[SOLVED] PC randomly hard freezes while playing certain games, especially with Chrome running

[Euthanatos12]

As the title says, I've been having this issue that only seems to occur with certain games but when it does I'm forced to completely power down the PC and start it back up. It's happened with Last Epoch, Tiny Tina's Wonderland (couldn't even play these for 10 minutes), and Lost Ark to name a few. Though oddly enough with LA it never occurred even once during the whole leveling process and only started days later when doing high level dungeons or returning to busy cities. I have even turned down a lot of the settings like shadows and various effects (despite the optimized settings being "ultra" everything), but it hasn't made a difference in the freezing.

I got this PC at the end of 2020 and it's served me well other than this fairly recent issue. This is my user benchmark: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/51949749

(I'm not sure what issue the user benchmark is citing with my SSD. I'm not able to find anything wrong with it and it gives me no issues in general. Additionally, 2 of the 3 games I mentioned are not installed on it.)

I've tried making sure all my drivers were up to date for basically everything and ran sfc /scannow, not to mention I just recently did an upgrade to Windows 11 as well. I've basically been trying small adjustments here and there, including turning off hardware acceleration on Chrome, based on other threads I've read. Freezing can still happen even if Chrome isn't running, but it seems to occur more if it is. I do not typically get any sort of freezing if I'm just using the PC for browsing, documents, music, etc. It might have occurred once before with various applications at work, but I can't accurately remember.

I have looked through other threads people have posted reporting similar problems but I didn't see any solution that has worked for me so far and wanted to post my benchmark and see if anyone has insight for me. While I don't have the greatest PC ever, it's usually more than enough to run modern games and I don't even play the most intensive kinds. I just want to be able to play stuff I spent money on and not get corrupted files. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GoofyOne]

Often when the machine freezes or reboots when playing games, it can be a power supply issue. It is difficult to be sure though. When the machine heats up, because you are making it work harder playing games, it draws more power.

Do you know all the components you have in your PC?? What CPU, Motherboard, Graphics Card, Power Supply you have in it?? Ahh ok you have a Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S/ac Motherboard with a Intel Core i7-9700K Cpu, and a Nvidia RTX 2070S graphics card. The benchmark screen doesn't say what power supply you have though.

I think the 'suggested' power supply for that graphics card is 450 Watts, but most people add 100-150 above that ... so probably should have at least 550-600 Watt power supply. Another possibility is that the GPU is overheating when you are playing games .. check that the fan(s) are running properly.

On my graphics card, which is a old RX 580X, it only has one fan and I have to set up a custom fan profile in the AMD driver software to keep the GPU cool. It packs up if I just leave it on the default settings.


{GoofyOne's 2c worth ... which may, or may not be actually worth 2c}

 

[Euthanatos12]

Often when the machine freezes or reboots when playing games, it can be a power supply issue. It is difficult to be sure though. When the machine heats up, because you are making it work harder playing games, it draws more power.

Do you know all the components you have in your PC?? What CPU, Motherboard, Graphics Card, Power Supply you have in it?? Ahh ok you have a Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S/ac Motherboard with a Intel Core i7-9700K Cpu, and a Nvidia RTX 2070S graphics card. The benchmark screen doesn't say what power supply you have though.

I think the 'suggested' power supply for that graphics card is 450 Watts, but most people add 100-150 above that ... so probably should have at least 550-600 Watt power supply. Another possibility is that the GPU is overheating when you are playing games .. check that the fan(s) are running properly.

On my graphics card, which is a old RX 580X, it only has one fan and I have to set up a custom fan profile in the AMD driver software to keep the GPU cool. It packs up if I just leave it on the default settings.


{GoofyOne's 2c worth ... which may, or may not be actually worth 2c}

I have a 600W power supply as far as I know.

I have MSI Afterburner open to keep an eye on things and tweak, but how would I know if the fan isn't working correctly?

 

[GoofyOne]

Well, you could take the cover off your PC, and visually check that the fans are spinning when you power the machine on. As for adjusting the fan speed, you should be able to do that in the MSI Afterburner utility. I saw this web page which may help in that regard. Thankfully it isn't a video, just gives the information without having to watch an entire video.

How To Improve Your Fan Curve

Also anoother possible issue, are you overclocking it???


{GoofyOne's 2c worth}