official CPU specifications for RAM speeds instead of the motherboard.
So now my computer just crashes and restarts repeatedly. I don't know what to do because it shows an error saying it failed to initialize and a crash dump. I can't see what caused it. Here is the Event Viewer.
Image: https://imgur.com/a/JxsuO7n
Edit
What's odd is that I had a cheap WAVLink drive for a year without any issues, but after switching to the 990 Pro all this instability started.
What are your temperatures while gaming? Did you check your 990 pro temp? If you swapped a gen 3 for a gen 4, you’ll need a cooler for the drive (gen 4 gets much hotter). Usually they just reduce speed when overheating, but since the issue began with the new drive, you should consider all settings. Is this drive part of your game library or the system drive?
The event viewer suggests a power problem. During stress tests you use less power than during gaming because most tests don’t load everything at once (like a game does—stressbench only loads the CPU, for example). The RM850x is a solid PSU but like any component it can fail. How stable is it?
And what’s your Windows power plan? If it’s balanced, you might try performance mode, or vice versa.
Hi,
in games I see temperatures between 50-70°C on the 7900x with pbo (-20 offset all core curve, +200 oc, auto scalar, mobo power limits and temp limits).
I have a good air cooler with ptm that never exceeds 80°C even in Cinebench.
The only issues occur during gaming.
All my drives use mobo heatsinks that keep them around the 40°C range when gaming.
I’m also using the 990 pro for OS and partial game storage.
It would be helpful to check the PSU—it’s two years old and I’ve been running a high-performance power plan.
It draws about 120-150W on CPU and 180-200W on GPU during gaming.
Thanks for your help, it’s a bit confusing since everything changed after upgrading to a better OS drive.
I found out that higher-end drives tend to maintain higher sustained speeds and are more affected by OC due to shared PCI lanes.
I’ll try balanced mode.
Do you have any suggestions on how to prevent Windows from generating error logs?
even more strange I played for hours yesterday without any issues, but now everything feels off. It looks like a driver problem, and since the newest NVIDIA drivers have been problematic, I’m leaning toward the PSU.
The RM850x comes with a 10-year warranty, meaning any failure after two years is likely due to a defective unit. It's improbable the issue lies elsewhere. You mentioned it's your system drive—how was the transition to the new drive handled? Did you create a clone or install Windows from scratch?
I am so confused,
every day feels unique,
I removed all pbo configurations and gpu overclocks,
which worked well on a cheap $50 ssd.
I had to completely adjust my PC.
It has failed every time I played today.
Two nights ago I played and streamed with pbo settings on.
I checked numerous drivers.
I reached out to Samsung support and they didn’t understand the issue.
I’m unsure what to do.
It looks like a driver problem, but my PC won’t save crash dumps and I can’t determine the cause.
I’ve reinstalled Windows three times on this drive so far.
Windows is installed on my backup sn850 drive—I’m almost ready to replace it with a 990 pro.
All I think is there’s an ASUS/Samsung conflict, the only drives that stopped working are the 980 pro and the 990 pro, which are two years apart and show the same problems.
The newest nvidia drivers have caused crashes on many users' computers.