System Shut Down

[Zhehan]

Hi, I have a brand new system and 2 other systems experiencing the same issue when playing this game. Not a Windows shut down, not a driver stops responding thing, but the screens go black, audio stops and then the computer turns off after 5-10 seconds. This is the ONLY game or software to cause this behavior. I have good quality 80 Plus PSU's that exceed the recommended specs for all the systems. all of them are AMD CPU, Motherboard and Graphics based.

1. CyberPower PC E-Sports system w. Ryzen 5 3600, ASUS Prime B550-Plus mobo, XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy, 16GB DDR4-3000, M2 SSD, etc. APEVIA 600W 80 Plus Gold PSU It's a quality system. New as of Thursday, October 8, 2020..

2. Custom built, FX-8350, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 mobo, 16GB DDR3-1866, Sapphire Radeon RX 480, etc. Corsair CX600 PSU.

3. Custom Built, FX-8320, Gigabyte GA-970-UD3 mobo, 16GB DDR3-1866, Radeon RX 590, Corsair CX600 PSU, etc.

All of them crash at one point in this game. The RX 590 systems can't make it more than 2 minutes in the benchmark before shutting down. Gameplay is the same, single or multiplayer. Using the AMD Radeon Software monitoring function, the RX 590 pulls up to 200w when running on High settings, with Vulkan as the renderer. The RX 480 pulls up to 130w. This is well within design limits. DX 11 and 12 pulls less power, and provide less performance to boot, but they are still unstable.

All of them have the latest drivers and Windows updates. SS4 is the only software or game that causes this instability. Doesn't matter what graphics settings or renderer are chosen.

I realize systems 2 and 3 are older, but I played all the way through Doom Eternal on ridiculously high settings without a single crash on system #2. Again, these systems are bullet-proof on everything else but SS4. I bought the new system because I thought there was an issue with system #3.

Anyone else seeing problems like this?

*EDIT*: Revised how the crash is happening in this original post.

*EDIT* #2: TLDR - The fix for System #2 was to create a game specific fan profile in the Radeon Software to adequately cool the card. The Default Fan Profile favored a quiet fan vs aggressively cooling the card, the card got too hot and shut the system down to save itself.

[Zhehan]

I have a Corsair 430W PSU that I bought in 2009 in an AMD based system in my house that is stable as a rock. It's my living room media PC. Your Mileage May Vary.

[Doctor Eggman]

Zhehan님이 먼저 게시:

I have a Corsair 430W PSU that I bought in 2009 in an AMD based system in my house that is stable as a rock. It's my living room media PC. Your Mileage May Vary.

I'm not saying that Corsair PSU's can't work, but I wouldn't entrust them to heavy loads. I had a £20 budget CPU by "Ace" which couldn't even supply half the rated wattage that ran for years on an office computer with no problems, (Pentium 4 HT and some old AMD card) in that case it would be an amazing PSU for the money. :P

Seasonic PSU's especially from the Focus line onwards, rely on an old but slightly updated design that hasn't been changed majorly in years; longer than a decade. Whilst some might call it outdated, its reliability is ridiculous when it comes to delivering the rated power demands.

Btw, those FX CPU's can pull some insane loads, the Ryzen is considerably better peaking at around 140-150w max load... but the FX chips can pull up to 285 watt loads.
(on their own, as a single component)

Also you shouldn't use the Radeon Software to determine the wattage your GPU's are pulling. The more accurate method is to use an actual wattage oscilloscope, you'd find that the RX480 pulls around 170 watts and the RX590 can peak at 300 watts though will average 230-250 when heavy gaming. You can find out the actual wattage by looking for actual published tests that use oscilloscope readings.
Tom's Hardware tests are pretty accurate in most cases.

Also you then have to include all your peripherals attached to the computer, any additional functions that your motherboard has, any system lighting / case lighting and other things considered, its actually fairly easy to go over what you think your PSU is capable of, a lot of online benchmarking tests don't even consider added peripherals which is a huge issue and one of the main reasons why so many people end up with dead PSU's early in the PC's life.

If SS4 has any particular event that could cause your PC components to reach max loads I wouldn't be surprised that somewhere along the line the chain fails, because AMD can just be that power hungry. :P

[Tedmouse]

Zhehan님이 먼저 게시:

I just wanted to add this update. I am able to reproduce the system crash by starting the “Breakfast In France” chapter in either Single or Multi-Player (Co-Op) modes. The crash happens in Co-Op even if I am alone in the game. It crashes faster in Co-Op mode than it does in Single player. It crashes every time on my #2 system, which consists of an AMD FX-8350 and a Radeon RX 480 8GB. Additionally, I have noticed the crash happens in this way:

Screens go black and all audio stops. There is still some slight disk activity as indicated by the disk activity light, probably 5-10 seconds, then the system shuts down. There is not enough activity that would indicate a Windows shut down, and looking in Event Viewer, it shows that there are unscheduled shutdowns when these crashes happen. I previously thought it was an immediate, hard shutdown.

As such, the game is now completely unplayable for me since I can’t get past this crash.

I'm still trying to help figure out this issue, so I haven't left you, just a heads up.

If you haven't, I suggest making a (toms hardware) post as well, those guys are pretty good at figuring stuff out.

[DEN [CT]]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1dGQiNfCAc
~7:20

[Dixon Sider]

Zhehan님이 먼저 게시:

I have a Corsair 430W PSU that I bought in 2009 in an AMD based system in my house that is stable as a rock. It's my living room media PC. Your Mileage May Vary.

What is the wattage your GPU is drawing when it shuts down? The one good thing I have to say about AMD is that their performance monitoring software is the best I have used. Still not good enough for me to use an AMD GPU though.

[Dixon Sider]

DEN CT님이 먼저 게시:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1dGQiNfCAc
~7:20

Exactly why I purchased an 850W PSU (single card though)

[The Happy Friar]

Zhehan님이 먼저 게시:

I have a Corsair 430W PSU that I bought in 2009 in an AMD based system in my house that is stable as a rock. It's my living room media PC. Your Mileage May Vary.

Try changing your max FPS: options - graphics options - performance - max fps - 60.

Mine was unlimited. My GPU wattage would spike. @ 60 it was very consitant & I've been playing for ~10 minutes w/o crashes on the france map.

[The Happy Friar]

We just ran the game for ~25 minutes in the french map & no crashes with FPS capped.

[moonsammy]

I've also been experiencing hard crashes - black screen, computer reboots. No other games cause this to happen. In my case however, the timing is *super* consistent: at the transition between gameplay and cutscenes. For most of them it's been at the end of cutscenes - it'll play through the whole thing, and at the very end (leading into either the level complete screen or another section of gameplay) it immediately crashes. I've validated this by watching youtube videos of other people playing, to see where the cutscenes are supposed to end. For these crashes I've been able to just skip the cutscenes, and that side-stepped the issue. However, I'm now on what I assume is the final battle (far into From Earth With Love, two giant armies running at each other), and it's crashing in the middle of the fight at the exact same moment each time. I advance from the supply camp (with multiple crates of multi-weapon ammo) towards the enemy army, and once enough progress has been made the General leaps in. As soon as he lands and there's a fiery explosion on the ground, my system reboots. Every single time. I've tweaked the game settings, I've run as Admin and under different compatibility settings, changed the rendering engine, changed the resolution... no setting seems to touch this crash. If I make enough progress for the General to join the fight (which I *assume* is the start of a cutscene), my computer crashes.

Here's the log for the most recent attempt: https://pastebin.com/gtByh6qi

I didn't see it in the log, and this appears to differ from other people experiencing crashes: my video card is an Nvidia GTX 760. That does appear to put it under minimum spec, but the fact that I've been able to play everything *right* up to the final battle is pretty frustrating.

[Dixon Sider]

The reason other games may not be causing this is because you are not testing games that tax your GPU and CPU as much in SS4. Your GPU is not the only thing that is putting in work.

Try Prime 95 and Heaven benchmarking at the same time. But be SUPER careful and monitor your temperatures the entire time.

[The Happy Friar]

I ran Prime 95 under torture test & Heaven under Ultra quality - benchmark, twice in a row, no crash. SS4 crashes. The wattage & temp got higher on my GPU compared to SS4.

[Zhehan]

I have already stressed the systems more than the game does and they are stable. I'll try the FPS limit. Thanks!

[Dixon Sider]

The Happy Friar님이 먼저 게시:

I ran Prime 95 under torture test & Heaven under Ultra quality - benchmark, twice in a row, no crash. SS4 crashes. The wattage & temp got higher on my GPU compared to SS4.

The same thing happened to me with Dragon Quest 11. Your GPU is AMD? I put my GTX 1070 back in and just got back home from micro center where I RMAd the 5700 xt I tried out. My GTX 1070 has never had problems before or after trying out the 5700 xt. I blame AMD for it.

[The Happy Friar]

After playing for a while, after the stress test I went to play and it crashed even with the FPS limit. :(

Maybe it's a driver issue.

[The Happy Friar]

I tried renaming "sam4.exe" to something else to see if that would fix the problem, didn't.

It still crashed for me. However, I noticed that when I played I had a different style vs my son who didn't crash after I capped the FPS: he took the game slower, I was going as fast as I can. In Frances lots of LOD stuff changes (it crashed this time while driving the motorcycle), maybe it's LOD or asset loading related.