PC freeze/crashes

[Tigah]

Kind of a longshot, I have a 99 % issue with hardware not software seeing as games like rimworld, but also stellaris (both CPU intensive) will freeze my entire PC and crash it within 15-30 minutes of having it on, even just idling not even unpaused. CPU goes up to about 40-50 % usage and temperatures never rise above 50 C on anything (less for most things like disk obviously)

It could be practically everything if it wasnt for the detail that only CPU intensive games such as rimworld, stellaris also a game called cataclysm dark days ahead crashes my PC consistently, Ive had exactly 0 crashes in maybe 300+ games of league but frequent more than 1 per hour on CPU games. If anyone has any ideas of what kind of problem it implies im all ears. Because its very specifically only games like rimworld which will cause my PC to freeze, darkest dungeon I also believe causes absolutely no freezes or PC crashes, nor does foxhole (online indie game)

[Tigah]

For reference running league of legends with say netflix on in the background will put my CPU on 38-40 % capacity, it feels like such a weird cutoff point but maybe the obvious answer is just that the PC crashes because of the CPU once it passes that threshhold for longer than e.g 10 minutes (if thats what you think)

It just feels so weird that I have no issues running browsers of netflix twitch youtube in the dozens on 3 screens, or playing league of legends or foxhole or darkest dungeon, causes absolutely literally 0 crashes (in the span of 6+ hour sessions with no issues), but rimworld being on for more than 15 minutes causes a crash. Also these games (that do crash), are installed on seperate disks so i doubt both of them started breaking at the same time.

[desrtfox071]

Run something like OpenHardwareMonitor to log your CPU and GPU temps as well as system voltages, etc. You can log RAM usage as well. The kind of failure you mention, freeze/reboot after tens of minutes, is almost always a heat related issue with one of your components. Obviously, it could be something more subtle though, and logging as much data as possible before the failure occurs will help you to identify it.

Also, update your drivers and OS. FYI, games cannot cause your system to crash, same with Netflix etc, so you definitely have a driver issue, OS issue, or most likely a hardware issue.

[Astasia]

Only hardware issue I can think of that might cause something like that would be overheating. You said nothing goes above 50C, I'm not sure that is accurate, idle temps for a CPU are usually around 50C depending on your cooling system, sometimes as high as 60C. Normal running temps for a CPU are 70-90C. It's possible whatever is telling you your CPU is 50C isn't working.

Are you overclocking at all? That can also sometimes (rarely, usually if something is set wrong) cause weird issues with some games.

Thing to keep in mind though, both RimWorld and Stellaris are predominantly single thread games, they both have a few smaller threads that are generally trivial in resource use. Calling either game "CPU intensive" is a bit questionable, unless you are on a dual core system.

Overheating usually causes throttling on a good mobo, or on most other mobos (or when throttling fails) a shut down. Freezing doesn't make that much sense, but it could be a side effect of throttling. The other common CPU related issue would be lack of power, but that just causes an instant system reboot when you trip the limit.

Less instantly dangerous hardware issues usually cause a blue screen error, things like bad memory segments or failing drives.

So I'm not really sure what you are seeing is hardware related at all. I would say it's more likely to be a corrupt driver or something. Try a clean reinstall of your graphics/mobo drivers and see if that helps.

[Tigah]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/390441530483015690/752244820541440030/image0.jpg I just used a simple program to check heat while benchrunning stellaris, but I have a pretty sweet CPU cooler, I've read individual parts of the CPU could have heat issues but unless some or several thermometers are broken I dont suspect overheating.

The crash issues started before I started overclocking (used to be really rare and got more frequent over time indicating a hardware issue from what ive read) but I reset the BIOS completely since two weeks ago. I haven't really dared to pick off the giant ass cpu cooler and take the CPU out, im not sure if cooler paste can get old and messy if the guy who assembled the PC didnt bother doing it well or if sometimes you just have to redo cooling paste.

Its just so bizarre since i can so nonconsistently crash until i run very specific games, but other games + 12 chrome browsers and streams up cause absolutely 0 issues or possible crashes


EDIT: New update, took 2 hours before first crash, very convinced its a hardware, probably PSU related (ive had voltage problems on an old pc, which apparently builds up), second crash took 15 minutes. What just keeps me utterly perplexed is why it will *only* crash with *some* games on and never with others even if they only have a 5-10 % more CPU tax but like twice as as much GPU tax. But that was with a 650W PSU and it wasnt broken just not enough to run that PC at max capacity, this is a 850W PSU...

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Tigah:

sometimes you just have to redo cooling paste.

this used to be a thing, but i'm not really into hardware enough now to know if thats a thing of the past due to better quality stuff available now.

might be on the right track with the PSU, you have another one you can swap it with to test? could also just be its not getting enough. maybe bypass any power strips or surge protectors to see if that changes anything, maybe try another power outlet (ideally a different circuit in the building) and see what you get.

[Bozobub]

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

FYI, games cannot cause your system to crash, same with Netflix etc, so you definitely have a driver issue, OS issue, or most likely a hardware issue.

The rest of your advice is fine but this is utterly false, sorry. Yes, any application at all can crash your system, in the right/wrong circumstances.

[Astasia]

Something you can do to confirm it's not a hardware issues is to run a stress test, something like Prime95 will push your CPU to the max and if it survives (I mean that literally) that then you can pretty safely rule out a CPU related issue. Or you can run a normal benchmark test to simulate a game using most of your system resources more naturally (and safely). UNIGINE has some quality freeware benchmarks to try.

[Tigah]

For future reference if others have this issue.

I resolved the issue by downgrading my nvidia drivers to sometime in march because I noticed that I started crashing a bit after that. I've no idea why a nvidia update seems to cause my PC to completely freeze/crash but only on specific games and cause literal machine exception issues? Probably something I should contact nvidia about and ask for a warranty replacement or something...