[SOLVED] PC freezes when GPU (1070 TI) reaches 99% usage

[blurreJel]

My PC freezes (sound is still there, when i'm on discord and there are people talking or even music playing, I can hear them, and I can still talk on my mic for a few seconds until I no longer can which I have to restart my pc) most of the time when my gpu usage reaches 99%.

The gpu temps are quite low under these situations, usually around 45-55 degrees. I don't quite understand what the problem with it is, and I've been thinking if it was a RAM problem, but i noticed that my pc only freezes when the gpu utilization is high and my RAM rarely causes problems.

The CPU as well as RAM temps are normal, around 38-45 for both, and all sticks of the ram, when the freezing occurs. I've also overclocked the gpu (only slightly overclocked) since I got the build and before there were really no freezing problems when running games that are gpu intensive even when the usage reached 99%. This freezing sometimes even happens on non-gpu intensive games like valorant (which is cpu intensive), and when the gpu usage suddenly spikes up to 99 the entire pc freezes . I also benchmarked my gpu earlier thrice and each time it always froze. A few weeks ago when I benchmarked the slightly overclocked gpu, it never froze nor did Heaven Benchmark crash which I think is an indication of a good overclock for this build.

The terrible freezing only starting this week and I've been trying to figure out what's causing this.

This was the OC that I did (core clock was curved by the auto overclock on afterburner), and have used this overclock since last year with no problems. (I lowered the memory clock from 440 a few months ago down to 250 because it didn't seem necessary to use a higher memory clock at the time, and both the 440 and 250 mem clock did great with no freezing or crashing)

I reset everything back to 0 except for the power limit (100%), temp limit (92%), and the fan speed control (custom), and everything seemed to work fine, but after hours of gaming with gpu intensive games, the system still freezes but will unfreeze after awhile.

I also benchmarked it again after resetting and the max temperature I got was around 70 degrees with no freezing problem as opposed to the standard overclock I did, but it did stutter a bit.

All drivers are up to date, freshly reinstalled graphics drivers, the entire pc was cleaned properly a few days ago, I also made sure there were no other inconsistencies in the system via softwares (none that I could find).

I'm hoping that someone here might have an idea that could help me fix this issue.



Build:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32gb 3200Mhz (4x8gb) [CMW16GX4M2C3200C16]
ASUS ROG Strix X570-F
Asus ROG Strix Geforce GT 1070TI 8gb
Thermaltake Smart RGB 600W 80+ White
Cryorig H7 Plus Dual Fan CPU Cooler

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

that is a very low tier power supply that should not be used for a AAA gaming rig.
more than likely the cause of the issue(s).

 

[Phaaze88]

The first thing I'd suspect is the psu.
I've experienced those symptoms with a Seasonic Prime Titanium 750. Only lasted like 5 years. 7820X and 1080Ti.
I played around with overclocking a lot, which I believe wore it down even faster.
It would soft freeze in games and benchmarks unless I dropped the gpu's power limit to 60% or lower. Never seen it unfreeze though... maybe I didn't wait long enough.
When the freeze would happen, I could alt-tab out and move the mouse around, but the moment I clicked with the mouse, that was it - frozen.
Switched to a Corsair AX850 Titanium and it's been fine since.

Thermaltake Smart RGB 600W 80+ White

This isn't very high on the quality list, so I'd imagine there isn't a lot headroom to be pushing your hardware on it.

 

[jayjr1105]

Might want to pick up a better PSU either way...
https://www.newegg.com/evga-750-b5-220-b5-0750-v1-750w/p/N82E16817438165?Item=N82E16817438165

 

[blurreJel]

I was thinking it could be the PSU too since my MSI B450 motherboard's 3 RAM slots became faulty (possibly its VRM chips, as well as one of my hard drives suddenly died. Reading a few threads on here as well gave me the idea that it may be a PSU issue.

Would a Cooler Master MWE Gold 750 V2 (750W) be a good choice for a power supply? It's the only one available in my country (and area) at the moment.

 

[Karadjgne]

Doubt it's the psu. Not for a freeze. That's almost always a driver related conflict. A driver will hangup or loop, the gpu freezes until it can recover or windows gets tired of waiting and replaces or reactivates the driver. You still get sound because that's a whole different set of drivers. If it was the psu, such as with Phaaze, everything would lockup.

I'd start with doing a safe mode DDU reset of drivers (there's been reports of the latest drivers being buggy, typical with new OS releases or major updates) to a slightly older version, maybe 2 versions ago (not missing anything except Win11 stuff and a couple of game optimizations for new releases) and also check to see what else you have running in the background, services etc that might be conflicting.

 

[blurreJel]

I've tried reinstalling the drivers already with DDU without any luck. But everything does lock up and freezes when it's overclocked even by 250-440 memclock. I'm not sure if it's the power limit that's causing it but once I changed it back to default and there were no stuttering in games just the benchmark software but it's around 2/5 times that the stutter occurs, but if it was the power limit that was way above 100% I think it may be the PSU? or could there be other causes?

 

[Skyakimax]

hey did you fix this problem? i have the same problem. 1st I thought it's my PSU problem. no, I think it's a graphic card problem not sure, I am planning to test my card on another PC.. until I did some troubleshooting. here I unplugged the graphic card and play games onboard VGA no problem. can play games.. so I insert GPU and did some stress run no problem came. problem coming only play games. and I have Thermaltake 500w +80 silver PSU :/

I am planing these things forward

test my card another PC
change Windows version currently, my windows version is 21h1 * I had played many games windows 2004 no issues came to
need to downgrade Nvidia Drivers. currently, I have installed lasted drivers all of GPU and Motherboard, Bios

if you want to discuss this thing here is my email madushan.snoop@gmail.com, we can share our troubleshooting information. thanks

 

[blurreJel]

I found a temporary fix for my problem by removing the overclock on my pc, I set both my power limit, core voltage, and temp limit to its maximum on msi afterburner. Whenever its core clock was changed even by 50 (without any memory clock change), it would still freeze my system. Unfortunately, I do believe my problem is the PSU since I can now hear the psu fan spinning really hard when under load (even though it's recently cleaned). I have yet to replace it with a better power supply, but I'll respond back to this thread once I do get my hands on a new power supply.

But based on your problem, I think it's a driver issue since unlike mine, yours doesn't freeze up whenever you do a stress test. I've had an experience with games freezing before on a different motherboard which turned out to be a RAM issue (just had to clean the ram slots and switch up how my rams were placed in the slots), it apparently fixed that issue. Maybe try checking driver updates and especially updating your bios if you haven't done that yet? It might help.

 

[Skyakimax]

I found a temporary fix for my problem by removing the overclock on my pc, I set both my power limit, core voltage, and temp limit to its maximum on msi afterburner. Whenever its core clock was changed even by 50 (without any memory clock change), it would still freeze my system. Unfortunately, I do believe my problem is the PSU since I can now hear the psu fan spinning really hard when under load (even though it's recently cleaned). I have yet to replace it with a better power supply, but I'll respond back to this thread once I do get my hands on a new power supply.

But based on your problem, I think it's a driver issue since unlike mine, yours doesn't freeze up whenever you do a stress test. I've had an experience with games freezing before on a different motherboard which turned out to be a RAM issue (just had to clean the ram slots and switch up how my rams were placed in the slots), it apparently fixed that issue. Maybe try checking driver updates and especially updating your bios if you haven't done that yet? It might help.

mine has lasted GPU drivers. and motherboard drivers are all updated. not sure, today am going to test this card on my friend's pc.. let see what happened. i updated this post..

 

[blurreJel]

mine has lasted GPU drivers. and motherboard drivers are all updated. not sure, today am going to test this card on my friend's pc.. let see what happened. i updated this post..

Any updates on how yours went?

 

[Skyakimax]

i got found a problem with my ram stick. playing one ram and one slow no problem can play well many hours. need to check other ram card and other ram slots to.. i think problem is ram or motherboard ram slots..

 

[Skyakimax]

Any updates on how yours went?

did you check your ram kits? if not.. please do troubleshooting. one by one insert ram and play game. i think the problem has ram kits. not GPU. if GPU has problem it shows some error lines on display..

 

[blurreJel]

I bought a new PSU, Cooler Master MWE Gold 750 V2 (750W), and it seems to have resolved my issue.

Yours might be your ram kits. I've had a similar issue before with an MSI B450, I've set my RAM to it's XMP and I've almost always got some performance issues, and I believe that my power supply might have broken that motherboard's ram slots (which I have no idea how) since 3 of the slots suddenly stopped working (the 2x8 ram would still be detected but it would only detect half, and after troubleshooting it with other 2x8's it still wouldn't work). I replaced that motherboard with an ASUS X570-F, and it resolved all the issues I've had at the time. But I only got performance issues in games with it rather than system freezing though. But it's possible it could be your ram? Have you tried testing your build with a different set of ram? Or testing it with only one ram stick after another?

 

[Skyakimax]

I bought a new PSU, Cooler Master MWE Gold 750 V2 (750W), and it seems to have resolved my issue.

Yours might be your ram kits. I've had a similar issue before with an MSI B450, I've set my RAM to it's XMP and I've almost always got some performance issues, and I believe that my power supply might have broken that motherboard's ram slots (which I have no idea how) since 3 of the slots suddenly stopped working (the 2x8 ram would still be detected but it would only detect half, and after troubleshooting it with other 2x8's it still wouldn't work). I replaced that motherboard with an ASUS X570-F, and it resolved all the issues I've had at the time. But I only got performance issues in games with it rather than system freezing though. But it's possible it could be your ram? Have you tried testing your build with a different set of ram? Or testing it with only one ram stick after another?

I did my graphic card tested another PC.. it worked well, so I think the problem is my motherboard or Ram slot or ram kits. still going troubleshooting.. I update to you... signal ram can play games with no problem.. I cant play both rams.. so need to time troubleshoot.
if you have still a performance problem you should try another PC your ram and GPU too.

 

[blurreJel]

My system's performance issues disappeared after replacing th psu, I was even able to overclock my cpu and gpu slightly higher than what I originally had before. I found a really significant performance boost from that alone even if it was all in stock speed.

 

[Skyakimax]

My system's performance issues disappeared after replacing th psu, I was even able to overclock my cpu and gpu slightly higher than what I originally had before. I found a really significant performance boost from that alone even if it was all in stock speed.

mmmmmmmmm okay

 

[blurreJel]

Have you tried lowering your ram speed? Maybe your system becomes unstable when running your ram sticks at full speed? It happened on mine when I was running 4 sticks at 3200mhz on a B450, I'd get constant crashes and bsod's.

 

[Skyakimax]

Have you tried lowering your ram speed? Maybe your system becomes unstable when running your ram sticks at full speed? It happened on mine when I was running 4 sticks at 3200mhz on a B450, I'd get constant crashes and bsod's.

I am playing lower Mhz 2400.. my motherboard cant increase MHz range. so I think problem has one of ram or one of ram slot..... where are you from ? are you from USA?

 

[Karadjgne]

Power limits on gpus are funky. Some games, especially Amazon's New World can pull power limits in excess of 120%, even though the card is set for 100% or lower. Use msi Afterburner to verify that stuff.

Changing psus can be effective, not because of the change itself, but what it was changed to. Getting a better quality output with lower voltage ripple has a large affect on everything including stability of OC, OC ram, cpu OC limits, gpu OC limits etc.

Also there's silicon lottery. Major player in any OC. Some gpus/cpus/ram just OC's better than others, even when identical. All depends on the silicon used, voltages, current etc.