I've been building computers for over a decade and I work in IT as a systems admin, so I'm no stranger to troubleshooting pc issues. But this has me scratching my head.
I built a pc for my friend (now gf) a couple years ago and it had been working fine until the past couple weeks. We started playing Fortnite together (Yes, I'm in my 30s and enjoy Fortnite) and the game keeps crashing frequently. Usually within 15 minutes. Sometimes its a soft crash and the game just closes but most times the entire system will freeze and require a reboot. Yesterday it even BSOD, but she didn't get a snapshot of the error code in time.
These are the original specs:
Ryzen 5 2600
MSI b450m Bazooka v2
2x 8gb ddr4 3200
RX 580 Sapphire Nitro GPU (Now a GTX 1070 MSI Gaming X)
Kingston 256gb SATA SSD
Seagate 500gb HDD
EVGE 600w 80+ Bronze psu
3x 1080p monitors
When these crashed first started, the screens would be all messed up or not register at all and would have to reinstall the graphics driver to get them to all work again. So this led me to believe there was a driver or gpu issue. I ran DDU and reinstalled the drivers fresh while in safe mode. This did not fix anything and the same thing happened less than 15 minutes into Fortnite. I then had her reinstall Fortnite, but that didn't make a difference.
At that point I tried to see if it was a problem with the GPU itself. I installed Firestrike and Unigen Superposition benchmarks and ran them both in loops on highest settings. The GPU was at 100% usage and reached a max of 74c but never crashed after several back-to-back runs over 30 min.
I had her do another round of Fortnite till it crashed and then once the PC had recovered, I searched the windows even viewer for any errors around that time and did not see anything related to app crashed or hardware/driver failures.
At that point, I did a drive wipe and a full reinstall of Win10. Reinstalled all the needed mobo/cpu/gpu drivers fresh and applied all windows updates. Reinstalled Fortnite and it crashed a few minutes in. All the same issues as before.
Fast forward a week and I acquired a GTX 1070 to swap her with since so far it made sense that the issues were likely graphics related. She brings her PC to my house and I get it installed and use GeForce experience to apply the new drivers and do a reboot. We load up Fortnite and play 2-3 rounds without any issues and its running smoother than ever (more powerful gpu). Later that night when she is back at her place, we are playing together and it starts crashing every few minutes again. And this time is when the BSOD happened...
So I'm at a loss as to what the issue could be. Everything else seems to work flawlessly, but Fortnite keeps causing crashes.
Any input or suggestions would be helpful. I may be experienced, but I still sometimes miss something that should be obvious or didn't think to check.
I built a pc for my friend (now gf) a couple years ago and it had been working fine until the past couple weeks. We started playing Fortnite together (Yes, I'm in my 30s and enjoy Fortnite) and the game keeps crashing frequently. Usually within 15 minutes. Sometimes its a soft crash and the game just closes but most times the entire system will freeze and require a reboot. Yesterday it even BSOD, but she didn't get a snapshot of the error code in time.
These are the original specs:
Ryzen 5 2600
MSI b450m Bazooka v2
2x 8gb ddr4 3200
RX 580 Sapphire Nitro GPU (Now a GTX 1070 MSI Gaming X)
Kingston 256gb SATA SSD
Seagate 500gb HDD
EVGE 600w 80+ Bronze psu
3x 1080p monitors
When these crashed first started, the screens would be all messed up or not register at all and would have to reinstall the graphics driver to get them to all work again. So this led me to believe there was a driver or gpu issue. I ran DDU and reinstalled the drivers fresh while in safe mode. This did not fix anything and the same thing happened less than 15 minutes into Fortnite. I then had her reinstall Fortnite, but that didn't make a difference.
At that point I tried to see if it was a problem with the GPU itself. I installed Firestrike and Unigen Superposition benchmarks and ran them both in loops on highest settings. The GPU was at 100% usage and reached a max of 74c but never crashed after several back-to-back runs over 30 min.
I had her do another round of Fortnite till it crashed and then once the PC had recovered, I searched the windows even viewer for any errors around that time and did not see anything related to app crashed or hardware/driver failures.
At that point, I did a drive wipe and a full reinstall of Win10. Reinstalled all the needed mobo/cpu/gpu drivers fresh and applied all windows updates. Reinstalled Fortnite and it crashed a few minutes in. All the same issues as before.
Fast forward a week and I acquired a GTX 1070 to swap her with since so far it made sense that the issues were likely graphics related. She brings her PC to my house and I get it installed and use GeForce experience to apply the new drivers and do a reboot. We load up Fortnite and play 2-3 rounds without any issues and its running smoother than ever (more powerful gpu). Later that night when she is back at her place, we are playing together and it starts crashing every few minutes again. And this time is when the BSOD happened...
So I'm at a loss as to what the issue could be. Everything else seems to work flawlessly, but Fortnite keeps causing crashes.
Any input or suggestions would be helpful. I may be experienced, but I still sometimes miss something that should be obvious or didn't think to check.
Last edited: