I recently bought a used AMD RX 9060 XT 16GB and it has been crashing mainly while gaming. The computer suddenly restarts, then boots normally as if nothing happened. I've updated the drivers, checked the power cables, lowered my memory speed from 3600MHz to 3200MHz, disabled my CPU overclock, and turned off the AMD overlay. I'm wondering whether the power supply is struggling with transient power spikes, so I've ordered a replacement. My system has a Ryzen 5 5600X, 4x8GB of RAM, a Samsung 1TB SSD, and a Corsair TX750M power supply that dates from around 2019. Could the PSU be responsible, or is the graphics card potentially defective?
3 Answers
A quality 750W PSU should generally be enough for this hardware, so wattage alone doesn’t point to a problem. However, an older unit could still be failing or reacting poorly to sudden load changes. Replacing it with a newer, reputable ATX-compatible model is a reasonable test, especially since the crashes happen during gaming.
Because the card was purchased used, don’t overlook the possibility that it was damaged or already unstable. Large graphics cards can be damaged by impact or poor handling, and a faulty card can produce exactly these symptoms. Test the new PSU, reinstall the driver cleanly, and if the crashes continue, return the card under its warranty rather than replacing every other component.
I’ll give the replacement PSU a chance first, but if the same crashes continue I’ll return the graphics card instead of continuing to troubleshoot indefinitely.
Check Event Viewer around the time of each crash. Kernel-Power 41 only confirms that Windows lost power or restarted unexpectedly; it doesn’t identify the cause. WHEA errors can suggest a PCIe, memory-controller, or power problem, while display-driver or timeout errors point more toward the GPU or its driver. A sudden reboot with one monitor going black and the other turning green could be a power interruption or the card dropping off the PCIe bus.
I found a Kernel-Power 41 critical event, along with some other errors. During the crash, my DisplayPort monitor goes black while the HDMI monitor turns green.
That makes sense. My previous graphics card used more power, but this PSU is several years old, so I’ll try the new one before ruling it out.