Question PC crashing after short periods of gaming ?

[Constantijn]

Hello,

The problem I'm having is that whenever I am gaming for some time (usually less than 1 hour) my pc will crash. Most of the time, the crash entails my screen freezing or becoming black. On rarer occasions a BSOD appeared instead with the error code of : "IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL", but I am not sure if this was caused by the same issue. In both cases my usb devices seemed to get disconnected or turned off, as I can see that the lights get turned off. The pc does not shutdown by itself, the fans are still running and the in-case rgb is still active. After the crash, the only thing I can do is turn off the computer with the power button. When trying to turn it back on, it only works if I wait for a minute or two. If I try to turn it on right away, the pc seems to start but nothing is displayed on the monitor.

To pinpoint the cause of the issue, I tried to run some stresstest programs. When using Furmark or the AIDA64 GPU stress test, the pc will function fine with no crashes. When running the AIDA64 CPU stress test or Prime95, the above described crash will occur, usually well within 10 minutes. The cpu was usually around 70 degrees Celcius at the moment it crashed. Another thing I noticed was that the problem seems to occur more frequently during warm weather. This lead me to believe the issue might be the CPU overheating. I tried turning on a higher a fan profile for the CPU cooler in the BIOS, but the issue still appeared. Besides, I was under the impression that a CPU should downthrottle if it were to overheat ?

In conclusion, I'm not sure what the exact problem is and what I can do to solve it, so I would greatly appreciate some advice.

Specifications of my PC:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (with stock cooler)
Motherboard: ASUS TUF B450-Pro Gaming (bios version 3002)
GPU: MSI Radeon RX 5700 MECH OC
RAM: G.Skill Aegis F4-3000C16D-16GISB
PSU: Corsair TX550M
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox MB511
Storage: Kingston 240GB SSD / Seagate 1TB HDD
OS: Windows 10 64bit

I did not do any overclocking.

 

[drivinfast247]

Are you on latest BIOS? Make sure you are.

Next is the RAM. Make sure it's installed in the correct slots a2-b2.

Then download and run memtest86 from a USB drive.

 

[Constantijn]

Are you on latest BIOS? Make sure you are.

Next is the RAM. Make sure it's installed in the correct slots a2-b2.

Then download and run memtest86 from a USB drive.

First off, thank you for the reply.

I've installed the latest BIOS version from the ASUS support page of my motherboard 3 days ago in an attempt to fix this issue. This seemed to have made no difference.
Memory is indeed installed in the A2 and B2 slots.
I've run memtest86 a few days ago for approximately 45 minutes before I stopped it because it was taking very long. At that point it had detected 0 errors. I've also used the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool which also found 0 errors.

 

[drivinfast247]

First off, thank you for the reply.

I've installed the latest BIOS version from the ASUS support page of my motherboard 3 days ago in an attempt to fix this issue. This seemed to have made no difference.
Memory is indeed installed in the A2 and B2 slots.
I've run memtest86 a few days ago for approximately 45 minutes before I stopped it because it was taking very long. At that point it had detected 0 errors. I've also used the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool which also found 0 errors.

It'll take a long time to complete the memtest86. Let it run preferably overnight. If it has a single error you have a problem.

Check right now to see if you have the latest chipset driver installed for motherboard.

 

[Constantijn]

It'll take a long time to complete the memtest86. Let it run preferably overnight. If it has a single error you have a problem.

Check right now to see if you have the latest chipset driver installed for motherboard.

I did not have the chipset driver installed. So I installed those from the official ASUS page. Unfortunately , the pc still crashes after a couple of minutes in the stress test.
I'll run the memtest86 completely tonight then and reply with the results.

 

[Constantijn]

It'll take a long time to complete the memtest86. Let it run preferably overnight. If it has a single error you have a problem.

Check right now to see if you have the latest chipset driver installed for motherboard.

So, I was running memtest86 to make sure the program was working. After about 8 minutes the pc crashed just like when doing the stress test. After this I tried some different ram stick/ram slot combinations. I used the two ram sticks that I was already using, I'll call them 1 and 2. The results were as follows:

• Stick 1 in slot A2, stick 2 in slot B2: Crashed in stress test and memtest
• Stick 1 in slot A2, stick 2 not used: Did not crash
• Stick 2 in slot A2, stick 1 not used: Did not crash
• Stick 1 in Slot B2, stick 2 not used: Crashed in stress test
• Stick 1 in slot A1, stick 2 in slot B1: Crashed in stress test and memtest
• Stick 1 in slot A1, stick 2 not used: Did not crash
• Stick 1 in slot B1, stick 2 not used: Crashed in stress test

So this seems to imply that using slot B1 or B2 causes the problem. Both sticks seem to work fine in the other 2 slots so I think they are alright.
I would think that the ram slots are somehow faulty then. But I also read somewhere that such an issue might be caused by a bad pin connection of the cpu with the motherboard.
Could this indeed be the problem? And would there be something I can do to solve this or would this be something I need to send back for warranty.

 

[drivinfast247]

So, I was running memtest86 to make sure the program was working. After about 8 minutes the pc crashed just like when doing the stress test. After this I tried some different ram stick/ram slot combinations. I used the two ram sticks that I was already using, I'll call them 1 and 2. The results were as follows:

• Stick 1 in slot A2, stick 2 in slot B2: Crashed in stress test and memtest
• Stick 1 in slot A2, stick 2 not used: Did not crash
• Stick 2 in slot A2, stick 1 not used: Did not crash
• Stick 1 in Slot B2, stick 2 not used: Crashed in stress test
• Stick 1 in slot A1, stick 2 in slot B1: Crashed in stress test and memtest
• Stick 1 in slot A1, stick 2 not used: Did not crash
• Stick 1 in slot B1, stick 2 not used: Crashed in stress test

So this seems to imply that using slot B1 or B2 causes the problem. Both sticks seem to work fine in the other 2 slots so I think they are alright.
I would think that the ram slots are somehow faulty then. But I also read somewhere that such an issue might be caused by a bad pin connection of the cpu with the motherboard.
Could this indeed be the problem? And would there be something I can do to solve this or would this be something I need to send back for warranty.

Sounds like a CPU possibly needing to be re-seated or possibly a bad motherboard.

 

[Constantijn]

Sounds like a CPU possibly needing to be re-seated or possibly a bad motherboard.

Right, I'll try to reseat the CPU then when I have the time. If that doesn't work I'll see if I can get in contact with Asus for the warranty. Thanks for the help.