Specs: Ryzen 7 2700X, RX 7600 with factory OC, TUF Gaming B450M, 16GB 3200 DDR4 G.Skill Ripjaws RAM, Corsair CS650M PSU
This problem has been popping up for months, but until last night only popped up every few weeks to months. Basically, the PC will blackscreen, turn off peripherals (keyboards backlights go out) and just sort of “idle”, still running but not actually doing or displaying anything. Initially I thought my GPU was dying, I ran a Vega 56 before, bought it used and had it for 3 years, so not unreasonable. But now it’s also happening with the RX 7600. It happened 3 times last night, and I was able to replicate it once this morning (all four times while playing Snowrunner. Nothing happened yesterday while playing Red Dead Online for hours before that). Event Viewer shows nothing for the time of the crash. I’ve been trying to replicate it again with GPU-Z open on the other monitor, but no “luck” so far. There’s not even any readings that could indicate where the problem is. Temperature for both CPU and GPU remains in the 50s (around 70 for GPU hotspot), fans function normally, board power draw doesn’t go above 160W, nothing spikes randomly or anything of the sort and the new GPU should also be using significantly less power than the old one. I’ve also checked that the GPU is plugged in properly and drivers are updated.
The only things I can think of are either faulty RAM, a faulty motherboard or a faulty PSU. The PSU is one of the oldest parts of the PC, probably coming up on 10 years now, so if any part is failing I would expect it to be that. However, I still wanted to explore other possibilities before spending 100 bucks or more on a new, high quality PSU.
EDIT: Would also like to add that I’ve only found two threads on reddit that describe a problem that matches mine closely (there’s a ton of different black screen crashes, so a bit hard to find), but neither had a solution.
Well, I might’ve already ordered a new PSU. I’ll do the BIOS and chipset driver update and if it still happens then… well, I don’t know. Not like I can really check anyways.
And do sfc /scannow
It’s pretty fast and Windows usually finds borked files. Reinstalling Windows might be better, but it’s annoying.
Did the BIOS and chipset driver updates, sfc /scannow too but it found nothing. Suppose all that’s left is seeing if it’s made any difference, though I can’t say for sure either way.
Sad to report it still crashes. I’ve also checked for that Boost Performance Mode option, but it appears to not be an option for me
Darn. Maybe try switching off “fast boot” for Windows and doing a proper restart? That option (which is on by default) broke my installation once. Also had crashes that I couldn’t fix, disabled that, restarted, problem solved.
I can try that, but it just gets weirder. I’ve played Red Dead for an hour, maybe a little under earlier. That put my GPU load at 98% and ran my GPU and CPU 10 degrees hotter than when I’m playing Snowrunner, yet it didn’t crash then. Which is weird, right? You’d think any crashes would only be exacerbated by an increased load. So why would it crash at 70% load, but not at nearly 100%? Ran the stresstest in the AMD Adrenalin software, once for 15 and once for 30 seconds, no dice either.
Maybe it’s because RDO runs in Vulkan, but Snowrunner doesn’t (I think)? Seems unlikely, but grasping at straws is all I got left.
Ever thought it might be the game? Maybe the current GPU driver has a bug there?
I found a lot of issues with Snowrunner black screening on start. The fix here is to run it in fullscreen instead of borderless.
Can you try to play the game in fullscreen mode and see if it still crashes? If you use FreeSync it could be connected with that too.
I have thought it could be the game, even if it would be a terrible coincidence that it starts replicating the exact issue I’ve had before outside of it. I’ve also been playing the game just a couple of days earlier for hours on end with absolutely no issue. Also tried searching for anyone having the same problem with the game, but only found other black screen issues, like the black screen on start you mentioned, which are all more obviously software/driver related. But this is genuinely the whole PC crashing. I mean, it cuts power to my keyboard, my controller disconnects.
I should probably also try expanding my testing grounds, see if any other games run fine or crash too.
So, I played AC Valhalla for maybe 45 minutes without crashes, then played Snowrunner in Fullscreen and with a 60fps frame limit on for 2 hours. Not a conclusive test, but it might be better?