Apex shutting off PC

@PsyhiX69 

The important thing to know is if your PC is shot down without a blue screen and then restarts, or if the system just hangs?

@Darkness93_yt 

That is still not ideal.

Did you ever run stability tests on this system?

Or 3DMark,  Time Spy, Firestrike?

I got this right, you system is just powering down?

Why do I 'feel like' this game is killing PC? We all have a PC to play this game but can't maximize the PC potential.

If we try to maximize the PC performance, the game is killing PC. Some might say "Why other games are ok but Apex is just killing it?"

I think the game just keeps getting better...like what happen to the new world killing 3090?

I'm sorry I'm not helping you guys. I don't have games to play as the game keeps disconnect me. 

@Darkness93_yt 

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Darkness9t3 wrote:
Haven't tried 3DMark, Time Spy or Firestrike yet, should I try them all? Will start with 3DMark and let you know.

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It can't hurt. 😉

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Darkness9t3 wrote:

My next step though is to try an OS reinstall at some stage, and if it still happens I'll look into a more powerful PSU because the RTX 3090 does seem pretty power hungry.

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Modern CPUs and GPUs have very effective protection mechanism against overheating, it is rare that a PC is just crashing because of overheating in our days.

As said, a power issue namely the PSU running in its overpower protection is fare more likely.

You do have the newest graphic driver installed?

It still could be something else, like the power supply of the Motherboard, so I would suggest to buy at a place that allows returns. 

Your RM series is not a bad PSU at all, but for a 3090 I would recommand something in the HX/Platinum class.

So I don't have 3DMark Purchased but I just used the Demo Benchmark for Time Spy, here's the results. All ran smoothly though and no freezing / crashing issues.

Also Apex hasn't frozen again yet since using DDU after the latest Graphics driver, so it might just be a case of conflicting graphics drivers because I haven't usually used DDU between each update.

@Darkness93_yt 

If it works, it works. 🙂

@Darkness93_yt Speccy is very useful and will allow you to monitor the temp in windows. Can put it into startup and into the bar to monitor constantly. Free download here. 

https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy/download

On a practical level, I occasionally gently hoover the insides of the unplugged pc, the fans esp (put finger on fan to stop it spinning wildly) and vents, to stop dust building up, and make sure it's generally getting well ventilated. 

@maximas1986 I don't think the latest crashes are to do with the @Darkness93_yt 's heat issues. 

Yeah if you're talking about disconnects (there's server issues lately) or crashing to the menu / shutting down the whole PS5 that's a different story, I'm playing on PC so can't comment much on that.

@OldTreeCreeper Thanks but I'm familiar with Speccy, I use Geforce Experience's Advanced Performance Overlay instead, which monitors GPU temp as well as Fan Speed, Power, Voltage etc. It's what prompted me to play with the fan curve & temp limit initially as it seemed to crash on around 83 degrees at stock.

Just an update anyway, it happened again tonight (instant system power off) but I had only just used DDU this morning and installed the latest graphics driver to help prevent it. It might again be something to do with latest Nvidia drivers not quite being ready for the 3000 series, but as shaders are re-compiled and the game run a few more times that's probably what naturally makes it more stable.

Having said that, I never had these issues with my RTX 2080ti or my previous gaming rig (where the 2080ti normally lives). The game may have frozen sometimes, but not a whole system power down.

I'll see how it goes through the month but it seems to line up with a new Nvidia driver each time.

The weird thing is I can play other modern games on ultra too and they don't get the GPU running nearly as hot / crash / shutdown the system like Apex does, even if it is only a few times a month.

@Darkness93_yt it's a very odd issue. Youngtree has a dell that runs fine with a gtx1060, but we put extra ram in to be safe and run Windows from the c drive ssd, and everything else from other big drive or I installed a few smaller drives to spread the load, esp for big games programs. 

Do you defrag with defraggler after an update? By any chance do you have the windows defragmenter set to automatic, possibly running in the background as you play?

Have you gone through startup to make sure everything you don't want on, is off? 

Have you checked the heatsink is flush and seated properly?

Have you looked at your bios settings for temp? 

Have you tried leaving the case open? 

Have you tried to troubleshoot removing devices systematically in the rig, to see if one of them is drawing too much power? 

My laptop runs at about 60 degrees.

We've run into an issue with the rendering from solid works being very slow, but I suspect it's a setting somewhere in the background causing it. But no temp increase. 

Nice points about defragging, I don't and have never needed to worry about it, it's an NVME SSD though, I don't really want to reduce its lifetime.

I haven't had it crash again since the one time right after using DDU for the Graphics Driver, so I think it's what I was saying about Apex needing to catch up a bit after shaders are recompiled after each update.

As for systematically testing I've only swapped the GPU out, left the side panel off also but it's a combo of the GPU and PSU that has the game crash at a specific point.

Might not be much else I can do until I get a better PSU / GPU for the system, but for now I'm still able to get the most out of the rig I won and it does seem to be happening less often.

Just wanted to know if the devs tested with RTX 3090's themselves and saw similar issues, but when I tried a Support Chat a few months back I was just sent in circles on trying different troubleshooting steps that I already did.. they did mention the more users try with those cards the more data they'd be able to collect from the game, so it's kind of a wait-and-see situation too.

@Darkness93_yt 

SSD do not fragment.

Defragmentation is a thing on mechanical hard drives only. In principle it means that data that needs to be read in order to load an application or just data you need loaded at the same time is scattered over the surface of a mechanical hard drive, forces the hard drive to move the read head to jump over to a new location frequently.

That costs time because the read head needs to be adjusted every time, and that slows the drive down.

SSD don't have mechanical components, so it does not matter if the data is stored at different physical locations, the access will always be at the same speed.

@holger1405 yes, don't defragment an ssd. Even with a ordinary HD it's not a good idea to do it too regularly. Mostly I would use it to defragment fragmented files only, maby after a big update, and a complete defragment maby every 2-3 months depending.

Have found the windows defragmenter set to auto, on a few laptops with ssd. Think it's a default setting. Default for ssd should be off! 

Yeah that's what I thought, haven't done any manual defragging for SSDs.

For "Optimising" (which I think means defragging) from the Windows settings though they're on defaults, should I just turn it off for the C drive and see if it helps?

Was also thinking to try not changing the temp limit on Afterburner launch if it's more to do with a driver cleanup after an update.

@Darkness93_yt 

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Darkness9t3 wrote:

Yeah that's what I thought, haven't done any manual defragging for SSDs.

For "Optimising" (which I think means defragging) from the Windows settings though they're on defaults, should I just turn it off for the C drive and see if it helps?

Was also thinking to try not changing the temp limit on Afterburner launch if it's more to do with a driver cleanup after an update.

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No, Windows is detecting a SSD and will handle it accordantly, meaning it will do what is right for an SSD.

I said in my last post the SSD don't fragment, but that is not entirely true, even on a SSD it can happen that there are so many fragments on the drive that the Metadata, the data that tells the OS where a specific file is, can hit the limit and that would lead to I/O errors from the SSD.
So let the Optimising on.

Thanks for the info, will leave all unchanged then 🙂

So back to the original issue; I did some testing over this week and didn't change the temp limit at all.

Game still ran fine, which leads me to suspect it's something about the Driver Updates, and when the shaders are rebuilt for the GPU after one, sometimes it will just fail on a few games soon after but then stabalise itself.

There's currently another pending version (493.13, I'm on the previous one; 472.12, not sure why there's such a huge jump in version numbers though) but I'm skeptical to install it because I know Apex will crash out again a few times.

Any tricks with the shader cache I could try maybe? It's going to be something about the shader cache or the driver update, or maybe I should always stay one version behind (manually download it instead of downloading the latest with Experience)?

@Darkness93_yt 

The big jump in version number is probably due to NVIDIA ending support for Kepler GPUs.

For the first time the new driver let you set the shader cache size manually.
But I really doubt that a shader cache problem could lead to a complete shut down of the system.    

@holger1405 @Darkness93_yt I don't understand how not updating drivers is a good idea, as newer drivers usually synergise with the games better and it's always recommended to have everything up to date due to stability?

Yeah normally I'm all for keeping it on the latest driver, but I just have a feeling it'll make Apex crash again; it's always been in line with a GPU update it seems.

@holger1405 I doubt it also but it's a really weird issue, just my bad luck 😛 I'll do the update then I guess and report back after some more gameplays.

Question is; should I use my normal approach of DDU in Safe Mode or just go ahead with an Express or Clean Install? Usually I've used DDU, because when I go Express it's failed anyway. The Clean Install I've done every now and then but it still fails, so I'm not sure which is the most fail-safe approach.

@damsonwhufndthis 

There is a old saying:  Never Change a Running System!
That never counts for security updates!  😉 

Maintaining the System and holding it up to date is of course important, but I also see people "updating" themself into problems all the time.
As a general rule about updating, I would not let my graphic driver get 6 mounts old, but I am still at 471.68, I have no problems whatsoever with the games I play nor with any other task, so why should I update and risk to introduce one?

I also postpone Window updates for a few days to see if there is a problem with them, (That also don't count for important security updates.) and install them if I see that they are fine.

Then, I will update to Windows 11 in the near future, before that I will bring my system up to date, and not only the graphic driver.

The performance gain of a new driver (If any) is in most case absolutely negligible, so the qestion I ask myself is if I need this driver or this update right now? Does this driver has a feature I want?
I would at least suggest to wait a few days and check the NVIDIA or AMD forums to see if there are some problems with a new driver.
But as said, it is also not good the get a graphic driver totally outdated.

@Darkness93_yt 
DDU is a really great tool, but it also a tool that cleans the registry.
Anytime you clean the registry there is a chance that something goes wrong, and wile DDU is a very reliable tool, that risk still exist.
I personally only use DDU if there is problem.

You should shut down about any background program that is running, including the virus scanner and especially tools like Afterburner before installing a graphic driver, but I would suggest to use the normal clean install variant in the driver.

Well so far so good!

After the clean install update for the graphics driver I've not had a crash again over the week, seems pretty stable on Apex now! Temps for the GPU are still good because the custom fan curve is there, but I leave the temp limit unchanged as there's no need for that it seems plus there's no extra power draw.

I guess the current driver has more support for certain GPUs, but a clean install seemed the way to go.

Thanks so much for your help guys! I'll pass it back onto C-Sheldon88 on the other thread (https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/apex-legends-restarts-my-pc/td-p/10080004/page/3) to see if it helps him too (would be good to confirm as he's on a different GPU).

It's been great really digging into what the issue could be, hope this thread helps other users with the same issue!

Guess I spoke to soon, happened again tonight.

There was a pending driver update though (don't know if that has anything to do with it), so I'm trying a clean install of that.

I'll change the temp limit again too to be safe, as that's what made it more stable in the past; it must somehow spike to the stock temp still even with the fan curve on.

@Darkness93_yt at this stage, if I was you, I'd be totally bald from pulling my hair out! It really is a bizarre issue. 

All that remains is to put the computer in a fridge or next to an ac and run apex on it. That will tell you definitively if somthing is broken/ill fit or it's a settings/software issue. 🙂