I recently bought my first prebuilt PC from Amazon, but several games cause it to freeze and completely restart the system. Devil May Cry 5 crashes even on low settings, despite running acceptably on my old computer. Marvel Rivals worked normally until today, and Warframe crashes before getting past the daily login rewards. The system has an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 16GB of RAM, and an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. I've updated the processor and graphics card drivers, but I'm not sure what else to check. I also looked at Event Viewer after a crash and saw many errors happening at the same time, though I don't know how to interpret them. What should I troubleshoot first?
3 Answers
Because more than one game is crashing and the whole computer is rebooting, test the basics instead of lowering graphics settings further. Monitor CPU and GPU temperatures while gaming, verify that the graphics card and RAM are firmly seated, and make sure all power cables are connected properly. Run a memory test and a stability test if you can. If the PC is a new prebuilt, do not hesitate to use the seller’s warranty if it continues to restart under load—repeated hard crashes are not normal.
Start by checking whether every relevant driver and system component is current, especially the NVIDIA graphics driver, chipset drivers, motherboard BIOS, and Windows updates. A full system restart during multiple games usually points to a hardware, power, temperature, or driver problem rather than a normal in-game setting. Event Viewer can help, but the errors that appear after a forced restart are often consequences rather than the original cause. Check for a critical error at the exact time of the crash and note its source and event ID.
I checked Event Viewer and found a large group of errors at the same time as the crash, but I don’t understand what they mean.
Check whether Windows is recording a Kernel-Power event, but treat that as evidence of an unexpected shutdown, not a diagnosis. Disable automatic restarting temporarily so you can see whether a blue-screen error appears. You can also reinstall the NVIDIA driver using the clean-install option, then test one game at a time with overlays and overclocking utilities disabled. If it still powers off or reboots, the power supply, overheating, faulty RAM, or the graphics card itself should be investigated.
I updated the processor and graphics drivers, but I’m not sure how to update the chipset or BIOS safely. I’m also worried I may have already caused damage since this is my first PC.