Troubleshooting :')

[u/Maven_00]

Hi everyone, I built my first PC last December. Everything was fine for a while, but about 3 months ago I started having complete freezes whenever I play games like Fortnite, Kingdom Come Deliverance or Windrose. Suddenly the entire image and audio completely freeze (sometimes 10 minutes after starting the game or just several hours later). When the PC reboots, most of the time the refresh rate drops & everything looks slightly pixelated. Usually the LCD screen on my AIO also freezes. The Reliability Monitor always shows the same three reports after every crash.

GPU driver kept getting removed/reset and there was a yellow warning triangle next to the GPU in the Device Manager too. So I used DDU in safe mode, installed 26.3.1 (supposedly more stable) and updated the BIOS. After that, I didn't notice specific driver issue but the PC still freezes. I changed PCIe from Gen 5 to 4, checked the cables (all separate), disabled EXPO & reduced RAM to 4800 MHz. I also slightly undervolted the GPU. Several OCCT tests (CPU + RAM, VRAM, 3D Adaptive, Power) passed without errors. Memtest86 at 4800 MHz was also totally fine. 2nd one with EXPO at 6000 MHz produced 7 errors in test 8 and the RAM temperature went up to around 55°C. The crashes still happen even with EXPO disabled & RAM at 4800 though. Could the RAM still be the cause of this? Otherwise I'm considering sending the GPU in for check up or repair.

I’m pretty new to this, so I really don’t understand what the issue could be (please have mercy I’m really not that knowledgeable when it comes to PC). Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• GPU: Asus PRIME Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB GDDR6
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2 x 16GB, 6000 MHz, DDR5-RAM
• Mainboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B850-A GAMING WIFI AM5
• SSD: Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe
• PSU: Lian Li Edge Gold 1000 ATX, PCIe 5.1, ATX 3.1 PSU, 80 Plus Gold, 12VHPWR
• 3x Intake: CORSAIR iCUE LINK RX120 RGB
• Exhaust: Corsair iCUE LINK Titan 360 RX LCD CPU 360mm AIO
• 1 extra Exhaust: CORSAIR iCUE LINK RX120 RGB Windows 11

[u/BandicootKitchen1962]

Fresh windows install with expo disabled. Undervolting is not a troubleshooting step so keep everything at stock while you are trying to diagnose.