[SOLVED] Games crash to desktop with no errors. Out of ideas

[Varg7]

I recently built a brand new PC (in the last month) and no matter what game I play, at some point it ends up crashing to the desktop with no errors. Never had this issue with previous computers either. Thing is sometimes it happens within 10 minutes of playing, sometimes it doesn't happen for hours. I keep a close eye on the temps and they all seem fine, so I don't -think- it's that.

Things I have tried so far
-Full GFX driver reinstalls (using DDU)
-Updated windows as much as possible
-Memtest86
-Disabled XMP
-Moved to Windows 11, then back to Windows 10 a handful of times
-Double checked all hardware connections
-Tried previous GFX drivers
-Updated BIOS (from F8 to F20 to F21)

Seems at this point it's likely a hardware issue perhaps? Even though everything was bought brand new. The main culprit I suspect could be the GPU. A few issues with it aside from the crashes such as shadows/lighting/random flickers during gaming, terrible coil whine during gaming and also noticeable coil whine on the desktop when just moving the mouse. I also had a couple of bluescreens (Kernel error 141) and hard crashes where the entire screen goes all pixelated and just freezes, forcing a hard reset. But those were very rare. I just get the feeling the graphical side of the PC just isn't totally stable.

I'm no PC guru so if anyone can think of anything else that might be the cause it would be very much appreciated. Spent a fair amount of money on this PC and not really got much enjoyment out of it since I bought it because I use it just waiting for something to go wrong. And it inevitably does.

Note: When I run things like Unigine Benchmarks, it occasionally stutters and there is the odd shadow flicker here and there, but it has never crashed. The issues I face are only when gaming.

Specs
-ASUS TUF 3080ti OC (GPU)
-i7 12700k (CPU)
-Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X (Mobo)
-Corsair Vengeance DDR5 5600 MHz (RAM)
-Firecuda 530 1tb (SSD)
-Corsair RM1000e (PSU)

Thanks!

 

[Colif]

Site always shows your GPU drivers are out of date, even if you got them yesterday. Its basically there to trick people into using driver booster.

I just ran it for a joke. I wasn't expecting it to reject card completely like that.

 

[Varg7]

How's the coil whine on your 7900? It was bad on mine. I ended up with the 4080 founders editions, there is very slight whine there but well within the range of acceptable.

 

[Colif]

So far It is quiet. I have things I have to do before I will let myself play a game, but in the benchmarks I ran all I heard was fans ramp up.

I don't know what coil whine sounds like. I have watched videos on it and even with my noise cancelling headset, I still can't hear anything. It might mean I have it now and didn't know. My friend who installed it with me, said it only had slight whine and with side panel on, I shouldn't hear it.

My PC is between me and window, so I am back to thinking any noise I hear is PC. I turned PC off last night and a noise I thought was my PC was still there after PC was off. I went through this for about a year after building PC.

3Dmark makes my PC seem way better than it is.

I got 4 legendary scores on 4 different tests before I found out why.
No one else has the same CPU/GPU combo as I do. So top scores out of box.

Seems I am running the OC bios but I think it comes set to that as default.
I haven't played with making card faster, its already slaughtered my last GPU in one test.

 

[Varg7]

Swapped to an ASUS Z790-P motherboard. Which apparently has higher RAM speed (5600MHz vs 4800MHz ). I'm assuming that's at stock or something as both technically should be able to do at least 6000mhz. Will see how it goes and update here.

 

[Varg7]

24 hours now with XMP enabled and no crashes since changing the motherboard. The culprit was the Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X motherboard not handling XMP 5600mhz correctly.

Updating for anyone with a similar issue, maybe it will help.