- Jul 31, 2017
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Hey, I have a pretty serious problem that's causing my PC to crash every time I play a demanding game. It started I think a week ago as of today (Monday the 31st.) The most easily reproducible way for me to induce a crash is to play some PvP on Dark Souls 3.
During the crash, my computer screen goes either white or black/dark grey, with lines of a similar colour to the rest of the screen (but not quite the same shade) running vertically down the screen. The audio also loops. The computer is completely unresponsive until it's powered down. But it's not just that; after a crash it takes multiple attempts to get the computer to boot. I haven't been able to figure out what exactly allows it to boot but after I was swapping the RAM sticks into different slots (more on that later) it seemed to have a very good chance of booting. Basically, whenever I open it up and check something, it is able to boot after. But here's the kicker: it boots fine every time and doesn't crash when I use another, much older and weaker graphics card. However, this card is so much less powerful that I can't play Dark Souls or any other game for that matter in order to test the crashes, as the only time I could get it to crash with the better graphics card was to play a game as I mentioned earlier (although not all games). So I really don't know if it's the graphics card or some other issue, and was wondering if someone could give me some help.
What I've tried:
I'm out of ideas, and would love any help you guys and girls could offer. My speccy readout: https://puu.sh/wXTKq/4ca4aaf4c0.png
During the crash, my computer screen goes either white or black/dark grey, with lines of a similar colour to the rest of the screen (but not quite the same shade) running vertically down the screen. The audio also loops. The computer is completely unresponsive until it's powered down. But it's not just that; after a crash it takes multiple attempts to get the computer to boot. I haven't been able to figure out what exactly allows it to boot but after I was swapping the RAM sticks into different slots (more on that later) it seemed to have a very good chance of booting. Basically, whenever I open it up and check something, it is able to boot after. But here's the kicker: it boots fine every time and doesn't crash when I use another, much older and weaker graphics card. However, this card is so much less powerful that I can't play Dark Souls or any other game for that matter in order to test the crashes, as the only time I could get it to crash with the better graphics card was to play a game as I mentioned earlier (although not all games). So I really don't know if it's the graphics card or some other issue, and was wondering if someone could give me some help.
What I've tried:
1) I had a ntoskrnl blue screen in between the first and second crashes, but I've never had one since. As such, my first thought was to check the ram, so I put every stick of ram in every slot and tested each one individually and together in every combination, and it worked every time. I have 2 sticks of 4GB and one stick of 8GB for the record.
2) Next, I thought it might be a heat issue, so I took the side panels off my case and monitored the CPU temp closely, however I have a problem whereby my system temp displays as 100C+ when if i put my hand in there it's not warm at all: basically, I'm almost certain the readout is wrong, as it's resting temp even with just Chrome open is <100C. However as far as i can tell its not likely to be the temperature as neither my CPU temp or GPU temp got anywhere near high levels (50-65 max).
3) My final thought was that it was likely to be the power supply, as that was what I had read on most similar threads.I was so convinced that this was the problem that I bought a new PSU (a EVGA 600W 80+ rated). It was quite cheap, and I know that's not recommended, but it has about 150W of headroom as my system should only consume roughly 450W according to outervision's PSU calculator, and I figured that I'd just buy cheap in case it was not the issue. As you can tell by this thread, it wasn't.
I'm out of ideas, and would love any help you guys and girls could offer. My speccy readout: https://puu.sh/wXTKq/4ca4aaf4c0.png
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