Question Hard pc / or game crash (audio hanging and looping) followed by a loss of signal from the monitor

[lukesuperstarfish]

This is an issue I thought solved going by a previous post I did not long ago https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/strange-possibly-gpu-problems-not-entirely-sure.3713829/

The issue has gone as so, so far. I played the new pathfinder wrath of righteous game, and it runs fine, for the most part, a lot heavier on my pc than other games, but no so bad. Checking temperatures my gpu never goes above 77 celsius, and my cpu remaining in the high 50's low 60's. Out of nowhere in a harmless game menu with less performance on my card than the rest of the game, the audio hangs, and then goes quiet along with my monitor losing connection to the gpu. I had an issue similar to this, (post i linked) and the issue seemed to be solved by purchasing a new power supply. I haven't had any issues till now. Seeing that I wasn't too sure if this was a problem caused by the game, or another case of a psu not supplying enough power, so I went ahead and did the furmark gpu stress test and let it run for a while. Seeing that it went through the test no issues for about 15 minutes or so, when last time when it was crashing due to psu within 5 minutes, I saw that it couldn't be the same thing as last time. But the moment I tried exiting the furmark application, within just the launcher menu where the settings are, my pc just froze, audio looped very badly, and didn't stop looping. Monitor lost signal to pc and the audio continued looping forever. Keyboard and mouse both retained power during both these instances of crashing. Though when I decided to power off the pc with the power button the keyboard remained lit with it's led's. Nothing else.

At this point I have no earthly idea what is going on with my pc. I could make a guess that it's most likely a gpu problem now, since I very much doubt the idea that my brand new well received psu has the exact same issues as my prior one. Any help or ideas on what's going on would be appreciated.

MY SPECS:
gpu: gtx 1660 ti
cpu: ryzen 5 2600
motherboard: ASRock A320M-HDV R4.0 (AM4)
psu: EVGA 210-GQ-0650-V1 650 GQ, 80+ GOLD 650W

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I had a similar issue with an rx 6600xt I had purchased. My games at first would freeze up, then at times randomly during games my pc would go to a black screen then the audio would cut out within a few seconds and the pc would just reboot.

I did all types including purchasing a new Corsair rm850x power supply, thought I had everything fixed and then my card acted up again. Thankfully I was within my return period and Microcenter happened to get a new stock of cards, so I was able to return my card and trade up to an asus card which seems to be working much better.

I would say to boot into safe mode and use ddu to remove all of your gpu drivers. Then reinstall the latest drivers from nvidia. If the card acts up anymore, it might be time to rma the card. Or if you are in the return period return it. But as they told me, go ahead and contact support and get an rma process started. From what they advised me on this forum, the manufacturers don’t have as generous of warranty and return periods as they used to, so get that process started ASAP.

 

[lukesuperstarfish]

I had a similar issue with an rx 6600xt I had purchased. My games at first would freeze up, then at times randomly during games my pc would go to a black screen then the audio would cut out within a few seconds and the pc would just reboot.

I did all types including purchasing a new Corsair rm850x power supply, thought I had everything fixed and then my card acted up again. Thankfully I was within my return period and Microcenter happened to get a new stock of cards, so I was able to return my card and trade up to an asus card which seems to be working much better.

I would say to boot into safe mode and use ddu to remove all of your gpu drivers. Then reinstall the latest drivers from nvidia. If the card acts up anymore, it might be time to rma the card. Or if you are in the return period return it. But as they told me, go ahead and contact support and get an rma process started. From what they advised me on this forum, the manufacturers don’t have as generous of warranty and return periods as they used to, so get that process started ASAP.

unfortunately this card was part of a prebuilt pc, so there is no warranty or return option for me. If it's this <Mod Edit> card dying, then it means i have to buy a whole ass card

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Definitely then try to boot too safe mode and use ddu to wipe out the drivers and reinstall the latest drivers from nvidia then see if that helps. Those temps don’t sound bad. Do you have a friend that would let you test it in theirs in case it’s a board issue? If it were something with your board, motherboards are a lot cheaper than a gpu these days.

 

[lukesuperstarfish]

Definitely then try to boot too safe mode and use ddu to wipe out the drivers and reinstall the latest drivers from nvidia then see if that helps. Those temps don’t sound bad. Do you have a friend that would let you test it in theirs in case it’s a board issue? If it were something with your board, motherboards are a lot cheaper than a gpu these days.

I have my brother here with me, so if i have to i can test my gpu in his pc or his in mine. Hoping to god it's not the gpu dying

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Couple of other thoughts, you might try another cable from the card to the monitor. Maybe roll back to a previous driver version to see if maybe a new driver caused issues.

 

[lukesuperstarfish]

Couple of other thoughts, you might try another cable from the card to the monitor. Maybe roll back to a previous driver version to see if maybe a new driver caused issues.

definitely not the cable. Did another test with the pathfinder game, crashed as it did last time, at an arbitrary time, and i was disconnected from the discord call, implying that my whole windows and pc crashed in some way, but there was no bsod log, or any dmp file for that matter.

With the drivers, that's the plan. The only available graphics driver to download is a version prior anyway.

 

[lukesuperstarfish]

An update. Reinstalled graphics drivers, didn't change anything. Played teh pathfinder game again, horrible drop in frames and audio glitching once there were some blood effects and reflections. Managed to quit to desktop before it froze, but this time i didn't lose signal to monitor and it was just plain frozen until i forced restart my pc with the power button.

At this point I just want to know if it's a gpu issue so I can go ahead and buy a new one

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I would say if you can test the card in another pc and that pc acts up also then you would know. As far as cards to replace yours, if you are in the USA and have a Microcenter nearby, the one by me has been getting some stock of rx 6600xt cards lately, so that might be worth your while and be a bit of an upgrade from your 1660 ti. Plus they seem to run cool, at least my asus dual rx 6600xt seems to.

 

[MMorris666]

if it was me , i'd disable the automatic restart of Windows 10 on system failure. you should get a crash report then.

 

[lukesuperstarfish]

if it was me , i'd disable the automatic restart of Windows 10 on system failure. you should get a crash report then.

sadly when my pc crashes or freezes, it doesn't automatically restart, and must be forced restart by holding down the power button.

 

[MMorris666]

hmm, that is a pain.

 

[lukesuperstarfish]

Another update. Shut down pc and plugged it into the wall. Tried to replicate the crash but couldn't. Usually, I'm plugged into a backup battery surge protector. After an hour of playing the game and waiting for it to crash my pc, that didn't happen. Shut down pc and plugged it back into the surge protector, and now I can't replicate the crash there either. And usually, it would crash very fast. I have no idea what's going on or why it's no longer happening, but I'm not fully sure the problem is solved. Does anyone have an idea what's going on?

 

[xZGxFire]

Another update. Shut down pc and plugged it into the wall. Tried to replicate the crash but couldn't. Usually, I'm plugged into a backup battery surge protector. After an hour of playing the game and waiting for it to crash my pc, that didn't happen. Shut down pc and plugged it back into the surge protector, and now I can't replicate the crash there either. And usually, it would crash very fast. I have no idea what's going on or why it's no longer happening, but I'm not fully sure the problem is solved. Does anyone have an idea what's going on?

Did you found anything yet? Im having a similar issue.

 

[lukesuperstarfish]

Did you found anything yet? Im having a similar issue.

Took my pc to a shop, and it was there for 4 days going under constant stress tests. None of the crashes could be replicated, and so i was very suspicious of the setup i had at home. it could've been that my peripherals or drivers were causing some issues but i couldn't really feel certain in that since the crashes only happened when playing games.

So i bought an extension cord and now have my pc connected to the first outlet in my room. So far have not had another crash, but it's only been two days so i'm not going to say for certain the problem has been solved yet. But i say give it a try and plug your pc somewhere else and see if the problem stops. But seeing that there are people who had the same problem as me, but turned out it was their gpu or psu, it's a roll of the dice if your issue is at all the same thing as mine. I say just give it a try.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

If you use an extension cord make sure it’sa higher gauge one as there will some extra power drop, and you don’t need to have fires.