Computer Freeze During Gameplay, Benchmarks work fine.

[hazzagainst]

Hello everyone,

I hope you might have a final idea I might try before I RMA my GTX 1080 ti.

The problem is as follows. SInce I switched from my 2x 16:9 monitors to my 1x 16:9 and 1x 21:9 (LG 34UC89G-B) I've had an array of problems.

The first one being, that during gameplay, at some point, I went from smooth 120fps to 35fps after about 5 minutes of playing (Tested on Battlefield 5, Vermintide 2, Anthem Demo, Witcher 3, Battlefield 1, all on medium to ultra settings). The issue would only go away after restarting the PC. The same thing happened during my Heaven Benchmark tests.

The second problem , which is the more severe one, is that sometimes, the computer completely freezes. This could happen right when starting up the game, or after 1 hour of gameplay. The audio still worked fine, whatever song was running on spotify still continued, but the only remedy to the situation was, that I had to kill the computer by holding down the power key like suffocating someone with a pillow. Whenever that happened, the last entry in the Windows Event Log was the Event ID: 4101-Display driver nvlddmkm crash.

So thats when the fixing began. I cleaned all of my drivers with DDU, updated my BIOs, ran scans on the RAMs and the HDDs. The power supply works fine, as does the temperature regulation. The scans occured anywhere between 65-74°C for the GPU and ~60-65°C for the CPU.

That atleast sorta helped my first problem, since it only accured after about 30 minute of Heaven Benchmark test on ultra, but the second one still persists. Weirdly enough, I can have the Heaven Benchmark running on Ultra for constant 120-144fps at a GPU usage of about 80%. Whenever playing a game on higher settings for a while the freeze accurs again, adding the Event ID 4101 to the Event Log again.

At this point I have the gut feeling its actually the GPU that has a hardware defect (bought it brand new in August 2018) and that I should just RMA it.

Here are my specs:
- Intel Core i7-8700k CPU @ 3.70GHZ

- Inno3D gtx 1080ti

- 500gb Samsung 860 Evo 2,5'' SSD (running OS on this)

- ASRock Z370 Pro4

- 32GB G.SKill Aegis ddr4 Dual Kit

- 600 watt be quiet! Straight Power 10 CM Modular 80+ Gold

- Running on Win10 Pro 64x

Im very happy about any further advice.

P.S. Here is some further testing. When running Vermintide 2 on medium settings with 120fps/120hz on the montior it works fine. Same with 60fps/hz on ultra. But if I do 100fps/hz on Ultra the computer freezes after roughly 10 minutes. So with ultra and 144fps/hz on the monitor it freezes within the first 2 minutes, with 120fps/hz on ultra within 5 minutes. So it appears to have atleast something to do with the GPU strain.

 

[nikoskostantopoulow]

I'll agree it's most likely the GPU.
You can set it's fan(s) on a more aggressive curve just to see how it goes.

 

[hazzagainst]

I'll agree it's most likely the GPU.
You can set it's fan(s) on a more aggressive curve just to see how it goes.

I set the fans to go into 100% speed at 55°C in MSI Afterburner already. Thanks for the suggestion tho. Im not sure if it helps the topic at all, but sometimes when playing (even when working completely fine) the task manager says that the GPU usage is at about 5%. Which is pretty much impossible while playing if you ask me.

 

[hazzagainst]

Okay, guess i got it. Huge Props to the user a991299.
So here is the solution:
I am using MSI Afterburner.
1) While in the menu press Ctrl + F. This will bring out the Clock Speed - Voltage curve.
2) Set all the points that are higher than your default clock to it (if your default clock is 1450 Mhz, then lower all the points to 1450 Mhz if they are higher). For me it was 1607 Mhz.
3) Close the curve window and press "Apply".
4) MSI Afterburner will reset everytime you restart your computer so it will be good to save your settings as a profile. You will have to apply the profile after each reboot!

Obviously the performance got slightly worse, but alteast I can play now at all. Hope it might help anyone stumbling upon this thread.