PC freezes when gaming and watching youtube at the same time

[likho1eye]

I have an odd problem, I like to game while watching/listening to podcasts. However my PC completely freezes (have to cold reboot) if I have youtube video playing on one monitor and a full screen game on another.

PC specs: AMD Ryzen 7, 32GB ram, Radeon RX 580, Windows 10

My investigation so far:
- CPU and GPU are not overheating
- no errors in the windows system log before the freeze
- not game, browser or streaming platform dependent. It will fail with game A + Youtube playing in Chrome just as well as game B and Rumble playing in Edge.
- freezing does NOT happen if I simply collapse the browser window that is playing video
- sometimes it's almost instant upon starting a game when video playing, and sometimes it will take 30 minutes for PC to freeze

Other than the video card perhaps needing an upgrade, I'm not seeing anything that could cause this.

Suggestions appreciated.

[likho1eye]

The system and gaming is running from SSD.

Disabled hardware acceleration in Chrome, but that didn't help. PC still freezes after a few minutes.
Here's a photo I took with my phone of the frozen screen with the task manager: https://i.imgur.com/KLcmahZ.jpg

The game is using up GPU, otherwise everything seems normal.

[likho1eye]

smallcat の投稿を引用：

Any connectivity issues ? Are you pleased with your Internet Service Provider ? Test your connection-Speedtest is useful .

No complains... My gaming PC is connected to my router via ethernet (I don't trust wifi for gaming). Speedtest consistently shows at least 900Mbps down and 30Mbps up, more outside peak hours.

[Komarimaru]

I'd check the event viewer on dates this happened and at what times, see what the actual error is.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Disable Hardware Acceleration in Web Browsers as well as Steam Client.
Then these will not use GPU + VRAM.
Also limit the # of browser tabs you actively have when running these and a game at the same time. To avoid issues, launch your preferred web browser BEFORE launching a Game.

I keep Task Manager and Chrome open at all times.
I compress and flush RAM using simple tool from IOBit.

I only have to do this on my older 4790K PC w/ 16GB RAM + 980 Ti 6GB

On my Ryzen PC with 32GB RAM it's never an issue. But then it also has a 3080 Ti in it.

I also always manually set Windows PageFile to SSD (C) to 8GB MIN / 32GB MAX

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

If system just freezes, with no over heating, no error in windows logs which is a problem, then I could assume possiblity like 3rd party app that causing issues, having really bad microcode issues which could check bios updates for that, or possible OS issue which can try checking verification process on your OS, and error check to see if anything appears in the report.

Another thing could be which is a slim chance is your storage SSD controller might be bonk, but just a guess in the dark on that one. What could do is test using thumb drive with OS on it like Linux, or such, stress test each part, like cpu, GPU, ram, while SSD unplug, if issue doesn't happen at all, even doing same tests it might be your SSD, or OS itself again shot in the dark, and trouble shooting things to try figure out what causing your issue.

[Illusion of Progress]

Komarimaru の投稿を引用：

I'd check the event viewer on dates this happened and at what times, see what the actual error is.

This. Event Viewer logs stuff. Much of it might be fluff and it might not always be easy to track down, but do check it.

You'll likely see Event ID 41/Event ID 6008. Those are expected with unexpected restarts but are only a symptom, not a cause. (Just noticed you're getting freezes and not the Black screen and restart issue so never mind the prior part.) You need to look to see if other error or critical level warnings are being logged just after (or maybe before) the shutdown.

Also look in the "WindowsLiveEvent" folder within the Windows directory, and check the WHEA and Watchdog folders in there. I'd be curious if there's anything in there too.

Same for the Minidump folder also in the Windows directory (this may likely be empty if you're not getting BSODs with the crash).

[likho1eye]

I have already performed "Reset this PC", which effectively re-installs Windows.

I don't have WindowsLiveEvent or Mindump files under the Windows folder.

Checking system log in the EventViewer yields nothing interesting. Just a bunch of Information events with a couple of permission related Warnings. Then a time gap, followed by a system starting event and 6008.

It almost looks like system is simply overheating, except my GPU never goes over 70C. I even changed fan settings to keep it under 60C, but it didn't help.

[Wichtelman]

if it is a performance issue it should also freeze if you watch a video and run a benchmark software instead of a game... maybe try userbenchmark, passmark or something similiar that tests all hardware and/or edit window fullscreen - fullscreen etc...

btw which games and which ryzen cpu?

[likho1eye]

The CPU is Ryzen 7 2700X.

I've played Cyberpunk 2077 and Dead Space remake recently, and both had the same issue. I also tried to watch videos on Rumble using Edge browser as opposed to Chrome+Youtube, and it had the same effect.

No freezing if only gaming or only watching videos. Also no freezing if the browser window with the video playing is collapsed and not visible.

I'm going to try benchmark software later today and report back.

Another thing I just thought of that could be an issue: my secondary monitor where I watch videos is using 2560x1440 resolution and 150% scaling. I'm going to try 100% scaling and see if that changes anything.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

If you pause the game, even on a crappy PC and then switch to watching videos it should not hiccup not one bit.

Always run scaling at 100% otherwise it causes various issues. If you have trouble seeing or reading then use a 1080p Monitor instead of 1440p

Now you said you reset WinOS so it's like new again. Are you sure you went and downloaded + installed ALL the Drivers?

[emoticorpse]

Did this recently start or it's alwaya acted like this? Also, I'd just like to state that when I urge someone to do a fresh install, "reset this pc" is not a satisfactory alternative and i'd even call it bad practice in some cases. I respect someone's choice to use it but I would opt out of further assistance because I see that sometimes being a brick wall in the troubleshooting steps to refuse to do a proper reinstall.

[likho1eye]

Attempted resetting scaling on second monitor to 100% - still freezing. Took it about 40 minutes before freeze this time. I was so hopeful....

Run benchmark using BurnInTest, pushing GPU to 100%. I didn't get a freeze, however the test only lasts couple of minutes, so that doesn't prove anything. Ran it twice to be sure.

[kingjames488]

sounds like graphics error...

could be anything from a bad port to your putting the card in a reduced PCI slot to bad drivers to bad MOBO slot to who knows what...

there's nothing in the windows event viewer? cuz there should be if something crashes...

[Wichtelman]

likho1eye の投稿を引用：

Attempted resetting scaling on second monitor to 100% - still freezing. Took it about 40 minutes before freeze this time. I was so hopeful....

Run benchmark using BurnInTest, pushing GPU to 100%. I didn't get a freeze, however the test only lasts couple of minutes, so that doesn't prove anything. Ran it twice to be sure.

you need to run a benchmark that tests the whole system and watch videos at the same time... lets say if one ram stick "guess you have 4x8gb?" or the gpu is faulty how would you ever find out if you do not check if it runs 100% fine?

did you try a less demanding game aswell like fortnite or lol or counter strike idk?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

That's not realistic. If you run a stressful enough test, this would need most of your CPU and GPU and that's not going to leave room for something like web browser playing video or VLC media player playing a 1080p mp4 to have any room to run without hiccuping.

Games are another story, no game should be tying up your CPU and RAM so much that you can't multi-task and do other things and not run into performance issues. However you want a Game to be using 90-99% of your GPU really, so if you have other apps such as web browser set to use hardware acceleration (which is your GPU) then there you go, there's your problem right there.

Google Chrome for example is defaulted to "Hardware Acceleration = On" ~ Thus is going to tax your GPU Core and VRAM whenever you run it, and more so if you run more tabs and load up videos inside and such. When this option is turned off, it will only use your CPU.