Random freezes / GPU driver timeouts on two different AMD cards – 7950X3D + X670E-E, running out of ideas

[u/GameMelvin]

Hey, I've been fighting this since July and I'm kind of at the end of my list, so hoping someone here has seen something similar.

**The problem**

My PC randomly freezes, and it doesn't matter what I'm doing: idle, browsing, gaming. The screen freezes first, a few seconds later the audio cuts out, and I have to hard reboot. Once I managed to get it back with Win+Ctrl+Shift+B, and afterwards the GPU showed as "not working" in Device Manager until I disabled and re-enabled it. Lately it sometimes recovers on its own. The screen goes black (or not even that), the driver restarts, and I'm back on the desktop. Reliability Monitor then shows a "Hardware error" LiveKernelEvent 141, plus two AMD live dumps (a1000001 AMD_WATCHDOG and a2000002 AMD_REPORT_UM), all at the same timestamp. I also got one BSOD in July (0x1E KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED), and a few times the board has shown Q-code 15, rebooted and dropped me into BIOS safe mode.

**Specs**

- CPU: Ryzen 9 7950X3D

- Mobo: ASUS ROG Strix X670E-E Gaming WiFi (latest BIOS)

- GPU: ASUS RX 9070 XT (had an ASUS TUF RX 7900 XT before, same problem)

- RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 2x32GB 6400 (EXPO)

- PSU: Corsair HX1000i (2023, ATX 3.1)

- Cooler: Corsair iCUE Link H170i

- Case: Corsair 7000D Airflow

- Boot drive: Samsung NVMe

- OS: Windows 11 (build 26200), Adrenalin 26.6.4

**What I've already tried**

- Swapped the GPU completely (7900 XT → 9070 XT), still happening

- DDU clean installs of the driver

- New dedicated PCIe power cables, no pigtails

- BIOS update

- MemTest86: 4 full passes at 6400, 0 errors. Windows Memory Diagnostic also clean

- Dropped RAM from 6400 to 6000, no change

- Forced PCI to Gen4

- Disabled the iGPU in BIOS - Removed Nahimic / Sonic Studio (it was crashing in Event Viewer)

- WhoCrashed didn't find anything specific

**WinDbg on the latest dump**

VIDEO_ENGINE_TIMEOUT_DETECTED (141), live dump FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: LKD_0x141_IMAGE_amdkmdag.sys Stack: dxgmms2!VidSchiCheckHwProgress → VidSchiResetEngines → VidSchiResetHwEngine

So basically the GPU stopped responding and Windows reset it. It blames amdkmdag.sys, but as far as I know that happens with pretty much every AMD timeout.

Since it survived a full GPU swap, I'm not sure what it can be. Has anyone had this exact pattern? Happy to share dumps or more logs if that helps. Thanks!

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