Question HEEEELP FREEZING PC :CCCC

[sumama]

My PC kept freezing when playing R6 like since 3 months ago, just straight up freeze no warning no nothing, cant input anything, no alt f4 no ctrl alt del, only rebooting worked and it went back to normal, and when I looked it up it said it was some overheating performance issue so I stopped playing overall, still puzzled bc my temperature was steady at 70 Celsius and peaked at 90 which didnt seem bad but still let it slide.

Today I started playing LoL as Ive been doing and everything was ok, but as soon as I opened Mortal Sin from Steam it freezed like 20 minutes in, I thought alr weird but ig this game is too demanding too so ill just play something else, rebooted and opened STRAFTAT which I KNOW is not a demanding game but boom 10 minutes in again freezes the same way. I worried and thought well maybe its fps games bc LoL isnt acting up, so I rebooted and opened Hollow Knight which like it wouldnt have any reason to crash and in even less time like 5 minutes CRASHED AGAIN. I now rebooted and have been trying to fix for the last half hour too scared to open anything really other than explorer. Ran malware scan and quarantined some files for prevention nothing serious and thats been about it. My temperature rn is at 50 Celsius just the browser open idrk what to do please help me :c, I dont want to lose my PC im broke I cant afford anything else and I need it for Uni and just being online like always. Maybe its steam? HEAVILY MODDED ONLINE Minecraft worked fine last week i wouldnt think its a hardware issue.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Did you build this PC yourself? There are many reasons why the crashes -- freezes -- could happen.

For instance, in my case, I had a vaping-pen accident on a dry windy day, shuffling on a wool carpet when I went to take the pen out of a PC's USB port. And Zap! the entire USB controller was gone. I had to replace the motherboard.

Over about 8 or 9 months, crashes occurring every few weeks finally were discovered to result from a loose six-pin wire connection at my my modular power-supply (PSU).

But . . as I said . . . . there are many other reasons this could occur.

 

[Quintessa]

my temperature was steady at 70 Celsius and peaked at 90 which didnt seem bad but still let it slide

90 is borderline throttling for many GPUs and CPUs. Not "instant death" but enough to trigger instability depending on cooling and power delivery. Still, the freeze behavior points more at power or memory than thermals alone.

Maybe its steam?

Nope. Steam doesn't lock your whole PC to the point ctrl+alt+del dies. If that's not a windows 11 update issue like some people on reddit are experiencing, that's hardware-level. Maybe you did a windows update (esp. into 24H2) and then saw these symptoms?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

OP was only logged in for 4 minutes. Conclusion: if this isn't the typical hit and run with OP never returning to the thread, I'll be surprised.

If they do come back? List the damned system specs.

 

[sumama]

Heyy, I was just gone for the day. First off I didnt build this PC, someone did for me its just like a super budget pc a technician put together for my family like 3/4 years ago. My system specs are the following (Hope Im listing this correctly):
- Processor AMD Athlon 3000G with Radeon Vega Graphics 3.50 GHz
- RAM installed 16,0 GB (13,9 GB able to be used)
- Storage 233 GB SSD ADATA SWORDFISH + model ST1000lm024 samsung hdd in a JAWAN tech SATA usb 3.0 ssd enclosure
- Graphics card AMD Radeon(TM) Vega 3 Graphics (2 GB)
- Windows 10 capable device
Hope this pinpoints some questions

 

[DAPUNISHER]

AMD Athlon 3000G with Radeon Vega Graphics 3.50 GHz

I used to mess around with this CPU 5 years ago. Vega is no longer actively supported beyond security updates and a few bug fixes. Nuke the drivers with https://www.guru3d.com/download/display-driver-uninstaller-download/

Follow the directions and you will be golden. @Schmide provided excellent directions in this post - https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...-win-11-to-version-25h2.2631758/post-41498944

Disconnect the internet so windows does not try to update them automagically. I'd suggest trying the R.ID drivers and seeing if that helps - Pick the ones for Vega - https://rdn-id.com/ You can download them and have them ready to go so you don't need to connect to the internet before getting them installed.

 

[mmaenpaa]

First and easiest diagnostic test is always memory. If memory has errors all other tests are tainted by that. Run MS own diagnostic tool, it is quite good.

How to Use Windows Memory Diagnostic | Microsoft Surface

Optimize your PC performance and prevent slowdowns with Windows Memory Diagnostic and RAM tools. Learn how to test RAM and improve performance with Windows Memory Diagnostic.

www.microsoft.com

 

[sumama]

Thx everyone, Ill be trying the fixes this week and will update, thx again!

 

[Fallen Kell]

You can also try looking in the system logs. I recently started having some random crashes myself, and saw some power fluctuation error messages in the logs, leading me to highly suspect the power supply (which is well over 10 years old I believe, and one of the few items I had not replaced in the system, but it was a Seasonic Platinum rated 1000W, so basically a high tier PSU that had 10 year warranty, so I figured it was probably still good to continue using, however time had finally claimed it as a victim).

 

[Mantrid-Drone]

Those temperatures are high; others here should note they're Celsius not Fahrenheit. When idling or with little stress 50°C, except in a very hot climate (40°) and little air circulation, is much higher than I'd accept. Above 85°C can damage components if that occurs with any regularity.

My, admittedly, non-gaming, PCs stay at around 40°C during normal use even under stress with the CPU at 80%+ rarely peak higher than 55°C during the hottest summer days here (UK - 35°C).

So with no other evidence of what it might be, particularly if you've no historic record of what is normal for your PC, those temperatures are what I'd be looking into.

I'd check that all the fans, especially the CPU heatsink one(s) and the GPUs own fans are spinning up correctly. I'd also check, carefully, that the CPU heatsink is still firmly seated.

If the PC's 'power plan' is set to high performance I'd look at the system cooling policy settings are ie. if they're active or not. I'd go into the BIOS too and see if shown what the reported temperatures are there and if any are obviously higher than the others.

Check if the fans are set to a limited PWM setting (some MBs allow you set it 75% to reduce system noise) and maybe reset that and see if it makes a difference.

I'd also do all this:-

How to lower CPU temperature in 2025 - 9 ways to cool down your CPU

Do you think that your CPU is too hot? Have you ever experienced a full system shutdown right in the middle of playing a video game? This could be caused

www.wepc.com

Finally I'd suspect the GPU might be involved, so if its fans are spinning up OK and there's nothing obviously wrong, then I would try bypassing/disabling that temporarily, swapping the display output to the MB's connections. Obviously you won't be able to play most games but if the crashing still occurs then, at least, it would indicate it is not the GPU causing the problem.

The PSU, as ^ suggested, could still be involved but how you'd test that without having a replacement available I don't know.