I recently got my friend a 3060 Ti and helped him install it in his PC. Initially, everything seemed to work fine, but now his PC is crashing when he tries to play certain games. Interestingly, not all games cause this issue; for example, Baldur's Gate 3 runs without a problem, while older titles like Battlefront 2 do cause crashes. We suspect it might be related to his power supply unit (PSU) since he's using a 500 Watt PSU. His setup includes the 3060 Ti, an i5-10400 processor, and 16 GB of DDR4 RAM. The system allows him to log in without issues, but crashes start when he opens a game. Also, he mentioned encountering a Kernel Power Event 41 error. We've tried updating the BIOS and setting Windows to Max performance mode. Any advice on whether the 500W PSU is adequate or if we should look for a replacement would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
From what you've described, it sounds like the PSU might be the culprit. Sometimes even if a PSU is rated for 500W, if it's of lower quality, it may not deliver the power consistently. Keep that as a last resort check; try other options first to avoid the hassle!
Was the 3060 Ti new or used? Also, it would help to know the temperatures of the components while at the desktop and when running games like Baldur's Gate 3, which isn't very GPU intensive. Higher demanding games like Battlefront 2 might push the temps up more. And, did you consider using DDU to clean up old drivers before the fresh install?
It's a used card, but it looks well-kept. I checked the temperatures during BG3, and they're normal. I'm not familiar with DDU; what's that?
A 500W PSU should be sufficient for that setup, assuming it's a decent quality unit. One thing to check is what GPU he upgraded from. If it was another NVIDIA card, there might be leftover driver conflicts. If it was an AMD card, I'd recommend completely uninstalling its drivers before doing a clean install of the NVIDIA drivers.
He upgraded from a GTX 1050, and we've already updated the GPU driver. Do you think old drivers could still be causing issues?
I plan to check the PSU last, as I want to tackle the easier fixes first.