My PC completely locks up after about 20–45 minutes in Risk of Rain 2 or Subnautica: Below Zero. The screen freezes, the audio loops, keyboard shortcuts stop working, and even Caps Lock no longer responds. I have to force the system off with the power button. This does not happen in other games such as Elden Ring, Dark Souls 1–3, CS2, League of Legends, Slay the Spire, or Left 4 Dead.
My system has an Intel i7-10700F, RTX 3060, 16 GB DDR4 consisting of one 16 GB stick currently running at 2133 MT/s, an ASRock CML-HDV/M.2 TPM motherboard, a be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 750 W PSU, and Windows 11. The BIOS is AMI P1.20 from September 2022.
I have already run Windows Memory Diagnostic, Prime95, FurMark, OCCT Power, and HWiNFO checks. I tried different RAM slots, lower graphics settings, reinstalling the GPU driver and Windows, verifying game files, disabling HAGS and overlays, forcing DirectX 11, using NVIDIA Debug Mode, enabling Intel Speed Shift, and moving the games between drives. Temperatures and voltages looked normal during stress tests, and Windows has not recorded an obvious crash. What else could cause these two games to hard-lock the entire system?
1 Answer
Both games use Unity, so that common factor is worth following up on. After the next freeze, check C:WindowsLiveKernelReports and %LocalAppData%CrashDumps. A lockup with a repeating sound can sometimes generate a live-kernel report even when normal crash logs are empty. Also inspect Event Viewer under Windows Logs > System for WHEA-Logger events 18 or 19, which can point to CPU, PCIe, or memory problems. Kernel-Power 41 will usually only confirm that the machine was shut down unexpectedly, so it is not necessarily the cause.
Your memory is also running at the conservative default speed of 2133 MT/s. If the module and motherboard support it, try enabling the appropriate XMP profile, but test stability afterward rather than assuming it fixes the issue.
I checked those folders and they were either empty or only contained unrelated crash dumps. Event Viewer only shows warnings saying the issue was recovered, and Kernel-Power 41 just records that I had to press the power button. I will still test the XMP profile.