Question stumped at PC hard freezing during games

Feb 20, 2025
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I bought a second-hand PC (first mistake) and I'm tearing my hair out now because it just won't stop freezing during games. At this point I'm pretty certain it's a hardware issue, but I'm really holding onto the slim chance that it's a software issue.

I've tested COD Cold War, Cyberpunk 2077, Terraria and Geometry Dash, and apart from GD they've all made my PC hard freeze (no BSOD) to the point of having to restart at the case. If there's audio playing at the time it'll loop really fast to the point it sounds like a taser. Cold War crashes at the lobby menu or in settings, always around a minute after opening, and Cyberpunk also crashes around a minute of playing. Strangely Terraria takes several minutes to maybe even an hour before crashing, and GD has never crashed on me (however I haven't played it for very long in one sitting). If I restart my monitor, it says no input detected and my PC and peripherals continue to stay on (I can't do anything with them though).

On Win10 if I look in event viewer, the crashes coincide with WHEA-Logger ID 1, a fatal hardware error has occurred and blames it on genuineintel.sys. I also get a bunch of other warnings that happen often that I don't believe contribute to the freezing.

I use Afterburner to monitor temps and more, and at the time of the freezing nothing looks out of the ordinary. I've tried updating and reinstalling all sorts of drivers and my BIOS, messing with BIOS settings, undervolting, turning off XMP, even going from windows 11 to 10. I've tried all sorts of CMD prompt fixes too and have ran tons of hardware tests (including memtest86). Userbenchmark doesn't crash, however it won't detect half of my components and the ones it will detect it says are underperforming. 3DMARK's Time Spy test works fine at first but then will just crash all the same as the other games. I'll be honest, I have an irrational fear of messing with the hardware inside my PC, so I haven't tried reseating or removing RAM or anything like that, plus being a mini-ITX it's not simple. All I really want to know is what is the most likely cause of the issue so I can figure out where to go from there.

If it's any help I do live in a hall of residence so maybe the wall outlet could be dodgy, but my friends' PCs do fine in their rooms and they're not really willing to let me bring my setup in to test. It has frozen while watching a YouTube video and while doing nothing before too, but those haven't occurred in a while.

RTX 4060 (latest driver)
i5 12400
2x16GB G skill ddr5 5600mhz 40cl
B760-I Gaming Wifi (update 1805)
Unknown power supply (yes, I know. The seller didn't know and I have no idea how to find it, but it was a prebuilt, so I assume it at least has enough wattage. Main culprit though)
 
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

RTX 4060 (latest driver)
i5 12400
2x16GB G skill ddr5 5600mhz 40cl
B760-I Gaming Wifi (update 1805)
Unknown power supply (yes, I know. The seller didn't know and I have no idea how to find it, but it was a prebuilt, so I assume it at least has enough wattage. Main culprit though)

When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model. If you can't identify the PSU, take the side panels off your case and pass on what you see on the stickered info on the PSU. You've stated that it's a prebuilt, can you find the link tot he prebuilt? On that last part, no, most prebuilt's don't come with a good quality PSU since they need to cut corners in order to make a profit.

even going from windows 11 to 10.
You mean you migrated to Windows 11 using the internal upgrade path found on Windows 10? If so, you should recreate your bootable USB installer for Windows 11, then reinstall the OS while all drives except the one you wish to install the OS onto is hooked to the board/system. Install the OS in offline mode and while offline, install all relevant drivers in said elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator, before connecting to the www to run an update on the OS.

If you can, please pass on a screenshot of what you see on Disk Management and Device Manager.

Side note, the sweet spot for any DDR5 platform is a dual channel DDR5-6000MHz ram kit with tight latencies.

Moved thread from Components section to Systems section.
 
CPU: Intel i5-12400
CPU cooler: No idea sorry
Motherboard: Asus ROG b760-I Gaming Wi-Fi
Ram: G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB 32GB (2x16) DDR5 I believe (F5-5600J4040C16G)
SSD: Team TM8FPK002T 2TB nvme
GPU: RTX 4060
PSU: I don't have access to a screwdriver yet sorry (it's hidden in some compartment I believe).
Chassis: NZXT H1 V1
OS: Windows 10 22H2 19045.5487 (I downgraded from Win11 via USB)
Monitor: MSI G271C

I'm not sure if my RAM would be stable if I boosted it to 6000mhz because it's advertised as 5600mhz. I know it's not the fastest though.