I’ve been experiencing an issue with my current PC for, probably a couple years now, where it will occasionally just, crash. No BSOD, and everything stays on, but, the visual display will lock to the last frame displayed, and the audio will output the last sound byte on loop until a hard reset in an extremely ear-destroying buzzing noise. It never seems to do it when idle, and almost always is under load when it happens, usually with 3D-intensive gaming.
One thing in particular which causes it, without fail, is trying to play Need For Speed: Heat, when I got it for free on Steam a while back. Attempting to boot the game would automatically cause that exact type of crash before reaching the EULA, every single time without fail.
I’ve tried swapping out the RAM, I’ve checked temps for overheating, and I’ve cleaned everything out to prevent dust buildup. When I try to check the Event Viewer to see if anything was recorded, it’s always missing the last few hours of logs, up until the “Windows was shut down improperly” error or however it’s worded.
Specs:
Windows 10
i7-10700F
RTX 2060
32 GB RAM
Feel free to ask for any necessary information, and I’ll try to provide.
Edit for the bot: No dump files are available.
Freezes are really annoying to diagnose as there are no logs. You just have to go down the list of most common culprits. I would say GPU and PSU share the first place here. If you can test the GPU in a different machine and a different PSU in that machine, I would do so.
If you test a different PSU, DO NOT re-use the cables. Use the cable that belong to each PSU. PSU outputs and therefore the cables are not standardized. Even a different version of the same model PSU could have different outputs and cables. Using the wrong cables can kill components.