Why is War Thunder crashing my PC only in certain instances?

[COSMIC BRUDDAH]

So I have a PC that was built in like 2017 or 2018 by a guy I bought it from on FB marketplace. I have little knowledge on PC stuff so I could use some help!

To be honest I haven't had many issues with my rig. It's used, sure but it's been a powerhouse that's ran basically everything I've asked it to. Can it run newer games, nah but it can like 99% of stuff. Maybe I'm delusional about it. But the issues I've been facing is where I can play War Thunder perfectly fine on Air Arcade mode but when I go into Air Realistic or even Ground Arcade? My system has a issue with that. It'll black screen and lock my screen for a sec. Then it'll load back into the game screen. It also does it on rarely on Air Arcade too now that I'm thinking about it. Water based levels on Air Arcade really push it

It's a water cooled PC as well so I'm wondering if it's getting overheated again. Dead By Daylight bricked it last year and I had to replace to water system on it. So I hope it's not that. Is the system just getting old and now it's time to replace some things?

These are the specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-core
RAM: 28GB
Storage: 1T
Graphics: GTX 1080 (it says just GTX 1080 on my specs but the actual card in my PC case says GTX 1080 FTW)

Also running with DirectX 12

If I were to upgrade this PC what would be the most logical steps and ways to upgrade it? I have no clue how any of this works. Thanks for any help you can give me!

[nullable]

Well if you think it might be a temp issue there's plenty of utilities to check/monitor that. So... https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html HWMonitor could be a good option.

Ok but before you do run that and then ask "are these temps good" the thermal limits for your CPU and GPU are well known values, so look them up so the data you're monitoring means something to you.

Also your card is a GeForce 1080 your specs are correct. The FTW is mostly marketing jargon, and the card is overclocked a few mhz, but not enough to make a significant difference between a purely stock vanilla 1080.

https://pangoly.com/en/compare/vga/evga-geforce-gtx-1080-ftw-vs-evga-gtx-1080 you can see the differences there. The FTW cards would have been like $50-$100 more than a stock card, and would have been better than a poke in the eye. But it's not like your 1080 can run games that "lesser" 1080's can't.

That being said your PC should run War Thunder fine your CPU and GPU exceed the specs. But long lived games do tend to experience requirement creepy as updates gradually add more demanding things. I don't play War Thunder so I don't know what the state of the game is. Do things improve if you lower the graphical settings a bit?

Also you say War Thunder Crashes your PC, but what you describe doesn't sound like a crash to me. The game isn't crashing, and it doesn't sound like your PC is restarting. So you may be playing a bit fast and loose with the terminology there. Kinda sounds like hiccups loading the game offhand.

As for upgrades, the GPU is the oldest part and in need of an upgrade. Any current gen midrange card would be an improvement. On the Nvidia side I'd look for a good deal on a 3070/4060/4070. There's decent and cheaper AMD options too, and even Intel's newest GPUs are very economical for the performance. There's lots of options so you'd have to figure out what your budget is and look up some benchmarks for that class of hardware to see if you think the cost is worth it. Although it might be difficult to find direct comparisons in current/recent hardware reviews to your 1080, it is nearly 9 years old now (having been released in 2016)

Are you sure you have 28GB of RAM, it is an odd amount. Like 3x8GB and 1x4GB? It's not the biggest deal, you have a lot of experience running it at this point, but someone is bound to freak out and start laying down layers of FUD.

Although RAM running in the slowest configuration could drag performance down a bit compared to a more optimal configuration. Ryzen CPU's generally like faster RAM. You could look this up and see if it's something worth fussing over.

[COSMIC BRUDDAH]

Originally posted by nullable:

Well if you think it might be a temp issue there's plenty of utilities to check/monitor that. So... https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html HWMonitor could be a good option.

Ok but before you do run that and then ask "are these temps good" the thermal limits for your CPU and GPU are well known values, so look them up so the data you're monitoring means something to you.

Also your card is a GeForce 1080 your specs are correct. The FTW is mostly marketing jargon, and the card is overclocked a few mhz, but not enough to make a significant difference between a purely stock vanilla 1080.

https://pangoly.com/en/compare/vga/evga-geforce-gtx-1080-ftw-vs-evga-gtx-1080 you can see the differences there. The FTW cards would have been like $50-$100 more than a stock card, and would have been better than a poke in the eye. But it's not like your 1080 can run games that "lesser" 1080's can't.

That being said your PC should run War Thunder fine your CPU and GPU exceed the specs. But long lived games do tend to experience requirement creepy as updates gradually add more demanding things. I don't play War Thunder so I don't know what the state of the game is. Do things improve if you lower the graphical settings a bit?

Also you say War Thunder Crashes your PC, but what you describe doesn't sound like a crash to me. The game isn't crashing, and it doesn't sound like your PC is restarting. So you may be playing a bit fast and loose with the terminology there. Kinda sounds like hiccups loading the game offhand.

As for upgrades, the GPU is the oldest part and in need of an upgrade. Any current gen midrange card would be an improvement. On the Nvidia side I'd look for a good deal on a 3070/4060/4070. There's decent and cheaper AMD options too, and even Intel's newest GPUs are very economical for the performance. There's lots of options so you'd have to figure out what your budget is and look up some benchmarks for that class of hardware to see if you think the cost is worth it. Although it might be difficult to find direct comparisons in current/recent hardware reviews to your 1080, it is nearly 9 years old now (having been released in 2016)

Are you sure you have 28GB of RAM, it is an odd amount. Like 3x8GB and 1x4GB? It's not the biggest deal, you have a lot of experience running it at this point, but someone is bound to freak out and start laying down layers of FUD.

Although RAM running in the slowest configuration could drag performance down a bit compared to a more optimal configuration. Ryzen CPU's generally like faster RAM. You could look this up and see if it's something worth fussing over.

To go off the crashes: The game will still be running but it's like the game freezes, the screen goes black for split second, comes back one with pixel issues and then the game will come back where I was in the match. It's really hard to explain. I might try to capture it on recording

[COSMIC BRUDDAH]

Originally posted by nullable:

Well if you think it might be a temp issue there's plenty of utilities to check/monitor that. So... https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html HWMonitor could be a good option.

Ok but before you do run that and then ask "are these temps good" the thermal limits for your CPU and GPU are well known values, so look them up so the data you're monitoring means something to you.

Also your card is a GeForce 1080 your specs are correct. The FTW is mostly marketing jargon, and the card is overclocked a few mhz, but not enough to make a significant difference between a purely stock vanilla 1080.

https://pangoly.com/en/compare/vga/evga-geforce-gtx-1080-ftw-vs-evga-gtx-1080 you can see the differences there. The FTW cards would have been like $50-$100 more than a stock card, and would have been better than a poke in the eye. But it's not like your 1080 can run games that "lesser" 1080's can't.

That being said your PC should run War Thunder fine your CPU and GPU exceed the specs. But long lived games do tend to experience requirement creepy as updates gradually add more demanding things. I don't play War Thunder so I don't know what the state of the game is. Do things improve if you lower the graphical settings a bit?

Also you say War Thunder Crashes your PC, but what you describe doesn't sound like a crash to me. The game isn't crashing, and it doesn't sound like your PC is restarting. So you may be playing a bit fast and loose with the terminology there. Kinda sounds like hiccups loading the game offhand.

As for upgrades, the GPU is the oldest part and in need of an upgrade. Any current gen midrange card would be an improvement. On the Nvidia side I'd look for a good deal on a 3070/4060/4070. There's decent and cheaper AMD options too, and even Intel's newest GPUs are very economical for the performance. There's lots of options so you'd have to figure out what your budget is and look up some benchmarks for that class of hardware to see if you think the cost is worth it. Although it might be difficult to find direct comparisons in current/recent hardware reviews to your 1080, it is nearly 9 years old now (having been released in 2016)

Are you sure you have 28GB of RAM, it is an odd amount. Like 3x8GB and 1x4GB? It's not the biggest deal, you have a lot of experience running it at this point, but someone is bound to freak out and start laying down layers of FUD.

Although RAM running in the slowest configuration could drag performance down a bit compared to a more optimal configuration. Ryzen CPU's generally like faster RAM. You could look this up and see if it's something worth fussing over.

I have 28.0 installed RAM on my system. It says that in my system info and on my NVIDIA app

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Specs are good enough to run WT decently. It might be overheating issue since air realistic maps are much larger then air arcade maps and ground maps put more strain on hardware too.

[GOD RAYS ON ULTRA™]

Originally posted by COSMIC BRUDDAH:

RAM: 28GB

What in the world is that?? Wtf?? That needs to be removed from your PC ASAP. Like holy heck what? How on earth??!!

There's no way that's a dual channel ram kit no friggin way. Ram is supposed to be for ddr4 = 8, 16, 32, 64gb, configured that way not 28 :/

[COSMIC BRUDDAH]

Originally posted by Rumpelcrutchskin:

Specs are good enough to run WT decently. It might be overheating issue since air realistic maps are much larger then air arcade maps and ground maps put more strain on hardware too.

This seems to be what I feared. Dead By Daylight caused an overheat and I had to replace parts. Seems like larger maps are gonna cause it to overheat and the same goes for others modes. I need to upgrade for sure

[COSMIC BRUDDAH]

Originally posted by GOD RAYS ON ULTRA™:

Originally posted by COSMIC BRUDDAH:

RAM: 28GB

What in the world is that?? Wtf?? That needs to be removed from your PC ASAP. Like holy heck what? How on earth??!!

There's no way that's a dual channel ram kit no friggin way. Ram is supposed to be for ddr4 = 8, 16, 32, 64gb, configured that way not 28 :/

So what's it doing to my system? I didn't build this PC

[nullable]

Originally posted by COSMIC BRUDDAH:

To go off the crashes: The game will still be running but it's like the game freezes, the screen goes black for split second, comes back one with pixel issues and then the game will come back where I was in the match. It's really hard to explain. I might try to capture it on recording

As I said, as described, that doesn't sound like a crash. It is a thing, but if the game crashed I'd expect it to exit and end process or you would have to via the task manager and then restart it.

Originally posted by COSMIC BRUDDAH:

Originally posted by GOD RAYS ON ULTRA™:

What in the world is that?? Wtf?? That needs to be removed from your PC ASAP. Like holy heck what? How on earth??!!

There's no way that's a dual channel ram kit no friggin way. Ram is supposed to be for ddr4 = 8, 16, 32, 64gb, configured that way not 28 :/

So what's it doing to my system? I didn't build this PC

Well it's a gross overreaction because there's always a subset of pseudo experts who think anything that's not perfect is heresy and a sin against Tron.

The above user is freaking out because they don't know about mixed mode. And mindlessly clings to only one configuration being valid.

And they've made themselves look foolish because they didn't consider you've run the system for years and 28GB works well enough. Freaking out about it doesn't make you want to take them seriously I'd wager.

The original builder did something a bit off/non-standard with the RAM. In mixed mode the first 24GB could be running dual channel. The odd extra 4GB would that gets you to 28GB could be running in slower single channel. It's not then end of the world. The other foolish thing RAM zealots forget is that while dual channel is nice, single channel is fine most of the time too. You can see this across multiple sites that address the issue.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Whoever installed 3x 8GB + 1x 4GB is a moron. Who would do that?
Sounds like a trash PSU and not enough cooling (fans) as well.

[COSMIC BRUDDAH]

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by COSMIC BRUDDAH:

To go off the crashes: The game will still be running but it's like the game freezes, the screen goes black for split second, comes back one with pixel issues and then the game will come back where I was in the match. It's really hard to explain. I might try to capture it on recording

As I said, as described, that doesn't sound like a crash. It is a thing, but if the game crashed I'd expect it to exit and end process or you would have to via the task manager and then restart it.

Originally posted by COSMIC BRUDDAH:

So what's it doing to my system? I didn't build this PC

Well it's a gross overreaction because there's always a subset of pseudo experts who think anything that's not perfect is heresy and a sin against Tron.

The above user is freaking out because they don't know about mixed mode. And mindlessly clings to only one configuration being valid.

And they've made themselves look foolish because they didn't consider you've run the system for years and 28GB works well enough. Freaking out about it doesn't make you want to take them seriously I'd wager.

The original builder did something a bit off/non-standard with the RAM. In mixed mode the first 24GB could be running dual channel. The odd extra 4GB would that gets you to 28GB could be running in slower single channel. It's not then end of the world. The other foolish thing RAM zealots forget is that while dual channel is nice, single channel is fine most of the time too. You can see this across multiple sites that address the issue.

The guy who built it used it for 3D printing pretty much exclusive. So I'm wondering if that RAM choice was for just that.

[COSMIC BRUDDAH]

Thanks for all the info guys. I think I'm just gonna do some upgrades and see where it takes me. Got a friend who can get me a 3060 and some other stuff I'll need

[COSMIC BRUDDAH]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Whoever installed 3x 8GB + 1x 4GB is a moron. Who would do that?
Sounds like a trash PSU and not enough cooling (fans) as well.

Oof

[Bad 💀 Motha]

GTX 1080 is perfectly fine for such a game; which is not a demanding game even @ 4K

RTX 3060 won't fair much better. In some cases worse.

Fix the RAM, Cooling and possible faulty or unreliable Power Supply issues.

If the installed 3x 8GB actually do match in terms of specs, ditch that 1x 4GB and buy a 1x 8GB that matches

Look up on YouTube how to use MSI Afterburner. If needed, crank up the GPU fan(s) before launching a game and monitor the CPU & GPU Temps.

[ˢᵈˣ FatCat]

if blackscreen than back normal again , could be Driver crash, go check event viewer is there any nvidia crash something? or cable DP going bad, overheat DP/hdmi could do that,
and lets use direx 11 if there is

*Event viewer > windows log > system
i used using 6gigs for a loong loong time, never had issue back in the day, playing AC 1 and 2 and blackflag smoothsail

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes could easily be a driver issues or faulty cable.

Wipe out everything NVIDIA and reboot and then install either 566.36 or 572.47

If you install GFE or NVIDIA app; change the settings within to "Check for updates ONLY"

And block any drivers from Windows Updates so it can't update those.