Custom PC Building

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Question about Gaming PC upgrading and crash diagnosis. (self.pcbuilding)

submitted 3 weeks ago by darthelmet to c/[email protected]

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I have 2 questions that may or may not be related:

My gaming PC periodically has full system crashes while I'm playing some games. I've tried looking at crash reports but I couldn't really figure out what was different from looking at them. I've seen it suggested that it could be overheating, although it's kind of hard to tell since the temp range when I check isn't that high, but I do feel a lot of heat coming off the machine when I stick my hand over the vent and I hear the fans working hard when I'm playing some games.
I was thinking that it might be worth it to try to upgrade some parts to maybe alleviate one possible source of issues. So what I'm wondering is what the best approach would be. For example would getting a better graphics card make it work less hard and produce less heat? Or does a more powerful card just produce more heat? How much can I reasonable upgrade cooling systems given a fixed amount of space in the case? It's been a while since I've manually swapped out parts. Last 2 PC I opted for just buying pre-made although in the past I built one. The one I have now is an Alienware Aurora R11 from a few years ago and it's got an RTX 2070 Super for a graphics card. Does it make sense to try to upgrade it? If so, is it worth going for the newest series or would it be fine/better for my purposes to go to the 30 series?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Are you sure it's heat? Heat could be the culprit, but unless you're regularly running hot (think 90C+), it's probably not heat. Even 75°C would be normal for a graphics card, and "feeling a lot of heat" and hearing your fans when playing something graphically intensive would be expected at those temps.

Three common causes of crashing that aren't heat-related:

Bad/corrupted driver
RAM going bad
PSU going bad

Try a fresh driver install. How old is your RAM or PSU? Try playing games with your RAM set at JDEC speeds (turn off XMP). Have you checked for BIOS updates?

If you're thinking it's heat: when was the last time you changed the thermal paste on your GPU?

For your second question, I'm not actually sure, but I would think that a more powerful card should produce less heat overall for the same workload (in general), since the equivalent processing power of older hardware has ideally been crammed into a smaller footprint.

[–] darthelmet 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks for the response. For now I tried updating my BIOS and I'll work my way down the more difficult troubleshooting steps as I have time.

As for age of RAM/PSU, they all came with the PC which I got sometime in 2020. Do they tend to go bad over time if nothing else damages them? Short of swapping them out, how can I tell if they're the cause of the issues?

Also with the thermal paste, is that something I'm meant to regularly change or just if I suspect there is an overheating issue?