My PC behaves normally during long gaming sessions, with no stuttering or interruptions. However, when I use Chrome or Firefox for simple tasks, the display occasionally freezes or resets, and all of my USB peripherals make their disconnect sound before returning to normal. This can happen repeatedly. Afterward, games such as Overwatch may run at extremely low frame rates until I restart the computer. What could be causing this, and how can I diagnose it? My system has an Intel Core i7-10700K, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060, a Gigabyte Z490 AORUS Elite motherboard, 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, and an 850W Corsair power supply.
2 Answers
This sounds more like a hardware or driver problem than the browser itself. As a quick test, disable hardware acceleration in Chrome or Firefox and see whether the resets stop. The graphics card, its driver, or the connection between the GPU and motherboard could be involved. If possible, testing with another graphics card would help confirm whether the GPU is at fault.
It may be Windows Explorer or the desktop shell crashing and restarting rather than the entire operating system failing. Since the PC recovers and your peripherals reconnect, check Event Viewer immediately after reproducing the problem. Look through Windows Logs and the Application and System sections for display-driver, USB, Explorer, or hardware-related errors.
I’ll reproduce the issue and inspect the Event Viewer logs right afterward to see which component is failing.
The RTX 5060 is fairly new, and I never saw this happen with my previous GTX 1650, but I’ll still test hardware acceleration and check the card and drivers.