Question Upgraded to RTX 3060 - everything seems stable except for one game - Black Ops 3 crashing

[frast666]

Hi guys,
a couple of days ago I finally upgraded from gtx 1060 to rtx 3060. Specifically a new MSI RTX 3060 VENTUS 2x OC.
So far I have played a couple of games to test performance: Doom Eternal, Mafia Definitive Edition, Crysis 3, and Death Stranding. Everything seemed fine until I tried to play Black Ops 3.
Black ops 3 is crashing completely randomly. I was playing that game without any problems on the same PC last week with my gtx 1060, yet now the game crashes out of nowhere to desktop without any error. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all while I play the game for one hour, sometimes it happens after 15 minutes. The steps I tried so far:

• Reinstalling GPU drivers (with Display Driver Uninstaller)
• Undervolting GPU
• Decreasing Core && Memory Clock
• Decreasing Power limit (to 58%)
• Setting fan speed to 100%
• Reinstalling Black Ops 3
• Running Black Ops 3 (and steam) as administrator with compatibility mode and disabled full screen optimization
• Disabled XMP
• Experimenting with different graphical settings in Black Ops 3
• Tested memory with memtest
• Disabled all audio sources
• Disabled G-sync

Now, what's so weird is that the problem happens only in Black Ops 3. I even run some benchmarks - FurMark && Time Spy Extreme Stress Test in 3dmark, and all of them completed successfully with desirable results.
I am completely lost. I don't know if I should buy a stronger PSU (most probably that's what you will suggest, yet based on all metrics from MSI Afterburner, I don't see GPU consuming power excessively, especially when I set the power limit to 58%) or return a card as malfunctioning. Unless this is just some compatibility problem with Black Ops 3 and there is nothing I can do.

My specs:
MSI RTX 3060 VENTUS 2x OC
Corsair CV550
i7 6700k
B250 KRAIT GAMING
16GB

Cheers

 

[Darkbreeze]

Even JonnyGuru (Jon Gerow, head of PSU engineering for Corsair) has voiced the opinion that the CV series units are not very good. Regardless of any other considerations and based solely on the fact that it's not a good PSU, I'd recommend getting a better quality power supply. It might be the problem, it might not, but you're not doing your hardware any favors by running that unit regardless of whether it is or isn't.

Also, I would check to see if you have the latest stable motherboard BIOS version installed. Probably also a good idea to check the motherboard product page to see if there are newer chipset, network adapter and audio controller drivers as well. Also, I wouldn't think undervolting or limiting power more than a few percent is likely to fix this kind of problem. I'd probably set those back to the defaults but it MIGHT be a good idea to take a look at the GPU, memory and VRM temps on the card using HWinfo just to make sure there are no thermal concerns.

 

[frast666]

Hmmm, I decided to do a couple of tests with my old GPU, just to double-check... and I encountered actually the same problem. That obviously changes everything. I now know that it's not a defective GPU. I plugged in an HDD from my laptop and booted from it. I ran BO3 and did a lot of tests with the new GPU. Everything seems to be working. I can only assume there is something running in my PC that causes some random problems with BO3 and I was lucky not to encounter them when I was playing the game during last weeks with my old GPU. I tried to clean up the computer, clean up autostart, etc. but still, the problem persists. I am not planning to format the computer and most probably I will boot from the laptop's HDD just to play BO3 when I want it until I will feel like formatting and installing Windows from scratch.

I will consider changing PSU anyway, thank you for that suggestion.
Unless somebody has a suggestion on what to clean up on my PC, I will need to use the aforementioned workaround and the thread could be possibly closed.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Have you been using the same Windows installation since that system was originally built with the 6700k? Because if so, that means you've probably been through MANY major updates to the OS over the years. If you've never done a CLEAN install during that time

("Formatting" is not actually the same as doing a clean install, and in fact when doing a clean install "formatting" isn't even something you do. It's something Windows does automatically. What you DO do, is disconnect all secondary drives except the flash drive you are installing from, choose the "Custom" option during the installation, delete ALL existing partitions on the drive you wish to install Windows on, and then install to the unpartitioned, unformatted drive. Windows creates the necessary partitions and performs any necessary formattting, automatically. People think formatting the C: partition is the same as formatting the drive, but it is not. There are other, hidden partitions that must be eliminated in order to do a clean install otherwise all you've done is refresh the OS installation because you will still have the same Windows boot manager/EFI partition as before in most cases.)

then it is probably a really good idea to do so. Followed by downloading and installing the latest chipset, network adapters, audio controller and graphics card drivers from the manufacturers product support pages for the motherboard and graphics card. Do NOT rely on the native Windows drivers, ever, unless there is literally no choice for that OS version as with some older hardware. Anyhow, a better PSU and a clean OS install would likely clear this up for you. Good luck man.