Hard Crashes

leo1983

leo1983

leo1983

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18 Aug 2017
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41
Hoping I can get a bit of help on diagnosing the cause of these hard crashes I seem to be getting...

Built first PC in February, played Metro Exodus, PC froze up for a second or two then rebooted itself.
Thought maybe it was because I turned ray tracing on etc. so lowered settings and played a while longer. But then crashed again later in the game.

Since then I have had crashes in multiple games, but sometimes it plays well for a few hours without issue.

I always get a 'Default Radeon WattMan settings has been restored due to unexpected system failure' message when it gets back into Windows, which sounds like a GPU issue, but I havent changed from the default settings.

I was getting drivers from Asus for the GPU, but then downloaded Driver Booster and found there was a much newer Radeon Driver which I didn't have, I DL this (and anything else out of date) but still have issues.

I also changed GPU power connection from 2 PCIE connections on same cable to 2 separate cables.

Bit stumped really... any suggestions?


  • Windows 10 Pro
  • AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor
  • ASUS TUF GAMING B550-PLUS DDR4 ATX Motherboard
  • Corsair RM750x 80+ Gold Fully Modular Power Supply
  • Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 32GB (2x16GB) 3600 MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Dual Kit
  • ASUS Radeon RX 6800 16GB ROG STRIX OC Graphics Car
  • Cooler Master MasterAir MA620P RGB CPU Cooler
  • WD Blue SN550 2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD/Solid State Drive
  • WD Gold 6TB hard Drive SATA 6Gbs
 
Thanks, may try that DDU first then, hopefully its a driver thing. If the GPU is broken its going to be a nightmare trying to get a replacement.
 
Ran DDU today, reinstalled drivers using 'AMD Adrenalin' which I guess is there software for keeping things up to date. Just had the first freeze a few hours later. Playing Escape From Tarkov this time, screen just freezes, i need to hold down power until it reboots.
Dont suppose anyone has any other suggestions i can try?
 
Ok went into the Radeon Software, Performance, Tuning, GPU Tuning and lowered the Max Frequency % and Voltage % from 100% to 90%... Does that sound ok for underclocking the GPU?
 
Thanks for tips so far.

Not too keen on unplugging everything and slowly adding back unless as a last resort. The crashes only happen when gaming, and some days they don't happen at all, so that could be a long process.

I did run memtest (using Windows Memory Diagnostic) which said no issues were found.

However, some other weird things have been happening...
When I tried opening Windows Memory Diagnostic yesterday... it opened briefly, then while I was reading through the options it closed itself down (this happened several times).
Today, I managed to run the test, and then took a look for the results in Event Viewer. But as of right now, I am trying to open event viewer again - as soon as it opens I get a blue loading spinner on the cursor, then event viewer closes itself. If I try and open again, it does the same thing.
I have noticed this type of thing before on this PC, where something opens then closes straight away on its own.

Maybe something went wrong with the windows install that is causing this and could also be causing the crashes?

Also, just to clarify the types of crashes I am getting, the regular ones I am keen to fix are more of a freeze... the game just freezes and I cant do anything apart from hold the power down until the system reboots.
Thought its worth mentioning that, as what I mentioned in the opening post where PC reboots itself is what happens for Metro Exodus, but that could be an issue with that game rather than this more regular issue I get with various games.
 
After the above, crashed 3 times in a row, culminating in no signal being sent to monitor.
I ended up calling a support guy over who said motherboard is showing an error on the GPU... he moved to the other GPU slot and got the system up and running again.
I did a fresh windows install, played a few games successfully, then I started getting crashes again.

I'm about to return the GPU as faulty... I havent got another one to try in it's place to confirm that, and it's going to be a nightmare sourcing another...
Any last chance saloon doubts it's the GPU before I return it? (and if not, any tips for sourcing another GPU :D)
 
PC777 said:
I've had similar issues that turned out to be bad ram. Bad ram can sometimes pass multiple tests, but an overnight Memtest86 as a USB drive will usually detect the errors even if other 2 or passes don't..

Even though sounds a lot like the GPU, bad ram can also give all kinds of errors, maybe run Memetest86 overnight before just to be sure you RMA your GPU.
Click to expand...

Thanks - I'll give this a shot tonight.
 
hyperseven said:
Have you looked in event viewer? Look for any kernel power errors, 41.
Click to expand...

I ended up sending the GPU back and waited a couple of weeks for a replacement.
Brand new GPU in place, and within 10 mins, everything froze again while playing a game!

So that rules out the GPU.

I checked event viewer, and noticed there were a couple of warnings/errors to do with the HDD.
The HDD is purely for storage, the games are all on the SSD so I was thinking this would have nothing to do with the crashes, but physically unplugged it and tried a few games again.
Well, this seems to have done some good... the problems where everything just freezes mid game and I need to hold power to reboot have not happened since.
I did have a crash where the PC rebooted itself though.

This crash did show a Kernal Power Error 41

So, I have 2 questions!

1 - Is there anything I should do with the HDD? plug it back in and defrag or something? Or is this faulty hardware?
2 - Does the 41 error basically mean I have a faulty PSU too?
 
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