My PC is over two years old and recently started shutting down while running demanding games, even though it used to handle them without problems. The display suddenly goes black, audio stops, and my Steam controller disconnects. The computer stays powered on for roughly 3–5 seconds before shutting down normally. Reliability History only reports that the previous shutdown was unexpected.
This has happened at very specific points in cutscenes in The Quarry and Expedition 33, including the cellar scene early in The Quarry and several scripted scenes in Expedition 33. Before the most recent shutdown, I noticed heavy stuttering. During testing, The Quarry also showed microstutters, asset pop-in, brief lighting artifacts, and moments where large portions of the scene appeared to load all at once. My desktop wallpaper also briefly turned black while I was reorganizing files, although that may be unrelated.
I replaced the power supply, monitored temperatures, updated the BIOS and chipset drivers, and tried undervolting and benchmarking both the GPU and CPU. Typical GPU and CPU temperatures are around 55–60°C, while the DDR5 memory stays below 40°C. What else should I troubleshoot?
System specs: ASRock B650 Pro RS motherboard, Radeon RX 6900 XT, Ryzen 7 7700X, and 32 GB of RAM.
2 Answers
Check the GPU power wiring as well. The RX 6900 XT should ideally use separate PCIe power cables from the PSU for each 8-pin connector rather than one daisy-chained or pig-tailed cable. A replacement PSU won’t help if the GPU is still being fed through an inadequate cable arrangement.
Try completely removing the graphics drivers with DDU, then install a fresh driver package. Since you’re seeing stuttering, pop-in, and lighting glitches before the shutdown, a corrupted or unstable GPU driver is worth ruling out. Reinstalling the affected games may also help if their shader or game files are damaged.
I haven’t tried DDU yet, so I’ll do a clean driver removal and reinstall. I’ll also verify or reinstall the games.
I haven’t changed or checked the GPU power cables yet, so I’ll confirm that each connector is using its own cable from the PSU.