Apex causing "Your device ran into a problem and couldn't be repaired"

Hey all,

I typically play ranked with my two friends, calling through Discord. A couple weeks ago, I started experiencing crashes when playing the game. This is what happens:

• FPS drops really low, audio gets distorted for a few seconds. Game freezes, bits of audio repeat a few times before the PC shuts off
• PC goes into loop: “diagnosing your pc” -> “your device ran into a problem and could not be repaired” -> Windows recovery.

I'm able to access Windows normally again if I switch off my PSU and disconnect everything connected to my motherboard (ethernet, standalone mic, keyboard) before plugging it in again

• WINDOWS\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt doesn’t give much info
• Windows Event Viewer doesn’t have an entry for the crash

Since then, it has happened multiple times. There’s no way to tell if it’s coming. Some days it happens, some days it doesn’t. Sometimes it happens in my first match, sometimes it happens after several matches. Here are some instances where it occurred:

• Mid-match, right after pinging a whole squad as Vantage
• After picking my legend in character select
• Off-drop, while looting
• When looking at weapon skins in the weapon locker
• Sitting in main lobby
• While searching for solutions to this problem in my browser with the game open in the background
• Went AFK during the post-match rewards screen, came back to PC going into the loop above

Specs

• AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
• MSI B550M Pro-VDH WiFi (version 2.M1, dated Sept 3, 2024)
• 32 GB RAM, DDR4-3200
• Windows is on a 256 GB SATA SSD, Apex is installed separately on a 1 TB M2 SSD
• RTX 3060
• PSU is at least 650W

Steps I’ve tried

• Verifying files in Steam, un- and reinstalling Apex
• Running “sfc scannow” and other commands through CMD
• Lowering graphics settings, including streaming budget
• Lowering max frame rate
• Removing all drivers with AMD Cleanup Utility
• Updating NVidia drivers to ver 610.74, which was released on the Jul 7, 2026
• Running various benchmark tests in OCCT (with no failures)
• Lowering my RAM speed to 2133 MHz, disabling XMP profiles

I will also attach my Windows update history, if it's relevant at all.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, let me know if there's any information I can provide!