So my PC recently started crashing randomly on me. I built it in 2017. It's a Vega 64 LC from XFX, a Ryzen 1800X CPU, Seasonic Prime TX-1000 1000W 80+ Titanium power supply, 16GB (8x2) DDR4 3600 G.Skill TridentZ RAM running at 3200MHz currently, Asus ROG Crosshair VI Extreme with BIOS 7704. There's one newer BIOS available. I have two storage devices installed. One 500GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD and one 500GB Seagate 7200RPM HDD.
I think I have 4 year warranties through SquareTrade for all the expensive parts. Though I have no idea how SquareTrade works. The warranty on the GPU was only 2 years long. XFX apparently doesn't apply their long warranty to reference designs. I asked them and was very annoyed because my GPU was literally $800 when I bought it.
This crashing only started recently within the last month or two. I'm not sure but I think possibly every time the PC has crashed it was when I had Edge browser open. It seems to mainly crash when I try to play a game. I've had this PC since late 2017 but I don't think I ever played a demanding game on it until a few months ago (was too busy). And the amount of time it takes for the crash to occur seems random. Sometimes it crashes soon, sometimes it could be an hour. The entire PC shuts down. All the power goes off. And it won't turn back on unless I flip the power button on the back of the power supply off and back on again.
Then I press the case power button. Then the PC starts to turn on for a couple seconds. Turns off immediately again. Then it finally turns on again normally. I assume this is a normal power cycle thing that PSU's do when they are tripped off. The way the PC is crashing suggests to me that the power supply OPP is being triggered. And it's turning off to protect the power supply and PC.
I recently updated my GPU driver to 20.8.2. I was using a fairly old driver before that, but I don't remember which. In an attempt to fix the problem I've done the automatic GPU undervolt in the Radeon software and I've turned off Edge browser hardware acceleration.
I vaguely remember reading a couple years ago that there was a problem with Vega GPU's and transient power spikes which overloaded PSU's because they were overly sensitive. Or because they didn't have enough wattage for the Vega spikes. My PSU is 1000W. My entire PC is attached to a Cyberpower 900W UPS. It's
this one except the older model which is only 900W. I bought that in 2013. My Vega 64 is the very power hungry Liquid Cooled version.
My GPU I've noticed becomes very hot to the touch. It will burn my hand if I touch it too long. Is that normal for a Vega 64 LC? Maybe one of the GPU parts is burned out or damaged and it's getting too hot and tripping the power supply protection system? Could the built in water cooler be failing after 3 years?
I'm getting really depressed because of this. I've never had a problem like this before with a PC. I don't know how I can figure out what is wrong because I only have one spare power supply and it's only 600W. It's the EVGA 100-W1-0600. I don't think that is enough for my PC. I have an old Nvidia EVGA 780 GPU from 2013 but I have no idea if it still works. And I have no money to buy spare parts because I was laid off from Covid.
😞 I really don't know what to do.
How can I monitor GPU temperature in real time? Could this be a motherboard or BIOS caused problem?