PC crash and restart while playing

The idea that the game damaged your system is a faulty idea.  You bought a new system and something was wrong with the hardware out of the box, this game was just the one you played that maybe stressed the components enough for the issue to show.  The second PC is also the same issue.  Does this mean you are unlucky....yes, or the quality of the PCs you are buying is crap.  I have seen WAY too many "new" things that don't work right out of the box, especially since Covid, but even before that it was happening more than it should.   Computers are designed, with many safeguards to prevent programs from being able to harm them, and games can't do things to thermal limits, or voltages.  If a game is causing your PC to shut down, then it is simply showing up a hardware issue, not causing the issue to begin with.  The very fact that other games started having issues proves this point....it was just an issue getting worse the longer time went on.  Be prepared for your new PC to have this issue again when stressed with more games or time.

Now if you go back a few years and there were reports of a certain game nuking Nvidia Cards, it turned out to be a manufacturing issue with faulty parts, and the game was just putting enough stress on the card to cause it to show.  It is almost impossible for a game to cause physical damage to a card without some sort of outside force, such as user removing limits.  I know this game didn't sell super well, but there was enough people playing this game that IF it was somehow bricking computers, it would have been well published on this or other forums, and not be one or two posts here or there. 

I agree with mcsupersport that the game doesn't cause hardware failure, but it can trigger an existing underlying problem. If these are indeed two entirely different PCs, that's just extremely bad luck. Did you monitor temperatures while playing?

You said these PCs are pre-assembled, but are these brand PCs or custom PCs pre-assembled by the store? I've had bad experiences with custom PCs that were either poorly smashed together or didn't fully survive the journey from the store to my home.

Additional to Fred_vdp​ mcsupersport​ 

DAtV is, as a matter of fact especially good optimized on PC. 

A shutdown problem like this is in fact most of the time PSU or general power related. 

Guys, those are two completely different PCs from two different stores. ALL HW components are completely different, CPUs are one an Intel and one an AM4 AMD, GPUs are from two different brands and two different generations. Even the power cable I used on the second pc was different, all external devices were brand new. I even installed and tried DAtV as first thing after installing OS and GPU drivers (new version of nvidia drivers btw and not the same I've used on the 1st pc), to be sure no SW were causing any trouble. The game before the crashes was running perfectly and smoothly, no micro lag or anything at all, 60+fps. Temperatures of both GPU and CPU were ok. The crash is sudden and the PC basically restart by itself. I can see your point in relation to a faulty HW components but what are the odds that this happened on two completely different configurations? Can't really find an answer to this.

Alad93 wrote:

I can see your point in relation to a faulty HW components but what are the odds that this happened on two completely different configurations?

Actually, pretty high, considering that many system builders offer cheap PSU's for their builds. 
But there are other probable causes as well of course. 

Point is what Fred_vdp​ and mcsupersport​ said, software is never "harming" your pc, it maximal shows weak-points of the used components. 

This reminds me of the time a lot of people believes StarCraft II was breaking their PCs when all the game really did was not cap the framerate in menus, causing GPUs to run at 100% usage. This ended up overheating a ton of laptops, also of different brands and models.

if we extend this to Veilguard, I think you can see a similar trigger in at least two areas. First, the shader compilation, which makes the CPU run very hot if you have poor cooling (mine ran at 98°C, which is pushing it). Second is the dynamic resolution, where the game will optionally increase the rendering resolution until it either reaches your set resolution or if your GPU is at 100% usage. For my modest GPU, this means heavy strain in Arlathan forest with constant 100% GPU usage, so I ended up disabling dynamic resolution and running the game at a capped framerate and a fixed upscaling quality to reduce temperatures.

holger1405 wrote:

Actually, pretty high, considering that many system builders offer cheap PSU's for their builds. 

And they rarely specify which PSU is in it, when this is specifically a component that you don't want to cheap out on. They will display wattage, and nothing more. Same with CPU coolers. You often get stuck with the stock cooling. If it's a third party cooler, you get a cheap one with RGB lights to make it "gaming" tier.

for two separate PCs to act similarly, my first question would be: How stable is your POWER? Have you considered a  (Uninteruptable Power Supply)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply
If you are experiencing rough AC power service, then a spike or brown-out (low voltage) can cause the hardware issues you describe.
If you Are using a UPS to protect your system, then I'd really be unsure what else to suggest.

That sounds incredibly frustrating, especially as a long-time fan of the series. It's alarming that the same issue happened on two different high-end setups. Hopefully, EA takes reports like yours seriously and addresses any optimization or compatibility problems soon. No game should put your hardware at risk.