#Sudden black screen while playing a game

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

graceful field
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I'm playing apex legends and my pc crashes, no BSOD just black screen and it restarts itself

crude violet
graceful field
# crude violet Check your temperatures under load.

Should i do it in a game or in a benchmark application? In the game in playing right now temps seem fine, but when i opened up userbenchmark my CPU temp was up to 77 degrees celsius and im not sure if this will go any higher

crude violet
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I would say that you should do a good gaming session while having some temperature monitor on at the same time.

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As long as the temperatures keep rising you kinda have to keep going until it reaches a baseline where it doesn't go up anymore.

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You want to monitor both CPU and GPU temperatures during this.

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Also I'm going to need your full system specs to confirm what the thermal design limits are.

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And to also like... Figure out if your system combination is just bad.

graceful field
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like all parts?

crude violet
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All parts yeah

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If you don't feel like doing a gaming session, you don't want to use a benchmark.

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Instead you would want to use a stresstest.

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Stresstest is quicker obviously, gives us faster results.

graceful field
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ryzen 5 5500
stock amd cooler
msi b550 gaming gen3
G skill ram 16gb 2x8 3200mhz (i dont know the exact model)
rx 6650 xt msi MECH
kingston NV2 1tb m.2
barracuda HDD 1tb
coolermaster MWE 650W White V2

graceful field
crude violet
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Furmark to get GPU temps. CPU temps with like Prime95.

graceful field
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I'll try prime95, because my GPU temps are always below 55 degrees

crude violet
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Prime 95 is super brutal though, so it will definitely hit the thermal limit with a stock cooler

crude violet
graceful field
graceful field
crude violet
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The fact that it's under 55 just doesn't sound right.

graceful field
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alright ill try the furmark test too then

crude violet
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Yup.

graceful field
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Do i change anything here?

image.png
crude violet
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I don't want you just cooking the chip immediately.

graceful field
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do i stop it if it gets too high??

crude violet
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If it hits 90°c

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Then you must stop it immediately.

graceful field
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its 90 now

crude violet
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Stop the test.

graceful field
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I CLOSED IT

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its still at 90

crude violet
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You probably didn't stop the test

graceful field
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can i shut down pc??

crude violet
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Do it

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No time to explain how to close it properly

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You need to get it to stop rn

graceful field
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Ok

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Man that was scary

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Ok next time I should know how to stop the test ☠️

crude violet
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Yeah the test isn't halted by just closing the window

graceful field
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Oh

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I’ll let it cool down for a few minutes maybe

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Like not powering it

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Or is that worse

crude violet
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It should be fine to power it on.

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It's not really worse, the load is off so the system has already started to cool down.

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Even the stock cooler is efficient enough to dissipate heat relatively quickly when there's no load.

graceful field
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alright

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you said that stresstest would hit my thermal limit with my stock cooler

crude violet
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I did kinda expect this to happen though

graceful field
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yeah

crude violet
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Yeah it immediately went to TjMax

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Since the test was halted the system is fine.

graceful field
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i mean, it restarted itself pretty quick when playing apex

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i think i was maybe 5 minutes in game

crude violet
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5 minutes at TjMax could cause it to power off.

graceful field
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in my other game my temps were "fine"

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it was around 70 degrees

crude violet
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Try and get some thermal readings in Apex then.

graceful field
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alright

crude violet
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I think that's a more realistic stress test in this scenario.

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Even the lowest load Prime95 already went to TjMax.

graceful field
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alright ill do that know

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ill @ you when i get the results, if thats fine by you?

crude violet
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sure

graceful field
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@crude violet nothing as of yet, cpu temps averaging around 68 degrees, GPU temps at 55 degrees

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gpu temps look a little more expected now

crude violet
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I still have a hard time believing those temps

graceful field
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also, no display after i tried tabbing out of apex legends

crude violet
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I want to furmark this puppy

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I want to see what the actual temperatures would be like under load

graceful field
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alright ill do the furmark test

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well so only issue this time was no display after tabbing out to discord

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but no random reboot or whatever

crude violet
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Hmm... Yeah it seems like we're dealing with a driver related issue.

graceful field
crude violet
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And?

graceful field
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61 degrees max

crude violet
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2 minutes is not nearly enough btw for a proper test

graceful field
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oh

crude violet
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But I don't think it really matters, since this looks like a driver issue not thermal

graceful field
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alright

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I installed the latest AMD driver after the first random reboot

crude violet
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Yeah well that's not nearly enough.

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You would want to run a DDU to completely nuke the old drivers out of your system, a simple reinstall isn't enough.

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Once you've done that, it's basically like doing a driver install on a brand new system.

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Some other steps I usually recommend people take is updating their BIOS, installing the latest chipset drivers and doing a system integrity test.

graceful field
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how do u do a system integrity test

crude violet
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You open the command prompt as admin and type in sfc /scannow

graceful field
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BIOS should be latest, I'm pretty sure and chipset drivers were automatically installed when I built the system, which is around 2 weeks ago

crude violet
graceful field
crude violet
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When you first install the OS, it installs basically what ever the F drivers.

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Same goes for stuff like chipset drivers.

graceful field
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No no, there was this MSI app that came up and it installed all drivers for me

crude violet
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Download and install the latest one.

graceful field
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oh

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Okay ill try that too

crude violet
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Also we can check which BIOS revision you have.

graceful field
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how

crude violet
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If you open up Msinfo

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It will tell you the BIOS revision you have installed onto the motherboard

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For example in my system

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Msinfo states it right below the CPU

graceful field
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do i install all?

image.png
crude violet
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Yes all

crude violet
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Which is also the latest BIOS available for my motherboard on Asus website

image.png
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That's how you check what BIOS you have and if it's the latest

graceful field
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haha okay i dont have the latest bios, i thought my brother updated it, I guess not

crude violet
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Yup

graceful field
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I'll have to update it tomorrow because my brother has the usb and he's asleep

crude violet
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You will do that then

graceful field
crude violet
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Honestly yeah

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I like to play it safe with driver related issues

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if the initial installation was f'd somehow, it wouldn't matter if you updated the driver or did a reinstall

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the problem would only go away after running the DDU and doing a fresh install of the latest drivers

graceful field
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alright

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ill do that tomorrow too

graceful field
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@crude violet alright, so I have to do DDU and bios update right

crude violet
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Yup

graceful field
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should my usb drive be empty when installing the new bios version?

crude violet
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Preferably yes and it should also be formatted in FAT32

graceful field
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alright ill be updating it now

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Ok, that's done

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Time for DDU

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My memory went back to default speeds, do I change it back to 3200mhz

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@crude violet also, I don't know if this helps you know what the exact problem is, but sometimes when I open up google chrome my pc freezes for a bit

crude violet
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Doesn't really help narrowing it down.

graceful field
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@crude violet sorry for ping

crude violet
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Won't forgive

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Also the DDU must be on the main drive, not in OneDrive

graceful field
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Oh

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Alright

desert barn
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remember to use DDU in safe mode

graceful field
desert barn
graceful field
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Okay, just got done installing the new drivers

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I'll let you know if I have any problems still

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@desert barn should I enable XMP again? It got disabled after installing the new bios update

desert barn
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yes

graceful field
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alright

graceful field
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I haven't played any games yet, but do you think it really couldve been my cpu overheating? After the 2nd random restart I put my pc down and reseated the ram, maybe the cooler went "back into place" and sticks better to my cpu and that caused it to not crash the 3rd time i tried apex

crude violet
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I wouldn't start drawing any conclusions here.

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Also if reseating RAM somehow fixed a temperature issue, that would mean your cooler is mounted completely wrong.

graceful field
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it could be mounted wrong

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well ill keep you updated if any issues persist

crude violet
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Like I said, don't draw any conclusions.

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Because the theory of reseating RAM fixing temps is frankly kinda dumb ngl

graceful field
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no but because of gravity that my cooler sits better on my cpu

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nothing to do with the ram i formulated it bad

crude violet
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Is your computer still laying on it's side?

graceful field
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nope

crude violet
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Then it's not the mounting.

graceful field
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alright

graceful field
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Ok no issues as of yet, just apex crashed, the game itself not pc

graceful field
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@crude violet i booted up a game, and screen turned black. Audio was kind of static

crude violet
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Basically we're at a point where I want to double check the CPU temperatures one more time

graceful field
crude violet
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Interesting

graceful field
crude violet
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We've already ruled them out haven't we?

graceful field
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I guess yeah

crude violet
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Hmm... I still kinda want to check the CPU temps one more time.

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But it looks to me like we're either looking at a power related issue or there's an issue with the graphics card.

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Power related or thermal issues are a lot more likely to cause these kinds of symptoms.

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So I want to double check the CPU temps and then we start digging into the PC itself.

graceful field
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Okay

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Do you want me to check the temps again with the same app?

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Or something else?

crude violet
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Since Prime95 would just peg it at TjMax, use Cinebench instead.

graceful field
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alright im installing it

graceful field
crude violet
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Run the multicore test, monitor your thermals at the same time.

graceful field
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but that was a short period of time

crude violet
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So under load for an extended period of time it will go to TjMax

graceful field
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I guess so

crude violet
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How do you want to approach this?

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Do you want to declare it a thermal issue and just get a new cooler or do you want to also explore the potential of a power failure?

graceful field
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I guess testing everything would be best

crude violet
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Well then, you would next have to gut the system.

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I would try reseating the graphics card and the power connectors leading to it.

graceful field
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How should I test it now that’s it’s reseated? Just a game?

crude violet
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Just a game yeah

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If you have a consistent way of making it crash, try that.

graceful field
crude violet
graceful field
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Was a black screen and then reboot

crude violet
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At this point it's most likely the CPU overheat protection kicking in, or the PSU is failing to feed the graphics card.

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Are there any PC hardware stores locally you could visit?

graceful field
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Nope

crude violet
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Basically what I would like you to do is buy a DeepCool AG400 cpu cooler or similar.

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As well as a Seasonic B12 PSU.

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Eliminate both potential issues at once, you can try with just the cooler first. If that works, hurray and you can return the PSU back to the store.

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However if it doesn't work, install the PSU as well and try again.

graceful field
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If i order it today it'll come in tomorrow

crude violet
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If that works for you

graceful field
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Would the CPU overheat from just booting up a game tho?

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I trust what you say

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But I can't comprehend it

crude violet
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Honestly

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Not likely, no

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There's one thing I have to ask though

graceful field
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yes

crude violet
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This problem has occured with Apex legends specifically, correct?

graceful field
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Nope

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Just happened with dead by daylight aswell

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twice

crude violet
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Honestly. I don't know how heavy it is on the CPU to load this games, it's not likely that it's enough to trip the overheat protection on your CPU but it is possible non the less.

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I would play it safe and get the AG400 since it's only like 30 bucks to make sure you won't have thermal issues period.

graceful field
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so the ag400 and the b12 seasonic psu right

crude violet
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That's correct

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And like of course make sure it's possible to return them in case I was completely wrong with my diagnosis.

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Or like at least the PSU. The cooler you might as well have even if it doesn't solve the issue.

graceful field
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750W is more than enough right

crude violet
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Pff overkill as hell for your setup

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You could honestly just buy a 550W unit and it would be more than enough.

graceful field
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okay

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What do you think the problem would be if it still happens even with the new parts?

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Problem with gpu?

crude violet
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We'll cross that bridge when we get there. I don't want to draw conclusions at this point.

graceful field
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alright

graceful field
crude violet
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Unless you have surge protection, it's definitely possible.

graceful field
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I don’t think I have it

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At my previous home we had frequent outages

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Like a few times a week sometimes

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And I used this psu in my previous built

crude violet
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You would always want to use a surge protector with your computer.

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They're not that expensive and can really save your ass.

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I've had two surge protectors that died protecting my computer.

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Surge protector costs next to nothing when compared to how much my computer costs.

graceful field
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Would you say that most likely would’ve messed up my psu

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Only thing power wise in this house was this random lack of power

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But that was once

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And only at my power outlet

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Maybe that had something to do with it

crude violet
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Honestly I can't say for sure, hence I'm going to say what I've said before

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I don't want to draw any conclusions.

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Let's see if replacing the PSU even fixes the issue first, then you should consider buying a surge protector.

graceful field
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Okay

graceful field
crude violet
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PSU tierlist gives it like a B ranking.

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But I always recommend Seasonic B12s since my personal experience with them have been very good.

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Especially if you're on a budget, it's very hard to beat Seasonic B12

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Also I have to ask you to chill with the pings, especially on low priority questions.

graceful field
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my bad

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so 550 should be enough

crude violet
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550W is enough yeah

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You can go higher if you're planning to upgrade your system in the near future

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but the current setup can work out of a 550W unit

graceful field
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Yeah I'm probably not upgrading my system for a while

crude violet
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550W it is then

graceful field
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Alright, it should come in tomorrow

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So, I should install the cooler first right and see if there's still any problems?

crude violet
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I think that's the way it should be done.

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Would be pretty painful to go through the PSU replacement if it turns out you don't actually need it.

graceful field
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👍 I'll keep you updated, thank you for your time

graceful field
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Just curious about the thing you said, CPU overheating protection, does it shut down the system once it hits 90c, or when theres just a large temp spike?

crude violet
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Say it's in a worst case scenario type of situation, the cooling fan is already spinning at max rpm. It has been downclocking like crazy but it just can't get to a controlled temperature...

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It just cuts the power as a last restort to try and save the CPU.

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However it is not a reliable method of making sure your CPU doesn't get damaged, the moment you hit TjMax is when you risk damage.

graceful field
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What could possible issues be when your CPU reaches TjMax?

crude violet
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Either the cooler is clogged in dust, the thermal paste is bad, the mounting is bad, the cooler itself is bad, the fan is broken...

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It typically is the cooling that's failing in that situation.

graceful field
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interesting

graceful field
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Also, using my pc without stressing it too much should be fine right? I need it for school assignments

crude violet
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Yeah

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either way the fix is arriving tomorrow

graceful field
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hopefully 🙏 but i have faith in your knowledge

graceful field
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Scrolling through Netflix Made my screen flicker and then it rebooted itself

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Damn

crude violet
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The parts will arrive soon, right?

graceful field
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yes, in 5-6 hours

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They will arrive once I'm back home so luckily I don't need my pc right now

crude violet
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Yeah, if the issue is getting more frequent it does honestly sound like we might be dealing with a PSU issue.

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Light desktop loads shouldn't be enough to crash a system, even if it's the stock cooler with crusty thermal paste.

graceful field
graceful field
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Also how should I remove thermal paste, I don’t have isopropyl alcohol

crude violet
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Or even papertowel as long as you double check you didn't leave lint behind.

graceful field
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Okay thanks

graceful field
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Is there a chance some other hardware got damaged because of the psu, or is it a small chance

crude violet
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That's why you never want to cheap out on the unit.

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Because it can and will destroy other components in the system.

graceful field
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Okay

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Warranty should cover it for my other parts

crude violet
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It honestly really depends.

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Each component has a separate warranty, if your system is a prebuilt you voided the warranty pretty much the moment you opened up the system.

graceful field
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My brother build it

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We bought all parts individually, except psu and ram

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Those came from my old built

crude violet
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Well in that case, each component has a separate warranty.

graceful field
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It should cover it, I’ll check later

crude violet
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Well it doesn't matter anyway.

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What matters most is diagnosing and repairing the system from here.

graceful field
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Yes

crude violet
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Just the fact that it crashed during just browsing, I would skip straight to replacing both the PSU and the CPU cooler.

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Once you've done that, the system should function fine.

graceful field
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Alright

graceful field
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@crude violet both cooler and psu are installed, still crashed

crude violet
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Well shit

graceful field
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yeah

crude violet
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And to confirm

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It's always just a black screen crash?

graceful field
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Yes

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No error nothing

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I looked at event viewer and no errors aswell

crude violet
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Well that's great, so we've got basically nothing to work on

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The only thing I could think of now is that it's probably the graphics card

graceful field
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I can ask my brother to put his graphics card in my computer, we might be able to rule that out

crude violet
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sounds good to me

graceful field
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it's an nvidia card, that shouldnt matter too much right?

crude violet
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You'll have to run DDU and install Nvidia drivers on your system.

graceful field
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okay

crude violet
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Other than that it will work obviously.

graceful field
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Put in a gtx 960, we had it lying around, booted up into windows fine, no crash. Booted up a game, no crash.

crude violet
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Keep using it for a little while longer, see if the system suddenly crashes.

crude violet
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At first it seemed okay, but it started crashing again.

graceful field
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Right

crude violet
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Use the system as it is for now. Let's say if it doesn't crash over the weekend, then put the AMD card back in and see if it starts crashing again.

graceful field
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Okay, will do

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Crazy if it actually is the GPU, worked fine for like 2 weeks and now this haha

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Well, we'll see what happens

crude violet
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The fact that the DDU helped a bit was a pretty strong indication of course.

graceful field
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Uhm, we're trying to boot into safe mode, there's no signal

crude violet
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With the GTX960?

graceful field
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yes

crude violet
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What in the...

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Hold on a second here

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This is the motherboard in your system right?

graceful field
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yes

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b550 gaming gen3

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from msi

crude violet
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The graphics card is installed in the silver slot?

graceful field
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top one, yes

crude violet
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Hmm...

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If you move the graphics card down to the second slot

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Does it still behave weirdly?

graceful field
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Haven't tried that

crude violet
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Let's kill two flies with one strike

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Take the AMD card, put it in the second slot and try using your system again as usual.

graceful field
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Okay will do

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No crash as of yet, I booted up a game, I'll let it sit for a while

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Like 10-15 minutes

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And see if there's any issues

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Nothing happened. I can try launching apex aswell, but last time I tried these things there was no crash either until the day after.

crude violet
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Yeah it's super weird because it's inconsistent like that.

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That's what made me suspect either a PSU failure or overheat

graceful field
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What if I try the AMD gpu in the second slot for the weekend, and see if there's any crashes or abnormalities?

crude violet
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You can try that

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Now we're at a point where we're kinda trying everything since we have nothing to work with

graceful field
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I can try to put it in the first slot one more time

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and see if it crashes again

crude violet
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I don't think that will make a difference

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Reseating the graphics card is the first thing we tried

graceful field
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thats true

crude violet
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Do you have any extra thermal paste on hand?

graceful field
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I do not

crude violet
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Because I'm thinking you might have to also try just reseating the CPU.

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But since you don't have thermal paste, let's not do that then.

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You could however reseat the RAM.

graceful field
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My brother said he reseated CPU when installing the cooler

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And we've reseated ram too

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and put in other sticks

crude violet
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Your bro did a gj doing all of that just in case

graceful field
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Yeah, he studied IT and all that in school I think

crude violet
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I think it's safe for us to focus on the graphics card for now.

graceful field
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and he built both my systems

crude violet
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So we're going to second slot with the AMD card

graceful field
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It's in, we installed the drivers again

crude violet
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Let's see how it goes

graceful field
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Yep

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I'll keep it in for the weekend

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and do the things i usually do

crude violet
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If it just immediately starts crashing, switch back to GTX960 and see if the problem disappears completely

graceful field
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Alright

crude violet
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And if it does, then you should claim the warranty on that graphics card.

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Which I have to say... Haven't seen many RX cards fail like this.

graceful field
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I have to go now

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I'll keep you updated

crude violet
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right'

crude violet
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Oh yeah and obviously if you don't have any use for that new PSU, you might as well return it since it made no difference whatsoever.

graceful field
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Might keep it, just in case. My old PSU went through a lot of torture with the power outages haha

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Better safe than sorry

crude violet
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Honestly that's a fair point, the B12 is significantly more reliable too

graceful field
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Alright, I'll be testing the pc now

graceful field
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No issues today. Also no flickering when I go fullscreen in a twitch stream or show on netflix (I assume the flickering would have to do with the gpu or whatever)

graceful field
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My brother changed my gpu back to first pcie slot, and where the system would reboot when i opened AMD software, nothing happens anymore.

crude violet
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I would've kept testing it a bit longer tbh.

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Keep using the system as usual now and we'll see what happens.

graceful field
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also 50c gpu temp and 45c cpu temp seems good no or is it still unbelievable

crude violet
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I dont really have much to say at this point

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If switching between two PCI-E lanes back to back somehow fixed the issue I'm just annoyed and confused

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Either there was some dirt on the contacts that got rubbed off when going back and forth or there was something in the PCI-E slot...

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If it's fixed now then that's great, I'm just annoyed I couldn't figure out what caused the issue in the first place.

graceful field
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It's fine man, you did your best and I appreciate that! Thank you for your time! If any issues occur again I'll send it in this thread, for now it seems to be working fine

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You're human after all, you can't know everything haha

graceful field
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@crude violet display turned black 2 times today, first time I fixed it by pressing CTRL + shift + windows + b, 2nd time that didn't work had to reboot pc with power button

graceful field
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Random reboots started happening again

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@crude violet sorry for ping i just dont know what to do

crude violet
# graceful field Random reboots started happening again

You're going to take a step back in diagnosis, last time it stopped rebooting after switching to the secondary PCI-E slot. So you should put it back there and keep using the system as usual and see if it starts rebooting with that slot in use.

graceful field
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alright

graceful field
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I feel like I have really bad performance in game for my system specs

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I know the 2nd lane is slower, but even in the first slot my performance was bad

graceful field
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@crude violet I could try the same thing that made it crash last time? That might be faster to rule out things

crude violet
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Definitely if there's a consistent way to crash it, I was under the impression that it's random

graceful field
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alright ill do that now

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yeah i did the same and no crash

crude violet
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And the way you did it has crashed the system previously every time?

graceful field
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i installed new chipset drivers and then my pc crashed, this was 2 days ago, when i went back to old drivers it was stable ish, and now when the card is in the bottom slot i can play games

crude violet
graceful field
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can a broken motherboard cause bad performance in game?

crude violet
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If the PCI-E lane is f'd up then yeah

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It could also be a CPU related issue but it's a bit less likely than a mobo failure.

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I don't think it's an issue with the graphics card either, the problems would've persisted in the secondary slot.

graceful field
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bad performance is in 2nd slot too but that shouldnt matter too much right

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well ill just rma the motherboard

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and see if that fixes things

crude violet
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It's the second slot so... Worse bandwith, worse performance.

graceful field
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alright

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well ill rma it and ill keep you updated

crude violet
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You can confirm the graphics card functionality for sure in another system, you could also try a different CPU.

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But other than that I would say it's most likely the motherboard.

graceful field
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alright thank you

graceful field
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@crude violet they tested my motherboard and concluded it’s not broken, I’ll rma my gpu then

crude violet
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Weird but alright

graceful field
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Yeah idk I got a mail saying they tested the motherboard and it was in perfect shape

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I’ll just rma the gpu and hopefully that’s the problem

crude violet
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Well the thing is that them "testing" the motherboard is usually just hooking it up and turning it on

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Graphics Card might just be dealt with in a similar fashion

graceful field
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ah

graceful field
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I guess the GPU was broken

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they're sending a new one

graceful field