Question Computer random crashes only at 144hz and the "screen goes black and GPU fan full speed" issue

[Linus Andreas]

Hello, so I have been having an issue now for a few months and it is driving me insane. In May my pc started to restart itself randomly, no big deal. But then it happend again, and again, and again. I thought something was up with the drivers so I updated them all, and it fixed it. One month later the issue came back and everything was updated, still crashed. The crashes was at random, I could be playing a heavy game or just browsing youtube, so I had no way to test the issue, but I found one specific game that allways crashed my PC after around 5 min. So with this game I started to troubleshoot, and nothing stopped the issue, from different USB devices to different outlets, it still crashed.
So I gave up and gave it to a PC repair store. After a week they called me and said they could not recreate the crash, even with the game I troubleshooted with. I took the PC back home and ofcourse, it kept on crashing. Lastly i swapped to a hdmi cable, and it stopped to crash. I was confused, so i went back to the DP cable and set it to 60hz instead of 144hz and i have not crashed since that. (I have tried other monitors and tried all 3 DP ports on my GPU, still crashed).
This makes no sense to me at all. Does anyone know what might be the issue?

A few notes: The PSU has been making weird sounds lately and my BIOS is from 2021 while the latest is from 2022 (bios look way outdated and I have no idea how to update the bios from there). The temperatures are all good, around 5c below the average temps. The PC is also free from dust. I have reinstalled Windows, both the keep files option and full factory reset. Only thing the eventviewer tells me is that the pc has shut down abruptly (Kernel 41) . I also get a WHEA logger 17, but it also comes randomly.
I have not upgraded my PC since I bought it.

Specs:
Intel i9-10900K CPU @ 3.70GHz 3.70 GHz
NVIDIA RTX 3080 10gb

Pc is prebuilt by Acer.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Ralston18]

PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used)?

Noted that you used Event Viewer. Also look in Reliability History/Monitor. The time line format may reveal some pattern regarding the crashes.

 

[Linus Andreas]

Could not find what the PSU is because of the prebuilt, but it is an 750w and it is 2 years old. PC has been used pretty much daily. It kinda look cheapish, it is just a big hassle to replace so I kinda wanted to make sure if this issue might have been caused by that and not the GPU or something.
Had an IT guy check my eventlog and he did not find anything weird.

Will probably buy a 800w PSU and test if it resolves the issue but as I said, Does really 60hz to 144hz take that much wattage for it to crash?

Thanks for the answer!

 

[Phaaze88]

The common culprits of the 'black screen to gpu fans blasting' are:
-psu
-gpu(more precisely, the voltage regulator)
-motherboard.
The above is taken from the following video:

Spoiler

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRyyCsuHFQ

Does really 60hz to 144hz take that much wattage for it to crash?

It's not so much the wattage, but the very brief(in the milliseconds) power and current spikes that are more common at higher fps ranges - even more so, if no fps cap is set. The odds of experiencing coil whine also increase.
Psus 'age' over time too, so what it outputs and handles now is lower than what it did when you got it 2 years ago.

If you are not in the position to swap out parts right now, there are workarounds available through fps caps and lower gpu power limits(via Afterburner or other).

 

[Linus Andreas]

Thank you for the respons, very helpful! Should point out that I have had weird static sounds from audio devices from this PC ever since I bought it. What makes this case so infuriating is that it has no problems at all untill it crashes, like no stuttering or performance losses. Some games can run perfectly fine for hours on max settings.

I dont have a powerful GPU around to try to swap that, but I will get hands on a PSU soon and we will see if that might be the issue, I hope so, less expensive then a new card.

Meantime I will stick to 60hz, will update if the PSU was the issue. Thanks again!

 

[Linus Andreas]

I just wanted to update this post for anyone having the same issue or similar issue.

I put back my monitors to 144hz and got afterburner, and I set the power limit to 80% and the PC has been crash free a week now (it crashed maybe 3 times a day before) so it was most likely a PSU issue.
The 3080 is pretty powerfull so I have not noticed any performance issues at all, all games run as before, even better, the GPU is at 75c at full load wich is way cooler then before.

Looks like I will just get a new PC in the future instead of replacing the PSU (it is a somewhat cramped prebuilt and would be a pain to replace) as the power limit feels fine for now.

Thanks for the help! and hope the power limit may help anyone with similar issues.