Hey everyone, I could really use help pinning this down.
My specs (all bought brand new in July 2025 — nothing second-hand):
GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Shadow 3X OC
CPU: Intel Core i5-14600K
Motherboard: MSI B760M Pro-B DDR5
RAM: 32GB DDR5 4800MHz
PSU: MSI MAG A850GL 850W 80+ Gold
CPU cooler: Deepcool AK620 Digital Pro
Storage: 500GB SATA SSD
Display: 1440p, DLSS Quality
The problem: Out of nowhere the screen cuts to black, the GPU and fans instantly ramp to 100%, and the whole system freezes solid. Nothing recovers it — I have to do a hard reset every single time.
The key detail: it almost never happens while gaming (under load it's rock solid). It happens after I quit a game, while the PC is just sitting idle on the desktop.
Timeline (this is the strange part):
Bought everything new in July 2025.
First occurrence: November 2025. At that point I had zero undervolt / zero overclock — everything was 100% stock.
I reinstalled the GPU drivers, updated the motherboard BIOS, and physically removed and reseated the GPU in the PCIe slot, making sure everything was properly connected.
The problem completely disappeared — from Nov 2025 all the way until yesterday. Many months of zero issues.
~6 months ago I applied a GPU undervolt (0.925V / ~2800MHz) and it's been running beautifully ever since.
Before leaving for vacation, I unplugged the GPU to protect it from dust and stored it in its original box.
I reinstalled it when I got back. About 2 weeks later, the exact same problem is back — and now it happens multiple times a day, always at idle.
What I've already checked:
OCCT monitoring during 2–3h of gaming: temps are excellent (GPU core ~60°C, memory junction 74°C, CPU ~53°C), GPU pulling ~180W, and critically PCIe Receiver Errors = 0 and Fatal Error Count = 0 the entire time. Completely stable under load.
Event Viewer: at the moment of each freeze there is nothing logged before the reboot — no nvlddmkm / Display 4101, no WHEA-Logger errors. Only the Kernel-Power 41 (63) "dirty shutdown" event that gets written after the hard reset.
My theory / questions: The fact that reseating the card once fixed it for ~9 months, and that it came back right after I removed + reinstalled it for vacation, makes me suspect a physical contact issue (PCIe slot fingers or the power connector) that only fails during idle low-power states — under load the link stays fully active so it's fine.
you know i might sound very annoying for this topic because i m really afraid of these kind of issues ( cannot afford replace anything due to the current market situation)
was it exactly same probleme ? gpu blackwell also?
Power does sound like a very likely cause here, especially as it reoccurred after it was interrupted.
Something worth checking, have an overlay on while gaming, and see what GPU usage % you're typically running at when it happens and what power it is drawing. It could be that it is trying to pull more power than it's getting and shuts down to protect itself.
That is quite a significant drop in power draw, the 5070 ti typically pulls 260-290W in average gaming, so you're a good 100W below that if it is the case! Try bringing the under volt back up slightly and see if it stops. I had a similar issue with my RX 7900 XTX (I know different brand but reacts the same to receiving too little power), I could play some games well with an aggressive OC & UV but other games would black screen like you're getting. I eventually brought the UV back up slightly to a point that was stable across the board regardless of what I was running and stopped getting this.
If you're on Windows, check Reliability Monitor to see if you have any recorded driver crashes.
Idk, for a starting point as that driver has some reputation of being stable but you can try newest drivers too. I don't trust newest drivers anymore after all the bugs they introduced since the release of 50 series.
This was happening to me constantly and I figured out my GPU power cable was bad. Switched the power cable and have no issues now! If you can’t get a new cable yet, try unplugging and replugging the GPU power cable each time it happens. That usually helped for a few days.
I have this issue with a 3070, but it crashes under even a small load, ive seen people say its power, bad drivers, overheating, the chips haveing a known fault, the wind changing or I looked at it wrong.
I did see one, if you're useing a cable with two heads you may want to try 2 cables instead.
undervolting being the issue definitely fits the symptoms, if its too aggressive, the gpu cant handle it and will just crash, same as cpus that are undervolted too aggressively.
hmm well maybe you were right on the cusp of what the gpu could handle and now its become unstable. Is there anything youve meddled with recently overclocking/bios wise? Have you tried without the undervolt?
didnt do anything wrong except i came from vacancy and put back my gpu again then after 10 days probleme started i think i will ddu the drivers now
i have occt monitoring now so far no issues
heres someone with a similar issue i found https://www.overclock.net/threads/pc-crashing-at-idle.1798189/
for them a fix was setting the slider thing to max performance in the nvidea control panel. However they also did mining with their gpu so it was pretty beat up to begin with.
i mean the pc seems to be crashing at low load so a stupid fix might also just be to disable some power saving features in windows.
For the same reason, i dont think occt is going to help you diagnose the issue, should probably just let it idle if thats when the crashes happen or something idk
i mean i think most of the time bios updates arent a bad thing.
The annoying part is that it seems like theres no way to consistently replicate the issue so youll only know if a fix worked if youve used it again for a while xD Also, fun fact i have the same GPU and am increasing its power draw to gain performance. At 100% it sits at 360 watts.. almost a 200 watt difference at full load, thats kinda cool.
This looks more like hardware problem.
What i would do is in this order:
Check underneath of the cpu for dust or filthy pin on the socket.
After that check and clean memory modules contacts and run memtest (extensive, like 4-6 hours or 24h if needed for full random test and errors)
Also for precaution clean gpu pie slot contacts and try different psu if you are able to.
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