- AMD Ryzen 5 1400 Desktop, Windows 10 64bit
- AMD Radeon RX 580
- Radeon Software AdrenalinEdition 18.2.1 (Relive not installed)
- Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SATA III SSD (boot drive, games)
- Samsung 390 series (C24F390) 24” curved monitor, Freesync
- MSI B350M, Bios Version 1.7 (9/19/2017)
- EVGA 450 Watt Power Supply
- 8gb DDR4 SDRAM 2133 mhz
I bought this computer to play Total War: Warhammer 1 & 2 through Steam. These games have been crashing sporadically from the get-go. Typical runtimes of 5 min up to an hour, sometimes more. Warhammer 2 always went worse. It would more frequently show strange artifacts, poor rendering, crash faster, etc.
Graphics were initially set on ultra, then high, all the way down to low. Tried turning on/off unlimited memory, turning anti alias off, etc. Low settings seemed to run longer but would still crash. Crashes were the same - black screen, game still running in the background. Could interact with game (click buttons, etc) but no video. I would Alt-tab out, close & restart. Sometimes it would recover from the black screen (I will try to screen capture a pic and post below). Screen would go black, game would run, this would show up, then total recovery after 5-10 seconds. No artifacts upon recovery but it would eventually get artifacts back after a few minutes, then eventually go black, then recover…. Whenever this happened (black, recover, eventual total crash) it would say Radeon had quit working.
Upgraded Windows 10 to 1709, used DDU to do a clean install of 18.3 Crimson. Radeon settings to set Ram to 1750 mhz, lowered power supply, raised power supply, lowered CPU frequency by up to 2.5%, raised frequency by up to 2.5%, increased fan, all no effect. Installed Afterburner, tried raising & lowering fan speed, power supply. Temp never goes above 70c. Went back to 18.2 Crimson, clean install. None of these solved the issue.
Here is where it gets weird. I bought a SSD to replace my HDD. I took it to a friends house to help me install. Installed, started the game, ran great all night on Ultra at his house. No artifacts, no crashes, beautiful. Took it home and it started crashing again. Buddy said it might be dirty electricity. Got a tripp lite 1200w line conditioner. No effect, still crashes. At his house we had used his mouse, his keyboard, his power supply cord, his HDMI cord, had a wired ethernet connect and ran the PC with both side panels off. Back at home I tried removing panels, swapping my mouse, keyboard, HDMI cable and power cord. No help. The only thing I havent tried is a wired internet connection.
Any ideas? He ran his power through an online battery backup (the kind that cleans power and isn’t just for power outages). Maybe my line conditioner isnt cutting it. My outlets are showing 124.5v AC which he says should be 120 or lower. I bought this PC mostly just to play this one game and I KNOW it can handle it if we get this bug worked out. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Cheers. -AB
