The system shuts down upon connecting the graphics card.
The system shuts down upon connecting the graphics card.
My PC has been crashing repeatedly over the past few hours. I attempted to re-seat the RAM, replaced each one individually, and everything functioned correctly. After cleaning the GPU, it started working again. Then it suddenly went black, the screen disappeared, and the system froze—no shutdown or looping. The keyboard and mouse stopped responding even after testing them with caps lock and num lock. I removed my old GPU, installed a new one, and tested for 10 to 15 minutes before putting the other GPU back in. Now it loads normally but crashes when loading Windows.
I’d attempt to run the drivers without the GPU first, then upgrade to the newest WHQL version with the GPU enabled. However, there are additional issues: your i5 3rd Gen and RX 6600 combination isn’t ideal—both the CPU and PCIe bandwidth are limiting factors. The RX 6600 uses PCIe Gen 4x8, so anything below that will hurt performance, which 3rd generation i5s lack. This creates a double bottleneck situation.
I removed the drivers without starting in safe mode from Device Manager, then tried the DDU method. I just found it on a YouTube video by JayTwocents. When I plugged the GPU back in to reinstall drivers, the PC crashed again right after opening the AMD software. I’m aware that my old CPU creates bottlenecks, and I planned to upgrade gradually over three years. I bought an used RX 6600 hoping it would keep me upgraded slowly, since this GPU seemed like the best future-proof option available at the time.
I’ll also attempt to connect my GPU to a friend’s computer tomorrow to see if the problem is software-related or hardware-based. I’m confident it’s safe, as I haven’t used it much since August and have invested nearly three years in it.
I wanted to let you know about a possible issue I encountered. I used DDU in safe mode, cleared all GPU drivers and reinstalled them. So far, I haven’t seen another black screen. I’m writing this after an hour of testing. I also ran furmark to see if power consumption was the problem, but it didn’t affect me. It seems a driver issue might be related to recent power outages in my area. Thanks for taking the time to help!