PC becomes unresponsive gradually during games
PC becomes unresponsive gradually during games
Hey everyone, this situation is really frustrating and I'm not sure what to do next.
Reproducing the issue is extremely difficult, which complicates testing it properly.
I believed I had finally fixed it, but after a month it reappeared yesterday.
Generally, whenever I play games, especially more demanding ones, everything except the game itself starts freezing.
It often begins with Chrome or File Explorer on my second monitor, yet I can still chat in Discord and play the game. I can no longer close any windows.
After a minute or two, Discord stops, and then after 3-4 minutes the game freezes too. At the start of the freeze, I can't use alt-tab or open the Task Manager.
My system details:
Ryzen 3950x
ASUS Strix X570-E
Corsair 4xGB DDR4 3200
samsung 970 pro 512
samsung 970 evo plus 1tb
samsung 860 evo
previously Zotac 2080 Ti (thought that was the cause)
currently 1080 Ti
power supply: 1080 Ti on straight power 8500W
What I've tried so far:
I have four RAM sticks, tested them in different configurations to see if any caused a crash. Also conducted several RAM tests.
I reinstalled Windows and upgraded to Windows 11.
Checked all my SSDs but haven't swapped yet. Ran chkdsk multiple times.
I've also tried another GPU for a month.
My temperatures are normal, nothing is spiking.
For some reasons, on the other GPU it crashes within about an hour. On this new one it took a month, and yesterday it crashed twice.
I've played for almost two hours without any crashes so far.
I searched through Windows event logs but couldn't find anything useful.
My questions:
Could anyone help me track down the cause of these crashes?
From my perspective, it might be related to the PSU or the mainboard/CPU. How can I test that without swapping?
I don’t have any components to swap, and buying and returning one would be inconvenient.
The windows nvme ssd contains 300 free space out of 375gb, with 800 free from 930, and 350 free from 930 in the games section.
4x8GB
Not enough RAM. It crashed whether I used just two or all four of them, and swapping one at a time still caused it. This suggests three might be faulty.
I think I tested with just one at a time, but now I’ve had this error for over a year and can’t recall it clearly 😅
Also, I don’t use Discord much.
It often happened when I played WoW and watched a show nearby.
I could reproduce it quickly when two games were running or during a very demanding game.
It also occurred when only the game was on, with nothing else open.
I discovered the answer.
It was the power supply unit.
After hearing a faint noise from my PSU last week, I looked it up. The fan wasn’t rotating. Since it was facing downward on my PC, I didn’t notice it.
So I replaced it with a new one and ran it under heavy load.
The interesting part is:
It’s significantly quieter now. Previously, at around 70% usage, the fans would be very loud and disruptive. Normally it would crash after just a minute. Now it runs smoothly for over 20 minutes, and the fans are completely silent.
This was an unusual issue to encounter. I had never experienced something like this before.