Help Request: PC started crashing during gaming recently, attempting to diagnose the cause

Thanks, unfortunately I don't have a second GPU available, but I may be able to borrow one from one of my buddies, good idea. The second GPU (the one failing now) actually lasted shorter than I thought it did (I checked via my email when I received it). It actually lasted about 1.5 years of heavy use at stock.

For the story there, I purchased a 8700K + 1080 Ti prebuilt from ABS (new egg's prebuilt brand) since it was a lot cheaper at the time (Black Friday sale) to get the parts that way than to build the computer and buy the component's individually. Well, that was a big mistake -- GPU died in less than a year so I got a replacement (though I had to pay more than a hundred bucks and spend hours getting support to do anything. Reaching anyone who could authorize replacement was a huge hassle). Initially they actually """repaired""" the original and sent it back to me (I had to pay for shipping and was in warranty). It wasn't repaired of course (same issues persisted) so I had to jump through a bunch of hoops again and eventually they replaced it with what's failing now.

This current PC was their replacement (3900X + 2080S) and also had issues from square one (the memory was never able to reach the advertised speeds so I had to do a ton of manually pain staking testing with memtest86 and the like to figure out what it could really do).

Fast forward 1.5 years and now this GPU is failing too. Never again man, if you want something right you apparently have to do it yourself (or at least use a more reputable prebuilder -- thinking on it I know MainGear did well in LInus and Gamer's Nexus blind tests whereas obviously brands like Dell typically do horribly). The whole thing makes me very suspicious that ABS is doing something shady like putting used GPUs into their machines or some such. They definitely don't test their memory in house or set XMP before shipping out. Awful prebuilders with terrible quality control has been my experience.

 

Thanks, I always run my PC through a power surge protector, I have not ever used one of those in-between batteries though. I had figured the surge protector would be enough for the "bad electricity" point you're making (correct me if I'm wrong).

For the memory errors that could be it I suppose, but even running the PC with each ram stick individually sadly didn't resolve the behavior (though maybe both sticks are bad I suppose).

For your point about daily shutdowns are startups, that is something I do pretty much every day. Should I not? Is it preferable to put the computer into "sleep mode" instead? I didn't know that would damage the hardware. Thanks,

 

I've never heard before that daily startups/shutdowns could more quickly damage hardware. Should I be using sleep mode instead? I pretty much totally shut down then restart my machines every day. Thanks,

 

Thanks, it's possible it was another issue for the first PC as you say -- the reason I figured it was the GPU was because the "rendering device lost" errors and visual artifacts seemed to point to the GPU at the time. Honestly this is a good lesson in not using (at least non-reputable) prebuilders I think even when they undercut the price of the individual parts. They really don't give a damn so long as the machine fails outside of their warranty window (always 1 year as far as I know). I was in warranty, but ABS apparently could've solve what was wrong with it (or just didn't want to replace whatever component was borked perhaps due to cost, who knows). They sent it back still broken with the same issues and eventually I was able to talk to someone that authorized the replacement which is failing now 1.5 years later. Needless to say I won't be making a purchase from ABS again in my lifetime.

 

surge protectors direct high current bursts to ground, they don't filter noise or correct the power factor, you need an online ups with line conditioning to handle all 3 cases.

tbf, a surge protector rarely reacts fast enough to save anything on it, in the forums and groups that qualified EE's and sparkies tend to collect at, they are frequently called a scam.

Even though this is the case, you need a significantly low grade chip for startup wear and tear to kill it this fast.

 

Thank you very much, do you have any recommendations for what UPS meets these requirements? I'd gladly buy one if it helps prevent these kinds of issues in the future. I'm not very knowledgeable about UPS's currently, so they also function as a surge protector as well? I'll need to do some Googling around for that. Thanks,

 

Schneider electric UPS's, these are sold as APC brand and are usually used for servers and such, the consumer level apc's are line interactive, so don't feature the power conditioning or power factor correction. (i have been informed that only offline models have absolutely no PFC or Conditioning features)

 

Ram errors can cause issues like that. Try y-cruncher pi bench, it will fail nearly instantly if any problems are found.

Inrush current.

 

My system passed the y-cruncher pi bench without issue in addition to some other memory testers. Thanks for the recommendation, good thing to try.

 

Sorry to spam you (thanks a lot for the recommendations). Would this one be a good fit do you think? https://www.amazon.com/APC-Sinewave...00MS/dp/B0779KYKLB?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1&psc=1 (1000 VA / 600 W). I'm actually leaning towards doing the beefier 1350/810 W version of that for the extra 20 bucks since from what I've read if you change out the battery it should last for a pretty long time.

I think I found their page listing many of their APC / schneider UPS's, but they have a lot here and I'm not really sure what the differences are or which I should buy: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/...a435-ac03-4541-be9c-4e03dd8cab3f&ref_=ast_bln

What I plan to do is just plug my computer (once I get it repaired or perhaps i'll just bite the bullet and build a new one) / monitor / speakers into it -- I might also plug my router/modem in, but currently those are in a different room with a basic surge protector.

I'm pretty out of my depth here as I've never used or owned a UPS before. Where I live we do get a good amount of power outages and storms so seems like it'd be a good idea. Thanks,

 

A well known brand and high end psu has all the necessary protection built in
read here > https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supplies-101,4193.html
UPC's main purpose is to provide shot time backup power when your household power
is down, avoid playing computer during thunderstorm save money
If you want good and efficient power, plug all your computer's directly to wall socket.
It will make a difference and install lighting rob on your rooftop to protect from lighting. >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rod

 

Thanks! If I do end up getting one of the nicer APC UPS’s it won’t hurt anything though right? I do have frequent power outages and my home has pretty old wiring so I figure it would probably be good to pick up one of the nicer UPS’s out there so I can plug in my PC / monitor / router / modem to it even if it’s just to avoid crashes when the power goes out.

I haven’t heard before about plugging directly to the wall — at the very least shouldn’t I be using a decent surge protector? I know some PSUs have some prediction built in but I’ve had some electronics get fried by lightning before so I’m pretty concerned about just plugging the PC directly to the wall. Seems like a nice ACP UPS is the best one can do within reason for protection unless I’m mistaken.

Thank you for the link, I will give that a thorough read tomorrow. @Astyanax Going off of that, do you think the APC UPS I linked would be unnecessary after all? I was planning to get the 190 dollar 1350 VA / 810 W one I had linked above. Thanks, sorry to pester you I’m just very new to the concept of UPS’s in general.

 

the BR1350MS is a line interactive model, for a home user its more than likely just fine, the online topology types i mentioned earlier are likely overkill for your use case so the one you found would likely be fine,

BR1350MS is also a pure sine wave rather than stepped, this plus the active pfc compatibility mean the psu won't make any weird buzzing noises.

PS: There is one thing to keep in mind with any ups, if your area has wildly variating voltages you need to appropriately configure the nominal voltage so it sits as close to the middle of that variance as possible to prevent unnecessary bucking and boosting. Though good psu's these days have a range of 90v-260v, you can still wear a good psu out quicker than usual if there are frequent boost events.

For example, heres mine



mines actually not appropriately configured atm, i used to need 240v nominal as max used to exceed 255v, on the worst days min can dip below 210v which triggers boosts, so i actually need to set mine back to the stock 230v - i just keep forgetting to lol.

 

Thank you very much, I think I’ll order than model then. I really appreciate your time and explaining everything. Yeah, my area’s pretty crap so I’ll have to look into configuring all that as you say. Much appreciated.

 

Have you undervolted your hardware?
Long story short, when i bought my hardware in 2017 it was the first thing i did after I've noticed my 1080 aorus xtreme reaching 92C at stock, reaching out to gygabite support ended up saing its all fine dont bother, but i did bother and undeevolted the card + oced memory, havent seen more then 62C since. Same i did for cpu and ram. I also bought ups powerman smartsine 1000 with sinusoidal signal fixing for corsair 650tx (its ok but batteries lasted for about 4 years) On/off pc every day, dont see other ways bcoz there's no ground in our house.

 

If the subject is so obvious to you why not put some links. I don`t know whether there are courses on helpful/polite manners for forums but you could use one...

 

Does the following keyboard shortcut bring the display back?

Windows Logo Key + Ctrl + Shift + B

There's an increase in reports of graphic anomalies / black screens / general issues over on the Nvidia sub Reddit.
Examples include characters with no lighting or shading, trees turning into confetti, black screens, freezes with wireframe lines, game crashes to desktop or just freezes but Windows continues to run underneath. DWM.exe crash and recovery errors are sometimes present in the event log particularly for those with multiple monitors. Likely a coincidence or borderline clocks / voltage but there's certainly an increase in reports.

I can also reproduce an issue with a custom EDID causing Windows to lockup at black screen ( monitor.sys ) until the custom EDID is removed, this isn't an issue with drivers 497.xx or older.

For the graphic anomalies / crashes, Nvidia rep (PidgeUK / ManuelG) has suggested reverting to driver 497.29 to see if the issues are resolved. Nvidia are requesting crash dumps with 512.95 if issues are resolved by rolling back to 497.29.

pidge2k (NVIDIA Forums Representative) Give driver 497.29 a try this weekend with the 3080 Ti and let me know how it goes. If the issue goes away, update your driver to the latest version again. When you see the corruption, proceed to capture a manual Windows crash dump as described in the FAQ below and send it to me at driverfeedback@nvidia.com FAQ at https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5149​

Hope your issue is resolved soon.

 

Thank you, I’ll try this!

 

Alright, I tried that and sadly it didn’t resolve the problem in my case. I’m actually leaning towards it probably being an issue with the PSU, but it’s possible it’s the GPU as well. Thanks for the recommendation, I appreciate it.

 

Thanks, I haven’t tried this yet, but I’ve heard from other people it helped tremendously with their temps. I can boot the machine and the bios so I may tinker around with that some. Thanks for the suggestion.