Hey everyone! I really need some help diagnosing an issue with my Cyberpower prebuilt PC from 2021. It was running great until about a week ago when I started experiencing frequent crashes while playing War Thunder. The screen freezes for a bit, then goes black, and the system reboots after around 30 seconds. I checked the event viewer, and every crash seems to relate to a Kernel Power event (ID 41) and a watchdog violation timeout from my Nvidia driver (Bugcheck Code: 0x133). I tried using DDU to remove and reinstall the drivers and even factory reset my Windows 11 installation, but the crashes persisted on GPU-heavy games like War Thunder and Hell Divers, while Factorio works fine. I also benchmarked with Heaven and it started crashing halfway through. My BIOS is updated, and XMP is set to profile 1. Could my GPU be dying, or is there something else going on?
2 Answers
It sounds like you've done a lot of good troubleshooting already. Since your BIOS is up-to-date and you’ve tried different drivers, it might be worth checking other components like your PSU. If the power supply isn't providing enough power, it can lead to crashes under heavy loads. Just something to consider while you're diagnosing!
I’d recommend first checking your system temperatures. Overheating can definitely cause crashes like that. Use a monitoring app to keep an eye on your CPU and GPU temps while gaming. Also, take a look at your task manager while you’re at it; you want to be sure neither the CPU nor GPU is maxing out. And don’t forget to check if your fans are clean—dust buildup can lead to overheating issues! Good luck with it!
I've already looked into the temps using HW Monitor. The resting temps are good, around 40-50°C, and peak at 69°C during benchmarks, which isn’t too bad. I've also made sure the hardware is clean and dust-free, so I'm not sure what's causing the crashes.