All Games Crashing/Freezing (not responding) on Somewhat New PC

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drag0nfruit

Aug 7, 2018
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I build my first custom gaming pc on the 12th of July and all seemed well, it actually exceeded my expectations in terms of fps in games but the next day I started experiencing BSODs when I tried running modded minecraft. I do not remember exactly what the errors were because I actually managed to stop the BSODs after a few hours of troubleshooting. I had no issues after that, I was able to run games for hours without and interruptions until about a week ago when I started experiencing freezes, but no BSODs this time. I decided to just wipe my ssd/boot drive and reinstall windows while keeping my hard drive untouched (my hard drive has all my games, pictures, desktop (shortcuts) and my downloads folder but all my programs and windows are installed on my ssd) I thought this solved the problem but after playing games for a few hours the freezing returned.

Basically what happens is when I launch a game it will freeze and go into a "not responding" state forcing me to close the game. This can happen right away or up to an hour after launching the game. So far I have only seen games crash; chrome, steam, prime95, and heaven benchmark have never crashed on me.

Specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor (stock cooler)
Motherboard: MSI B350 PC MATE ATX AM4
Memory: GeIL EVO POTENZA 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400
SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 500GB 2.5"
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX

Games that Crash:
-Minecraft
-GTA V
-Warframe
-Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
-Rocket League
-Staxel

Things I have tried:
-restarting pc
-reinstalling games
-running games on SSD rather than HDD
-updating drivers
-removing video drivers using DDU and then reinstalling them
-upping power limit of GPU using MSI Afterburner
-underclocking and overclocking GPU using MSI Afterburner
-resetting bios settings to default
-full scans with malwarebytes and avast
-reseating video card
-updating/installing/repairing various Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables (to my best ability)
-memtest86 15 passes no errors
-using sfc /scannow
-disabling windows game bar/game dvr
-checking temps while running prime95 and heaven benchmark, cpu stays under 65, gpu stays under 75

Thanks in advance, I want to be able to look at my computer with pride as I did when it first booted up, hopefully this thread is where I can make that happen!
 
Solution
Frag Maniac


Did you order new RAM yet, or are you just using one stick for now? I picked up a Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 2x8 GB kit at Newegg for $170 some time ago. Sign up for their email subscriber promos, they often have very good deals. That kit is made in white too, but on sales you're usually limited to whatever overstock they have. Corsair is one of the most extensively tested and used brands of RAM.

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Frag Maniac

Frag Maniac

Illustrious
Oct 6, 2012
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First, uninstall modded minecraft completely, especially all mods. Malwarebytes and Avast are OK for typical viruses, but not for trojans. However I would try disabling Avast if on W10, because it can conflict with Windows Defender, which anymore is a pain to completely shut down. I used to use Avast, but just use Windows Defender now.

Make sure you run DISM.exe before running sfc /scannow. Next, check for a MB BIOS update.

Keep us informed, many that have such problems with new builds do not let others know whom are considering building their own, what they found as a fix, and it can steer some away from PCs because of it.
 
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drag0nfruit

Aug 7, 2018
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I am on windows 10, I removed all modded editions of minecraft and deleted them from the recycling bin

I disabled Avast permanently, should I uninstall Avast or just disable it?

I ran DISM and then sfc /scannow twice, with a reboot in between, no issues found.

I flashed my bios to the latest version, games are still crashing.

I find it odd how I can run benchmarks and stress tests with no crashing but games always crash. I am considering doing another reinstall of windows, this time formatting both of my drives, not just the ssd.
 
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drag0nfruit

Aug 7, 2018
9
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I uninstalled avast. Staxel always crashes the fastest so I have been using it to check if a potential solution worked but I am going to try playing some other games for a bit just in case Staxel has is own separate issue causing it to crash.

I'll report back as soon as I get a crash which could be any minute now; or if I don't have any crashes I'm still going to give it a few days to call it solved just to be sure.
 
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drag0nfruit

Aug 7, 2018
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I have crashed in both Warframe and Rocket League, I actually had to force close Rocket League using the task manager because it never said not responding and was just frozen.
 
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Frag Maniac

Frag Maniac

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Oct 6, 2012
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By any chance have you ran a diagnostic check on the drive these games are installed on? Is the HDD making any unusual noises, and are the games installed on it? A diagnostic will tell you if there's any bad sectors.

Also check to see if the PSU voltages are at the right level and stable (not fluctuating wildly).

Lastly, while common knowledge to some, many aren't aware your HDD needs to be kept defragged and with 15% free space. That's 15% of actual not advertised capacity.
 
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drag0nfruit

Aug 7, 2018
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I ran a diagnostic check on both drives (if by this you mean going into the properties of the drive and doing error checking)

I haven't heard any strange noises from the HDD. I have most games on the HDD but I moved Rocket League and Staxel over to my SSD and they still crash.

Both drives are less than 50% full and my HDD is 0% fragmented.

How can I check the PSU voltages?
 
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drag0nfruit

Aug 7, 2018
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Ok huge huge huge update, I decided to try running my pc with each ram sticks individually and I was able to last around 40 minutes without a crash even in Staxel which crashes 95% of the time (made up statistic). I then tested it with my other ram stick and Staxel didn't last 5 minutes before crashing. I am not going to call this solved yet because I ran memtest86 overnight and had no errors. But I really have my fingers crossed that it is the ram at fault because I was planning on upgrading my ram anyway (mainly because my hole computer is black/white and my current bright red ram does not match).

Is there a chance that games are able to snag a faulty part of ram that even memtest86 is unable to detect?

 
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Frag Maniac

Frag Maniac

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Oct 6, 2012
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Are you sure your RAM is in dual channel mode? Check your MB manual for how to do that if not. Also enable XMP in the MB BIOS. That is also where you can check PSU voltages.

On HDD diagnostics, I prefer to use the free tools the HDD manufacturers provide.

Quite honestly in all my gaming years I've never had a scenario where RAM pasts memtest, but crashes games and fails the simple one module at a time test, but then I've never really had faulty RAM.

I'll check the MB QVL list to see if your RAM has been tested as compatible with your MB.
 
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drag0nfruit

Aug 7, 2018
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XMP was enables in the bios.
The voltages all seemed normal however the "System/3.3v" was swapping between 3.376 and 3.392.

I did some more testing with the ram and i'm becoming quite confident that one of the sticks was causing the problems. But should I be concerned about the voltages?

 
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drag0nfruit

Aug 7, 2018
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I've been playing games all day with no crashes! I'm glad it ended up being the ram because that is easy to replace.

Thanks for the help, if I hadn't posted here I probably would have just formatted and then given up for a while.

Cheers :D
 
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Frag Maniac

Frag Maniac

Illustrious
Oct 6, 2012
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351
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Did you order new RAM yet, or are you just using one stick for now? I picked up a Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 2x8 GB kit at Newegg for $170 some time ago. Sign up for their email subscriber promos, they often have very good deals. That kit is made in white too, but on sales you're usually limited to whatever overstock they have. Corsair is one of the most extensively tested and used brands of RAM.

 
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Solution
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drag0nfruit

Aug 7, 2018
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I'm just going to use one stick for now. I was planning on upgrading around the beginning of next month because that is when I get my paycheck. The ram you suggested looks really nice and I heard that Ryzen processors benefit from using faster ram so I think those would be perfect for my build!
 
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