I built this PC a little over a month ago: Arc B580, Ryzen 5 7500F, Gigabyte B650M Eagle WiFi6E motherboard, one 16GB Patriot Viper Elite 5 DDR5-6000 CL30 stick, Seasonic Focus GX-850 PSU, CH160 Plus case, and Windows 11 25H2. Recently, the entire system started restarting after roughly two hours of playing Assassin's Creed Mirage. There is no blue screen, and Windows starts normally afterward. Other games, including Overwatch, Transport Fever 2, and A Plague Tale: Innocence, have not caused it. Temperatures and usage look normal: the GPU stays below 60°C at around 70% utilization, the CPU is slightly above 60°C at about 50%, and memory usage is around 11GB. The crash only happens if Mirage is still running after that period; quitting it earlier and using another game or application does not trigger a restart. Event Viewer records Kernel-Power Event 41, with a bugcheck code of 0. I updated the BIOS from F4 to F9, restored default BIOS settings, disabled EXPO, reinstalled the graphics driver with DDU, installed the AMD chipset drivers, and checked both SSDs, which report over 95% health. What should I test next, and could this point to a hardware or power-delivery problem even though it only occurs with one game?
3 Answers
Use a memory test such as MemTest86 or Windows Memory Diagnostic, and consider testing with two matching DIMMs if you can. A single DDR5 stick works, but it runs in single-channel mode and can sometimes reveal marginal memory-controller or memory-training issues. Keep BIOS settings at stock, including EXPO disabled, while testing. Also verify that the motherboard model and BIOS are correct for the Ryzen 7500F and inspect the board and GPU power connections. If CPU, GPU, and memory tests pass but Mirage consistently restarts the PC, try reinstalling or verifying the game and check for game-specific driver issues.
Kernel-Power 41 is usually only a record that Windows noticed an unexpected restart; it does not identify the failing component. Because the bugcheck code is zero, Windows did not capture a normal blue-screen crash. Check the surrounding System log entries for WHEA hardware errors, display-driver resets, or other warnings, and run separate stress tests for the CPU, GPU, and memory. Also test Mirage with a frame-rate cap or reduced power limit. If only that game triggers the failure, it could still be exposing a marginal power, driver, or stability issue rather than being the root cause itself.
The PSU has enough rated capacity, but modern GPUs can create short transient spikes. Check the PSU label and serial number to determine its manufacturing date, and make sure every GPU power connector is fully seated and uses the proper dedicated cable rather than an unsuitable adapter or loose connection. If possible, temporarily test with another known-good PSU. A power-related restart is more plausible than overheating given the temperatures and the clean Event 41 record.
The serial prefix may indicate the unit was manufactured in 2026, but confirm it with Seasonic’s documentation or support rather than relying only on an online guess. Newer units are not automatically defective, so swapping in another PSU is the more useful test.
A minidump may not exist when the machine loses power or resets instantly. The absence of one does not rule out a hardware or power problem.