I've been facing some serious issues over the past few days where my computer completely crashes while gaming. The crashes can happen after about an hour of gaming, or even right when I start up my PC, and this occurs across several different games. When it crashes, both of my monitors go black, the sound continues for a moment, and then my computer shuts down entirely, requiring me to press the power button to restart it.
I suspect that this might be a problem with the graphics card, power supply, or motherboard, and I'm looking for help on how to confirm which component is the culprit—or if it's possibly multiple parts. Luckily, everything is still under warranty, but I want to avoid messing up a replacement. Here are my system specs:
- Windows Home 11
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Graphics Card
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D 12-Core 4.4GHz Processor
- 64GB DDR RAM
- MSI X670E Gaming Plus Wifi Motherboard
- BIOS Version - American Megatrends International 1.71, 7/4/2024
- 2TB SSD
So far, I've tried the following fixes:
- Used DDU to safely uninstall and reinstall NVIDIA and AMD drivers.
- Performed a factory reset of my PC.
- Clean installation of Windows from a USB drive.
- Reseated my graphics card, which didn't show any signs of physical damage.
I've also been getting some errors noted by the Reliability Monitor and Event Viewer like BlueScreen code 133 and LiveKernelEvent 117, 141, 1b8. Any advice on what to try next would be super appreciated!
1 Answer
It sounds like you’re dealing with some rough crashes! I’d recommend checking your event viewer for critical error logs—specifically look for the nvlddmkm error related to your NVIDIA drivers. I had a similar situation, and I managed to fix mine by downclocking the GPU using MSI Afterburner and also capping the framerate in some games. It worked for me, so it might help!
Thanks for the tip! I looked at the event viewer earlier and didn't see that specific error in the latest logs after my fresh install, but I’ll keep an eye out. How much did you downclock your GPU?