Question PC constantly rebooting, tabs closing, and "Out of Video Memory" error?

[ringmany]

Hi everyone,

My PC has been having issues lately, and I'm not certain what is causing the issue. I built this model around 5 years ago, all brand new hardware.
Around maybe a month ago, I started getting problems such as my PC randomly rebooting by itself, then starting disk repair checking. Sometimes I'll just be browsing YouTube or a low resource game and I get "Out of Video Memory" error and then all my tabs just stop working and I get a completely blank screen, my discord reboots itself. I'll open task manager to check resources and I'm only using like 30% of the physical RAM (16gb).

The full error I sometimes get is:
"Out of video memory trying to allocate a texture/rendering resource"
Although that's only sometimes. Past few days games and tabs are crashing with no error.

I have an:
MSI AERO GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB Video Card

My full hardware specs are here:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/RingMany/saved/WXCWXL

This happens frequently. The PC rebooting itself maybe every 3-4 days. All my browser tabs just turning into a completely white screen and having to reboot via task manager maybe every day, sometimes twice.
My GPU (MSI 1070) I purchased in early 2018, so around 5+ years old. My primary SSD that my OS is installed on is only around 2 years old. Although I do have around 3 SSD and 2 HDD on my PC in total which are a lot older, not sure if they can have an effect.

Even when I just have 3 chrome tabs open or I'm playing Valorant on low settings and the resources are low, my PC will randomly just keep closing all my tabs, giving a white screen or rebooting. I haven't made any changes to software, not changes in hardware in years, haven't installed anything. So I'm not quite sure if it's a hardware issue, GPU or my SSD having problems, or a software problem.

Today I was playing Assassins Creed and it just kept crashing every 10 minutes, no errors. Then even with no games running, just 3 chrome tabs open, my tabs and discord kept constantly closing by themselves every 5-10 minutes.

My virtual memory settings are here. Although I'm not certain exactly which ones need editing. As all my discord and chrome is on the primary SSD whereas my gaming stuff is on the H drive. I've never touched the settings before though in 5 years, so not sure why its a problem now.

Plus my memory usage, although it hasn't had issue for an hour now.

Any suggestions on what I can investigate, or maybe my GPU is dying?
Thanks all!

 

[SkyNetRising]

Sometimes I'll just be browsing YouTube or a low resource game and I get "Out of Video Memory" error and then all my tabs just stop working
I'm only using like 30% of the physical RAM (16gb).

Video memory is on graphics card. It has nothing to do with system ram.
1st turn off hardware acceleration in your browser settings.
2nd lower ingame graphics settings and reduce vram usage (like texture quality, video resolution).

My virtual memory settings are here.

Your virtual memory settings are ridiculous.
Ram workload in Task Manager screenshot is 13GB.
It all fits in physical ram.
You absolutely do not need 30Gb pagefile.

Set pagefile to single drive (do not spread it across multiple drives).
Set pagefile to secondary SSD or fast HDD (not game HDD), where enough free space is available.
Set size to custom - 4GB initial 16GB max.

 

[thestryker]

Try checking the automatic page file management to see if there's any difference. That error can come up when something with the page file isn't working right it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your video card.

Doing some health checks on the drives (bare minimum run CrystalDiskInfo) and running MemTest might be in order as well should the above not change anything.

 

[ringmany]

Hey, thanks for the suggestions. Did all of the above, sadly same issues after several days. Hard drives were all 100% good except primary SSD was 70%. No processes or anything suspicious.

Tabs still randomly crashing. A lot of times I find my discord looks normal but then realise it's just completely frozen and I have to reboot.

 

[drivinfast247]

Download and run memtest86 from safemode.

 

[ringmany]

Download and run memtest86 from safemode.

I didn't use memtest86 but I used TestMem5 with absolut config as people were recommending that instead. Ran for an hour and it said no errors detected

========= TestMem5 Log File =========
Customize: ABSOLUT(01102021) @anta777
Start testing at 11:01, 512Mb x16
Testing completed in 1:16.39, no errors.

 

[drivinfast247]

I didn't use memtest86 but I used TestMem5 with absolut config as people were recommending that instead. Ran for an hour and it said no errors detected

========= TestMem5 Log File =========
Customize: ABSOLUT(01102021) @anta777
Start testing at 11:01, 512Mb x16
Testing completed in 1:16.39, no errors.

Windows is installed on the drive @ 70% health?

 

[DRagor]

IMO GPU failure. Which considering it is only 5 years old is unlucky but well that happens.

 

[ringmany]

Windows is installed on the drive @ 70% health?

yes that's right, not sure it would explain the memory issues though or games crashing

 

[ringmany]

IMO GPU failure. Which considering it is only 5 years old is unlucky but well that happens.

Is there a way for me to confirm it's a GPU issue? Since they're incredibly expensive, I'd rather not replace unless it was a last resort.

 

[DRagor]

Is there a way for me to confirm it's a GPU issue? Since they're incredibly expensive, I'd rather not replace unless it was a last resort.

Typically you put the GPU in another PC and see if it starts misbehaving same way.

 

[ringmany]

Typically you put the GPU in another PC and see if it starts misbehaving same way.

Unfortunately I don't have a secondary PC to test, nor any friends nearby that would be probably be happy with me swapping my dodgy GPU with theirs for several hours, playing games and browsing to see what happens.
Plus my GPU is in a custom water loop with a water block attacked, so I'd have to drain my entire PC, disassemble, re-assemble the original fan backplate and then disassemble someone else's computer to replace the GPU to test. Is there any software that can do checks?

 

[DRagor]

Is there any software that can do checks?

Try running FurMark and see what happens.

 

[ringmany]

Try running FurMark and see what happens.

I ran FurMark GPU stress test for 30 mins, no issues at all. In this case I have no idea what is causing the issue. SSD appears to be healthy, GPU stress test no issues. Memtest5 didn't detect any problems.

At this stage, I don't know what's causing the issue. This only started happening around 3 weeks ago. It seems completely random, even if I don't games open, i'm just browsing 4 chrome tabs, it can randomly have all tabs turn into a white screen which needs task manager to delete, then discord is also frozen and needs rebooting. Or again paying valorant on low settings (same settings as part 3 years) just randomly dies with "Out of video memory " errors

 

[DRagor]

I ran FurMark GPU stress test for 30 mins, no issues at all.

That's a bit surprising. In that case just to be sure nuke current GPU drivers and re-install them again, maybe they got corrupted from reboots.

 

[ringmany]

I'm really not sure what else to try at this stage. My PC is still constantly having issues. Several times a day my chrome tabs will just freeze, turn completely white then crash and I have to keep opening task manager, closing browsers and rebooting because the entire page is completely frozen. Games randomly crashing. Sometimes I get warning that my PC is low on memory and when I open task manager it's only using 60%.

I'm not sure if this is a software issue or hardware issue. I've done all the stress tests for GPU, memory stress test, SSD health check, what else can I try or if it's hardware which 1 piece is causing the constant memory errors.

 

[35below0]

I would try a clean re-install of windows. It's possible this is a software issue.
Check if there are some strange things happening in task manager? Are there abnormal processes?

 

[ringmany]

I don't see anything abnormal. I just got a "Windows ran out of memory" error which is the first time i've ever seen that. Normally it's chrome crashing with out of memory or video memory failed while playing games, nevecr seen windows ran out of memory. Yet again when I open task manager its only using 60%. Do you think possibly corrupted RAM or software issue?

 

[35below0]

More likely corrupted GPU memory or software issue, but it could be ram. I think maybe software issue because some process may be responsible if it uses up available memory. Malware could be the culprit.

I can't be sure.

 

[ringmany]

More likely corrupted GPU memory or software issue, but it could be ram. I think maybe software issue because some process may be responsible if it uses up available memory. Malware could be the culprit.

I can't be sure.

Mate I think you were right about it being malware. I did an entire PC scan via windows defender, left it running overnight for like 12 hours, it picked up several different viruses, removed them, and I haven't experienced any more issues today so far. No chrome tabs or games crashing, and for the past month the memory was constantly 60% usage every day, but now it's only 40%.

Thanks so much for the suggestion. I was looking at spending £500 on a new GPU thinking that was the problem. It's only been a day, but fingers crossed that no more issues reoccur.

 

[35below0]

Very happy to help. I had memory leaks and rogue processes on my old Win 7 machine. I remember how screwy and unstable the system can become without it being a hardware issue.
Glad you saved your money.

 

[ringmany]

Sadly the issue has returned. It's still frequently crashing with memory errors. All my chrome tabs constantly freezing and closing by themselves. I'm really not sure what else to do at this stage.

 

[NorbertPlays]

FurMark and similar don't use all your VRAM so they're not entirely reliable as a memory integrity test; try this instead.

 

[ringmany]

FurMark and similar don't use all your VRAM so they're not entirely reliable as a memory integrity test; try this instead.

Cheers for the suggestion. I ran it for around 1 hour. The first part passed with:

Standard 5-minute test PASSed!

It then continued to run for an hour. No issues at all. But at the very end it got the error:

Runtime error: ERROR_DEVICE_LOST while getting () in context wait_for_fences
Seems child excited for no reason, code 69
memtest_vulkan: First test passed, but THEN runtime error occured

I'm not sure what this error means. Can't see any error for it on the github page. The PC is still running fine though, no memory errors or tabs crashing despite that error.

 

[ringmany]

Also just did a full scan using Memtest86, ran for 2 hours, no issues