Question My PC started crashing during gaming and i need some help to figure out if the problem is with my graphics card or power supply

Sep 20, 2020
1
0
10
First of all, my PC specs

GIgabyte GTX 1080

Ryzen 5 2600

Ripjaws 16 GB of RAM

Cooler master 625W psu

Gigabyte B450M DS3H motherboard

Windows 10 64 bits


So i have been having crashing issues while gaming for a few days now. These crashes pretty much always happen at the same moments. For example, in the Witcher 3, the game always crash during the cutscene at the begining of the game in which Ciri is training. In Dark Souls Remastered, the crash always happens at the very beginning of a cutscene. The games will also randomly crash during normal gameplay. When the crashes happens, my screen goes dark but the PC is still on and the music and sounds effect of the games are still playing in the background.

So began the troubleshooting. At first i though it could be a driver issue with my GTX 1080. I updated the drivers, i uninstall them to install older ones, i clean up the card with an air can, i made sure that the cables inside my case were well plug in, i even diagnosed windows 10 to make sure that there were no corrupted files that could somehow mess things up.


Nothing worked. The crashes were still happening.


Then it hit me. "Maybe the games are crashing because my psu is not providing enough power"?


When the crashes were happening while palying the Witcher 3, my resolution was set at 1440p while Dark Souls was at 4k. I lowered both games to 1080p and lo and behold, the games didn't crash during the cutscenes. So i figured that the crashing was happening because of my card been pushes to a certain level.


That was not the case.


I tested my card with the heaven benchmark with vsync turn off to push it as far as it could go and to my surprise there was zero crashes during the test. So at this point i pretty much gave up and removed my GTX1080 and replaced it with my old GTX 960.


The crashes stopped happening


I tested both the Witcher 3 and Dark Souls at the same settings and ran the heaven benchmark also at the same settings and there were no crashes whatsoever.


So what's the issue here? I'll been using my GTX 1080 for 3 years. As for my psu, i have been using it for 7 years.


Thank you for your help
 
First of all, my PC specs

GIgabyte GTX 1080

Ryzen 5 2600

Ripjaws 16 GB of RAM

Cooler master 625W psu

Gigabyte B450M DS3H motherboard

Windows 10 64 bits


So i have been having crashing issues while gaming for a few days now. These crashes pretty much always happen at the same moments. For example, in the Witcher 3, the game always crash during the cutscene at the begining of the game in which Ciri is training. In Dark Souls Remastered, the crash always happens at the very beginning of a cutscene. The games will also randomly crash during normal gameplay. When the crashes happens, my screen goes dark but the PC is still on and the music and sounds effect of the games are still playing in the background.

So began the troubleshooting. At first i though it could be a driver issue with my GTX 1080. I updated the drivers, i uninstall them to install older ones, i clean up the card with an air can, i made sure that the cables inside my case were well plug in, i even diagnosed windows 10 to make sure that there were no corrupted files that could somehow mess things up.


Nothing worked. The crashes were still happening.


Then it hit me. "Maybe the games are crashing because my psu is not providing enough power"?


When the crashes were happening while palying the Witcher 3, my resolution was set at 1440p while Dark Souls was at 4k. I lowered both games to 1080p and lo and behold, the games didn't crash during the cutscenes. So i figured that the crashing was happening because of my card been pushes to a certain level.


That was not the case.


I tested my card with the heaven benchmark with vsync turn off to push it as far as it could go and to my surprise there was zero crashes during the test. So at this point i pretty much gave up and removed my GTX1080 and replaced it with my old GTX 960.


The crashes stopped happening


I tested both the Witcher 3 and Dark Souls at the same settings and ran the heaven benchmark also at the same settings and there were no crashes whatsoever.


So what's the issue here? I'll been using my GTX 1080 for 3 years. As for my psu, i have been using it for 7 years.


Thank you for your help
Your PSU is total garbage (sorry to be so blunt). If replacing it fixes your problem or not you need to replace it with a decent quality model. It has no place in any modern system with a discreet GPU... at all. It's only designed with a 3-4 year lifespan, so you got your money's worth from it. Time to move on to something made for your purposes. Poor quality power supplies, even if you think they're working ok, deliver dirty power and can greatly reduce the lifespan of other components in your system. A recommendation for replacement would be based on your budget and location.
 
Jul 27, 2020
4
0
10
I have had problems with both games. Please test with some other PC games like Counter Strike.
Also, are you overclocked?
Use HWinfo to see power usage. Then use Aida64 or whatever you like to stress everything for atleast 3 hrs. If it doesn't show any error, then problem is with the games.