I recently bought a used PC for $350 for my girlfriend, and while Windows runs perfectly normal, I'm facing some issues with certain games when using dual-channel RAM.
The rig handles games like CS2 without a hitch for over 20 hours, but I've encountered crashes with others:
- **7 Days to Die** crashes within 10–20 minutes, sometimes going as long as 40.
- **Elden Ring: Nightreign** tends to crash after about an hour.
Here's what's happening during these crashes:
- The screen goes completely black, and both game and Discord audio cut out.
- Neither **Ctrl+Alt+Del** nor **Alt+F4** work when this occurs, leading to hard shutdowns. Occasionally, the PC restarts on its own after 5–10 minutes.
- The **Event Viewer** logs a **Critical Kernel-Power 41** message indicating that the system rebooted unexpectedly.
I've tried several troubleshooting steps:
- Ran **MemTest86** (2 passes with dual-channel) and got no errors.
- An **OCCT CPU+RAM test** ran for 50 minutes without issues.
- Monitored temperatures, and they stayed stable for both CPU and GPU.
- Swapped PSUs (including a 450W Thermaltake), but it didn't help.
- Tested single RAM sticks in both slots, and the PC powered on without problems.
- The original owner had mismatched RAM (8GB+8GB), and when I ran 7 Days to Die with a single RAM module for 2 hours, there were no crashes.
- I installed a new **G.SKILL 16GB+16GB DDR4 2666MHz**, but the dual-channel setup causes crashes while single sticks work fine.
- I dealt with an AMD driver timeout before the black screen, then rolled back the drivers from **25.9.1** to **25.8.1** based on online recommendations, but no luck there either.
- Updated the BIOS to the latest version (**F20c**). Unfortunately, I found that **XMP** isn't available, though I did enable the "enhanced stability" option.
With specs including an RX6600 8GB, i5-10400F, and the new RAM, I suspect it might be a compatibility issue with the motherboard. I've also done a fresh Windows reinstall, which didn't help either. If anyone could offer some insight into whether this is likely a motherboard problem or RAM incompatibility, I'd really appreciate it!
1 Answer
It sounds like your CPU's memory controller might be struggling with the dual-channel setup, especially since single sticks work fine. Have you checked if your memory speed and timings are set correctly? Lowering the speed to 2133MHz and adjusting timings could relieve some stress on the controller.
I think my understanding is that you can’t manually lower the RAM speed on your board—it's just supposed to run at whatever the CPU supports. If it’s faster RAM, it should slow down automatically.