Build Advice I'm close to throwing out my perfectly good PC and building a new one

[GreenPan]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Yjhpsh

That's my current PC. For a while now, I've been having sporadic but persistent crashing problems when playing games. The first example that comes to mind was GTA V campaign, which crashed constantly no matter how many fixes I tried.

I've also had trouble with Dying Light, Remnant: From the Ashes, Killing Floor 2 (not anymore for some reason), RPCS3 playing God of War 2, and - as of now - Lies of P (was crashing every 10-30 minutes, now it's stopped) and Nioh 2. There might be others that I'm not thinking of.

The weird and most frustrating part though is that not every game crashes. DJMAX Respect V, PCSX2, Halo 2, Resident Evil 4 Remake, the Talos Principle 2; those games never crashed/crash. I'm definitely crashing more often than I should, though.
I can't figure out in any case how to stop it. Here's some things I've tried over time with the various games, none of which seemed to make a difference:

● Updating BIOS
● Clean installing the latest video drivers
● Reverting to years-old drivers
● Disabling background processes (Game Bar, Afterburner, SteelSeries Engine, Wallpaper Engine)
● Playing on Windows 10 instead of Windows 11
● Completely resetting Windows 11
● Increasing virtual memory
● Increasing paging file size
● Replacing RAM
● Replacing SSD
● Lowering resolution and/or settings
● Stress testing CPU and GPU to see if failure would occur
● Trying pirated copies
● Maybe some other things I can't think of

Any advice? I was planning on upgrading when the 6000 series came out, but at this point I'm considering just buying a 4090 or even a 5090 once it releases.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

Stress testing CPU and GPU to see if failure would occur

what were the results?

And when you say game crashes, does it crash to desktop or blue screen and system reboot?

Do you have auto OC with PBO enabled or other manual PBO OC settings? If so, did you try it at stock settings?

What's your monitor resolution and refresh rate? Asking for your new GPU upgrade opinion. Or will you be upgrading both monitor and GPU?

 

[CodeConnoisseur]

Assuming it's not Windows that is crashing (blue screen), it sounds like a software issue. You should be able to find log files for these games which might give a hint as to what is causing them to crash (e.g. for GTA V it might be under My Documents\Rockstar Games\Launcher and any .log files in there). You can also check the Application log of Event Viewer and the Administrative Events view for anything related to those games. Additionally, you can save all the information from dxdiag and post a link to the file on a cloud storage service such as Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox.

Also, when you tried resetting Windows, was it a clean install from a flash drive or did you keep your files and/or use Windows reset? I would always recommend a clean install and manually backing up and restoring needed files then reinstalling all applications. Otherwise, there's still a slight risk that whatever is causing the problem is carried over.

 

[Ralston18]

Did you look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer for any error codes, warnings, or informational events just before or at the time of the crashes?

Did you try the built in Windows Troubleshooters, "dism", or "sfc /scannow"?

= = = =

This:

"Trying pirated copies"

That is not at all a viable method to troubleshoot problems. More likely to make things even worse.

And it also suggests that you have been running pirated software and that in itself may be the original cause of the problems.

My recommendation:

Clean reinstall, reconfigure, legal software.

Then, if the system is still crashing, then do another round of troubleshooting.

 

[GreenPan]

Stress testing CPU and GPU to see if failure would occur

what were the results?

And when you say game crashes, does it crash to desktop or blue screen and system reboot?

Do you have auto OC with PBO enabled or other manual PBO OC settings? If so, did you try it at stock settings?

What's your monitor resolution and refresh rate? Asking for your new GPU upgrade opinion. Or will you be upgrading both monitor and GPU?

Nothing really, no instability noted. I ran OCCT and Furmark for 30 minutes each with no hiccups.

When it crashes, it's to the desktop but I have experienced power cycling just a few times.

My CPU does have auto OC and PBO enabled and my GPU is factory overclocked. I haven't tried running them at stock settings yet, but that was going to be one of my next solution attempts.

I use an LG G3 so 4K 120Hz. I know the 90 cards are a terrible value, but "the best there is" always nice and I can afford it. So I figure, why not?

Assuming it's not Windows that is crashing (blue screen), it sounds like a software issue. You should be able to find log files for these games which might give a hint as to what is causing them to crash (e.g. for GTA V it might be under My Documents\Rockstar Games\Launcher and any .log files in there). You can also check the Application log of Event Viewer and the Administrative Events view for anything related to those games. Additionally, you can save all the information from dxdiag and post a link to the file on a cloud storage service such as Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox.

Also, when you tried resetting Windows, was it a clean install from a flash drive or did you keep your files and/or use Windows reset? I would always recommend a clean install and manually backing up and restoring needed files then reinstalling all applications. Otherwise, there's still a slight risk that whatever is causing the problem is carried over.

I did take note of Event Viewer. Here are a couple examples for Nioh 2 and Lies of P:

https://imgur.com/a/ClA7N1m

View: https://imgur.com/a/ClA7N1m

I could share the game's own logs as well.

Did you look in Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer for any error codes, warnings, or informational events just before or at the time of the crashes?

Did you try the built in Windows Troubleshooters, "dism", or "sfc /scannow"?

= = = =

This:

"Trying pirated copies"

That is not at all a viable method to troubleshoot problems. More likely to make things even worse.

And it also suggests that you have been running pirated software and that in itself may be the original cause of the problems.

My recommendation:

Clean reinstall, reconfigure, legal software.

Then, if the system is still crashing, then do another round of troubleshooting.

Reliability History and Event Viewer show no other abnormal behavior preceding or coinciding with the crashes. dism and sfc find no issues. The pirated copy was really GTA V since I figured Steam or Social Club may have been the culprit. The PC has been wiped since then

 

[Lucky_SLS]

And just to be sure, the games are not modded?

Cuz i have personal experience with Skyrim modding and how unstable modded games can be.

 

[GreenPan]

And just to be sure, the games are not modded?

Cuz i have personal experience with Skyrim modding and how unstable modded games can be.

None of these, no

 

[CodeConnoisseur]

Nothing really, no instability noted. I ran OCCT and Furmark for 30 minutes each with no hiccups.

When it crashes, it's to the desktop but I have experienced power cycling just a few times.

My CPU does have auto OC and PBO enabled and my GPU is factory overclocked. I haven't tried running them at stock settings yet, but that was going to be one of my next solution attempts.

I use an LG G3 so 4K 120Hz. I know the 90 cards are a terrible value, but "the best there is" always nice and I can afford it. So I figure, why not?


I did take note of Event Viewer. Here are a couple examples for Nioh 2 and Lies of P:

https://imgur.com/a/ClA7N1m

View: https://imgur.com/a/ClA7N1m

I could share the game's own logs as well.

Reliability History and Event Viewer show no other abnormal behavior preceding or coinciding with the crashes. dism and sfc find no issues. The pirated copy was really GTA V since I figured Steam or Social Club may have been the culprit. The PC has been wiped since then

When you say "power cycling just a few times" does the PC just shut off on its own or blue screen? Do you have any recent dump files in C:\Windows\Minidump or a recent C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP? 0xe0464645 is a bizarre error code that caught my eye, and just looking it up brings up all kinds of issues that were GPU-related. Try reseating your GPU. A little bit of MemTest never hurts too.

 

[GreenPan]

When you say "power cycling just a few times" does the PC just shut off on its own or blue screen? Do you have any recent dump files in C:\Windows\Minidump or a recent C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP? 0xe0464645 is a bizarre error code that caught my eye, and just looking it up brings up all kinds of issues that were GPU-related. Try reseating your GPU. A little bit of MemTest never hurts too.

By "power cycling," I mean the PC shuts off then turns itself back on again, basically restarting. No BSOD. And it only does that once, I just mean it has happened a few times before.

This is the only file present in Minidump
https://mega.nz/file/mMwETSbT#Od9lxdZrT4nHLbFO9UWEweAMiijl6pJ0D8hGhkkjYCI

 

[CodeConnoisseur]

By "power cycling," I mean the PC shuts off then turns itself back on again, basically restarting. No BSOD. And it only does that once, I just mean it has happened a few times before.

This is the only file present in Minidump
https://mega.nz/file/mMwETSbT#Od9lxdZrT4nHLbFO9UWEweAMiijl6pJ0D8hGhkkjYCI

Yeah, you should put MemTest on a flash drive, boot from it, and run the test. Still try reseating the GPU as well.

 

[35below0]

I know the 90 cards are a terrible value, but "the best there is" always nice and I can afford it. So I figure, why not?

Why do you say that? The 4090 is considered to be the best value of all the 4000 series simply because of how much performance it can give. All the others are cut down versions that are less worthy of their asking price, except the entry level 4060.

To each his own, but this is the first time i've seen anyone say it's bad value. Expensive? Oh yeah, but actually worth it? Well, yes.


There's nothing in your system specs that seems off.

What are the temps when the crash happens?
Run a malware check. Probably not malware but just for sanity.
Try looking at HWMonitor to see if anything is weird before a crash.

Ultimately, i think you should try borrowing a GPU, or buying a new one rather than a whole PC. Because everything you have tried should have unearthed the suspect already, and the GPU could be faulty in some way.
I'm not sure if game engines have anything to do with it but something is throwing off your GPU in certain games.

Given that 5000 series are expected to be a leap forward in price/performance, now is really not a good time for your GPU to start having fits.

 

[GreenPan]

Why do you say that? The 4090 is considered to be the best value of all the 4000 series simply because of how much performance it can give. All the others are cut down versions that are less worthy of their asking price, except the entry level 4060.

To each his own, but this is the first time i've seen anyone say it's bad value. Expensive? Oh yeah, but actually worth it? Well, yes.


There's nothing in your system specs that seems off.

What are the temps when the crash happens?
Run a malware check. Probably not malware but just for sanity.
Try looking at HWMonitor to see if anything is weird before a crash.

Ultimately, i think you should try borrowing a GPU, or buying a new one rather than a whole PC. Because everything you have tried should have unearthed the suspect already, and the GPU could be faulty in some way.
I'm not sure if game engines have anything to do with it but something is throwing off your GPU in certain games.

Given that 5000 series are expected to be a leap forward in price/performance, now is really not a good time for your GPU to start having fits.

From what I've seen, the 4090 runs games 20-30 fps better than a 4080 Super but costs about $800 more (if we look at the cheapest partner cards). The price to performance difference ratio isn't great. But you're right in the sense that, compared to the other lower end models, it's a pretty good value.

CPU is usually in the 50s, GPU in the 60s. No malware found either.

I'm only hesitate to keep buying new parts because as I said, I already bought new RAM and an SSD. Then, I try a new power supply and if that doesn't work, I try a new GPU. At that point I'm halfway to buying a entirely new PC anyway, so I might as well get the latest and greatest from the start.