GPU Runs Heaven But Crashes In Games

Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 10:43
Last edited 07/02/2019 - 13:55

There are definitely better places to post this but I'm gonna throw it out here anyway…

I'll tell the short story then add some TL;DR afterwards.

Built a PC for a friend - everything new except for the GPU which is a used 1060 I got off eBay. He takes it home and starts experiencing frame skipping and game crashes while playing WoW and Skyrim. He tries to fix it, makes it worse, gives it back to me. I fix what he's broken, set up the PC again and run Heaven for roughly 6 hours at Ultra settings without any hiccups. Give the PC back to him, he takes it home, then says that he's experiencing the same issues again.

This doesn't make sense to me - how could Heaven run fine but he's experiencing what seems to be performance issues when running some low end games?

Now for the potentially relevant TL;DR story of his own troubleshooting attempts. So when he tried to fix it he's opened up the PC, thought the RAM was in the wrong slots, taken off the CPU cooler to get to the RAM, put the RAM in the 'right slots' (the wrong slots), then just slapped the cooler back on without cleaning/reapplying thermal paste. He didn't tell me any of this and I only found out after running a stress test for about half hour and hearing the CPU cooler fall off. The motherboard backplate had fallen off when he'd tried to fix it so he hadn't actually screwed the CPU cooler into anything. His GPU doesnt have a backplate so the CPU cooler fell directly onto the GPUs PCB. I've since taken out the motherboard, retrieved the backplate, put the RAM back in the right slots, cleaned the CPU/Cooler with iso and reinstalled with new thermal paste.

Specs:
Asus nVidia GeForce GTX 1060 Dual OC 6GB GDDR5
AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Gigabyte B450M DS3H mATX
Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB (2x8GB) 2666MHz DDR4
Corsair CXM Series Modular CX550M

Computing Computer Component Video Card

Comments

  • HighAndDry on 07/02/2019 - 10:50
    +9

    Holy crap. He's lucky the only consequence was that the computer crashed in some games and he didn't basically short out and fry the whole system.

    I'm sorry but I think you have an idiot for a friend. I hope you've also now padlocked the case and slapped a warning sticker on it saying "Don't f***ing open this again".

    • ode1online on 07/02/2019 - 11:28
      +2

      Id block his number LOL

      • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 11:54
        +1

        Very tempting. I’ve probably put a full day of work into his PC. I’m not too worried because I figure I’ll be able to call in a favour at some point down the line but I have seriously thought about laying down an hourly rate for service.

  • [Deactivated] on 07/02/2019 - 10:54

    Learning from another thread recently, does your friend have the PC plugged into a power board that might be overloaded?

    Otherwise, assume your friend has found a website that's doing some bitcoin mining using his PC. That fits, and would cause the issue.

    • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 10:57

      Doesn’t make sense because it runs Heaven benchmark fine.

      • [Deactivated] on 07/02/2019 - 11:01
        +1

        Did the PC run heaven at the power point?

        Otherwise, get him to use HFinfo64, record what's happening with temps, load, memory and voltages.

        • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 11:19

          It was running off a dinky 6 outlet power board that was full up.

          Thanks for HWinfo, did not know about that. I also plan to get it back over my place and throw my GPU in it to try and narrow it down to the second hand GPU.

      • iforgotmysocks on 07/02/2019 - 16:32

        I'd expect power consumption to be higher in a game - it's a graphics performance benchmark, the CPU isn't used much.

        • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 16:43

          You make a good point. Do you know of any easy way to troubleshoot this without swapping the working PSU from my own PC?

  • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 10:56
    +1

    Yeah pretty I said something like “If anything breaks again - CALL ME FIRST!”

  • ode1online on 07/02/2019 - 11:28
    +1

    Every time you speak to him you may want to mention you don't know what damage he has done lol

    There are some FAKE 1060's floating around from china, basically the firmware has been altered on other Nvidia cards , id check the cards serial number etc and see if its a possible fake aswell.

    • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 11:42

      Haha good idea.

      Interesting to hear about fakes, although wouldn’t this have become evident while running heaven?

  • mrmc on 07/02/2019 - 12:05

    Prob not, but is his room temp really hot while you've got aircon and the card is overheating easily and throttling

  • [Deactivated] on 07/02/2019 - 12:12
    +1

    Your friend sounds special.

    1060s off eBay are likely to be from ex mining rigs. Take that information for what it's worth.

    The stutter your friend is complaining off may be game specific. I am not in the loop anymore but games optimised for Radeon may not work well on Nvidia, vice versa. I had a poverty rig with a Radeon card and it wouldn't run Nvidia games (mirrors edge was the worst). Then I had a insane Nvidia rig that wouldn't run Hitman (until they release GPU firmware).

    Either that your friend is raging and hitting to many keys, or Dorito dust went in PC.

    I'd recommend him some board games but they'll probably crash too.

  • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 13:11

    But they said in the adit was definitely not used for mining??? /sarcasm

    Again though, if it was a burnt out mining card, wouldn’t these issues present themselves when running the Heaven benchmark?

    Also he’s having the issues running WoW so I doubt it’s an optimisation issue.

    • sghetti on 07/02/2019 - 13:27

      If it was burnt out I'd say you'd definitely experience issues in any game/app that stresses that card out.

      Perhaps check that he's not blocking vents/fans when he's plugging it in at home?

      • [Deactivated] on 07/02/2019 - 14:40
        +1

        Maybe he is cooling it down with a hairdryer. 😂

    • [Deactivated] on 07/02/2019 - 14:39
      +1

      wouldn’t these issues present themselves when running the Heaven benchmark

      That's why I didn't bring up the possibility of a burnt out card. A 6 hour stress test is a reasonable level of stress to eliminate that possibility.

      Maybe you should watch your friend play. It probably won't crash when you're there.

  • myusername on 07/02/2019 - 13:28

    queue 'that's what friends are for' song

  • N1NJ4W4RR10R on 07/02/2019 - 13:37

    If you're running it in seperate systems, make sure it's installed properly in his then check if it's actually delivering power.

    If they're done on the same system…I really have no idea.

    • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 13:49

      I’m not sure if I understand what you’re asking but at this point in the story this has all happened on the one system. I will probably swap my GPU in or vice versa as a process of elimination.

  • Bargain4Days on 07/02/2019 - 13:37

    Hve you considered that wow maybe trying to bypass admin and run on the igpu, also posting specs would be relevant and informative

    • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 13:55

      I’ve not. Maybe I’m getting out of my depth here but if it was running it off the iGPU wouldn’t it output via the Mobos HDMI port? Also it’s not just WoW, Skyrim gives him sound with a blank display. Not sure if he’s tried any other games.

      Updated main post with specs.

      • Bargain4Days on 07/02/2019 - 13:57

        Maybe it could be the cpu, try to isolate the problem, test the gpu in another rig, if problem does not persist, continue to next part until you isolated the problem

  • trustnoone on 07/02/2019 - 14:01

    Have you seen the issues in the game? I wonder whether there could be a power issue in his line affecting the PSU and power to the graphics card, or if he's overloading something or similar.

    Also is graphics card driver updated fully, is geforce experience used, and are settings the default ones, or the ones reccomended from geforce expereince (I wonder if its worth try turning off some nvidia stuff too like shadowplay).

    • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 14:08

      Mm he reckons he’s run Heaven himself at his house also with no issue. I’m also interested to see the effects first hand, I already told him to YouTube screen tearing and he says that’s not it.

      GPU updated fully, set him up with GeForce experience and updated all drivers - this would have been about a month ago when I set it up initially and he’s had the issues from the get go (I’ve just taken my sweet time to fix it)

      • scrimshaw on 07/02/2019 - 15:15

        This might sound silly but have you tried running the system with a different set of RAM? Some Ryzen boards (even second Generation Ryzen) just don't work well with all types of RAM and they require tweaking to the timings for it to work nicely. He may also have bought RAM that was defective and this can be worked out with 1 to 2 hour test with Memtest86

        If you don't have spare RAM I'd try the Ryzen DRAM calculator https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ryzen-dram-calculator/ to try work out the optimal settings.

        • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 15:18

          Don't have spare RAM. I did the build and I did check the RAM was compatible on the Gigabyte support page before I ordered. Will double check with your calculator though - thanks!

          • scrimshaw on 07/02/2019 - 15:20

            @Cheaplikethebird: You will need a freeware application called Thaiphoon Burner to work out what kind of RAM is being used
            http://www.softnology.biz/files.html so that you can feed the program the details neccessary to calculate timings.

            • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 15:22

              @scrimshaw: I think you might have misunderstood my comment. I know what kind of RAM it is, it's this - https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Kingston-HyperX-Fury-16GB-2x8GB-…

              • scrimshaw on 07/02/2019 - 16:15
                +1

                @Cheaplikethebird: You might wonder why you need an app to tell you something you might already know from looking at Kingston's website but the specifications don't tell you which type of memory it uses

                However it is burned into the XMP profile of the memory, that is why you need a program to read the XMP profile and it will tell you if the memory modules came from Hynix, Samsung or Micron etc and what type of Die it uses (e.g B-Die, E-Die and so on) because different memory dies have different characteristics. Of course you can just guess it and it might work anyway.

                • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 16:44

                  @scrimshaw: Thanks for the informative response. Will definitely check this out.

                • Cheaplikethebird on 08/02/2019 - 15:44

                  @scrimshaw: Posted an update a few comments below. He's taking it into a PC store now. I reckon you might be right about it being a memory issue.

  • Typical16-bitEnjoyer on 07/02/2019 - 15:12

    What hard drive is it running from? You didn't mention this so I'm guessing it's something kept from an old system?

    I've seen a similar problem on a friend's PC. Massive stuttering on games. No issues with benchmarks. HDD smart logs indicated the hard drive was on it's way out. Benchmarks were running fine because they were loading entirely into RAM. Replaced with a new SSD and all was resolved.

    Otherwise my bet is a faulty/fake GPU.

    • Cheaplikethebird on 07/02/2019 - 15:14
      +1

      Nah it is new, just forgot to add it in. It's a 500GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO

  • gork on 08/02/2019 - 13:46

    So you haven't seen these issues for yourself?

    Considering what he did to try and fix the problemthe first time, I wouldn't trust his complaints until you sit down with him and see it in person.

    • Cheaplikethebird on 08/02/2019 - 15:24
      +1

      I work service desk so I know this first hand. The amount of times an issue is completely different to the way the user has explained it is countless.

      He sent me a screenshot of an error from WoW though and it was this - https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/solved-world-of-warcraf…

      Had him run the windows repair/scan tool from command prompt, found no issues. Had him run Memtest86 and that found no issues either.

      I think he's getting tired of not having a working PC as I've had his for the past fortnight at least while I procrastinate working on it. He suggested that he would take it into a proper PC repair store. I told him that while I'm confident it's an issue I can fix, that it will probably take a bit of time and troubleshooting and that if he wants it quickly that he should take it into the PC store. So he's doing that now, you bet I'm going to try and get the PC repair stores number because I definitely want to learn how this story turns out.

  • abctoz on 15/02/2019 - 23:50

    hmm a bit late but this might help…

    there are different power states that gpu's run at, it might be stable at top performance but at lower performance it is not quite stable, so the easiest way to test this is to download a program like MSI afterburner, DOWNCLOCK both the core and memory by say 100mhz and see if it is stable

    i have a similar problem with an old mining card, which had this problem when i bought it, been using it for 4 years now but just downclocked a bit

    • Cheaplikethebird on 16/02/2019 - 09:58
      +2

      Thanks for the info but nope, the story so far is that he’s taken it into a computer repair store and apparently they opened up the card and the thermal paste was completed dried up (which they said was consistent with cards used for mining) so they reapplied thermal paste but said that that didn’t fix it and suggested he purchase a new GPU. Fast forward to Thursday and he’s bought a new 2060 from MSY and installed it in his PC. Guess what - same issue. I have a feeling if might be a memory as suggested in the comments above. I’m a little sus on the repair store - I think they were told it was a 2nd hand GPU and immediately went to that as the issue. Anyway he took it back into them yesterday and now he’s asked me for the invoice for the RAM because they’re going to return it for him so I assume they’ve now narrowed that down as the issue. Will update this thread with the resolution once all is said and done and he’s gaming on a crash-free PC.

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