Hey everyone! I'm having some serious issues with my PC that I can't seem to figure out. It started crashing while playing Ark Survival Ascended, and since then, things have gotten progressively worse. Here are my specs:
- **CPU**: Intel i9-13900k (with an Asus Rog Ryou 3 AIO cooler)
- **GPU**: Asus Rog Strix 4090-OC
- **Motherboard**: Asus Rog Strix Z790 Gaming Wifi D4
- **Memory**: Corsair 4x 16GB at 3200MHz
- **Boot Drive**: Crucial P3 Plus
- **Additional Storage**: Sky Hynix Platinum 2TB, Samsung 970 Evo 2TB
- **PSU**: Asus THOR 1600W
The crashes vary; sometimes, my system totally freezes, and I get a blue screen error. Other times, all three of my monitors flash black a couple of times before going completely black and the system just sits there. No reboot, no error, nothing—until I power it off and back on.
I've checked the event viewer but it isn't much help. I'm not even sure what might be causing this. Could it be thermal throttling? I've kept an eye on the temps, and they seem fine. Maybe a failing memory stick? It could also be a Windows issue, since I did a full reinstall last year. McAfee checks out okay too. I'm at a bit of a loss here and I really want to solve this. Any ideas or pointers on what to check next?
Oh, and just updated my BIOS, too. I've got it set to AI optimized for overclocking, with the CPU settings at Intel's recommended defaults, XMP 2 enabled, and I even tried using GPU tweaker 3 from Asus in optimized mode. Thanks in advance!
2 Answers
If it's happening randomly, it could also be a failing RAM stick. You might want to try running a memory test or removing the memory sticks to see if one in particular is the culprit. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that cause the biggest headaches!
Good tip! I’d definitely check that out. Maybe run MemTest86 overnight to see if anything comes back off.
It sounds like you might be running into a known issue with some Intel's 13th and 14th-gen CPUs having microcode errors. I’d recommend doing a quick search on that topic to see if anything rings a bell. It's possible that updating the BIOS might not have fixed the underlying issue.
I did look it up and got a mixed bag of suggestions that ranged from GPU failures to Windows glitches and even BIOS problems. Super confusing!
I feel you! I had something similar, and it turned out to be a faulty GPU, but that was after trying all the other fixes.
Yeah, I had to replace one of my memory sticks last year. It gave symptoms like that but was pretty intermittent, which made it tough to diagnose at first.