PC Drivers & Software

[DoctorLya]

I'm having trouble with my graphics card right now where it crashed too often. It started once on Saturday and then 3 times on Sunday. It does a blackscreen and windows either restarts on its own or its just frozen and I have to force a restart.

Now it's very repetitive and happens most of the time. It sometimes stays good for 3 hours and sometimes just 5 minutes.

I need to go in the PC to set the GPU back into place everytime it crashes which is not ideal and not guaranteed everytime to make the graphics card work.

Windows does not report the crashes and just says critical to kernel power and had to shut down. There is also another warning talking about amdmasterv2 not able to boot up.

Another report says there is a problem with tpm.

For my rig I have a

Asrock b550m pro4 fully updated. 

8gb x 4 Corsair vengeance 3200

Amd 5600x

My PSU is an Asus that had 650w in power BUT it's over of the oldest part of my system that date back from 2014.

And this is the point where I am really confused. 

One part of me says it's the graphics card messing up and it is true because I have to set it in all the time after a crash now. 

But another part of me tells me that it could be the PSU...

I don't know what to do and I need help. 

Tomorrow I will do a clean up of the GPU to see if it fixes something.

[432hz]

Did this issue start after an update of some kind (Windows, GPU drivers, chipset drivers, BIOS, something else)?

When you say, "I need to go into the PC to set the GPU back into place every time it crashes", do you mean physically open the PC, remove the GPU, and reseat the GPU into the PCIe slot?

Do you have 2 separate (not daisy chained) PSU cables connected to the GPU?

Have you run a MemTest86 to verify your RAM isn't faulty?

[DoctorLya]

There was no update, I made a complete driver cleanup and reinstalled including the bios, all is up to date.

Yes I have to open the case and either wiggle the GPU or take it out to put it in again. The PSU cable only needs one on this card so it should be an issue and I already replugged it twice. This one didn't ask for any trouble. 

When I think about it, the GPU had been weird this last month. Multiple times, on any game, it had given me black screens and I  needed to just wait for 3 seconds and it wouldn't crash.

I will run memtest in about 9 hours but I don't it's a RAM issue but we never know.

[DoctorLya]

One last thing, I cannot see  anything on the screen obviously but I can still connect to my computer with parsec and do stuff on it via another computer. So it functions without the GPU.

[432hz · Accepted solution]

So overall, I'd approach it like this:

1. Rule out software (drivers updates, etc)
2. Rule out bad RAM (MemTest86)
3. Rule out PSU
4. Rule out other hardware (GPU, mobo, etc)

• Are you able to access and see the BIOS consistently? If so, you should be able to run MemTest86, which is a bootable USB. The results of this test should tell you if your RAM is going bad and which stick(s).
• What version of AMD GPU drivers are you on? I've seen many reports of issues with 24.x.x. Personally, I had to install 23.12.1 for stability with my RX 6800.
• Have you disabled Windows Update from automatically updating your drivers?
• The PSU certainly could've gone bad, especially considering its' age. Perhaps there was a surge and it did it's job of protecting your PC components or it just passed its MTBF. Contact the company if it's still under warranty.

[DoctorLya]

I ruled out the drivers, I ruled out the ram.

There was an update yesterday for the GPU so I did it but I also did a cleanup of the computer physically ( dust). 

I also put my computer laying down on the floor instead of standing up. 

I played for 3 hours on intense GPU games last night and no crashed. 

I'll need to test further before knowing that is good. 

Could it have been the dust, the driver or the angle, I don't know. I'll keep you updated if it crashed again and then we can rule out of it's the PSU or not.

[DoctorLya]

The issues continued unless they decided to go back to the GTX 1070 and install it to see if there were any difference and the crashes stop so it's definitely an issue with the GPU. 

[DoctorLya]

The graphics card was faulty had to buy a new one. 

Thank you for setting a guideline on how I should check the different components of computer.

[432hz]

You're welcome. Sorry to hear about the bad GPU. Glad you're back up and running. Enjoy.