My memory is acting up?
My memory is acting up?
PSU: what does "a few years" mean?
An older PSU might begin to weaken and stop working. That could be the culprit.
Can we replace it with another reliable PSU?
Make sure to use only the cables that came with the new PSU.
Keep in mind that PSUs supply three distinct voltages (3.3, 5, and 12V) to system parts. Any issue with voltage or its delivery to components will lead to complications.
So I wasn't able to run memtest yesterday, and after having no crashes for two days when EXPO was off, I thought about turning it on and testing. I played two lengthy Dota matches—70 and 85 minutes long—and didn’t encounter any crashes, errors, or anything unusual.
The PSU is nearly three years old. But Dota only manages to reach around 50% of its GPU performance. When I ran 3dmark benchmarks to check CPU and GPU load, there were no crashes under stress. I used all the cables that came with the PSU and the 12VHPWR connector that came with the GPU.
I haven’t installed anything new. The only updates were Windows Defender patches, which seem to happen daily, sometimes even twice a day. Both today and yesterday, including the previous days, I didn’t notice any issues.
I noticed Steelseries GG would randomly close and switch my input device. After reinstalling it, it hasn’t happened again, although it didn’t occur at the same time as the crash. Still, I’ve seen many strange things with legitimate software.
To be clear, reinstalling Windows didn’t solve the problem the last time, which was a few months ago. I ended up reading a Reddit thread about Logitech Ghub crashing games, uninstalled it, and the crashes stopped, so I thought that might have been the cause. I’ve used that software for years without any problems.
I’m still unsure what’s going on. If it was RAM, I’d expect at least one crash after more than two hours of playtime, especially since I couldn’t finish a game without at least one failure. It could be related to the Steelseries software. I’ll keep monitoring and post again to see if the crashes have stopped.
After playing for over 5-6 hours, I haven't experienced any crashes, freezes, stutters, or similar issues. It's uncertain if the problem is fully resolved, but if it is, it seems to be linked to one of these changes:
Disabling and reactivating EXPO caused significant stutters before EXPO was turned off.
Reinstalling Steelseries GG led to random crashes and input device changes after EXPO was disabled.
Windows Defender updates occur daily with minor patches; it's unclear if they're connected.