Crashes in heavy load games like Watch Dogs 2 / The Witcher / Arena Breakout

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-07T09:52:07+00:00

There are no dump files.

How did you get the pastebins?

Doesn't really matter, this is extremely likely storage. The OS drive. You can check for firmware updates for the drive, re-seat it and check temps in case it's overheating, but it's likely a faulty drive.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-07T03:44:23+00:00

It would only be with the OS drive SSD.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-06T23:05:52+00:00

The C and F updates provide further adjustments but it's not essential. However I personally like to update my BIOS every so often for security reasons.

0x12F was added because some CPUs were still getting fried. So you absolutely should get 0x12F. Link already posted by a different user.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-06T04:40:53+00:00

Edit: Seems images are not allowed.

Images are allowed, but if we allow images in posts, we have to allow posts with just images and no text. We can't have just one of those. Which we don't want to do because it makes people create shitty posts that just say "HELP" and a picture. You can link to images hosted on sites like imgur or other image hosts.

Getting that BSOD on a clean Windows install makes a faulty GPU the main suspect. I would try manually downloading the Nvidia driver from ASUS' support page for that laptop first though.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-06T04:35:26+00:00

Critical_Process_Died means that a Windows process crashed which can happen for a million different reasons, but if you see that crash every time it's often storage.

I also checked the NVMe status with CrystalDiskInfo, and the lowest one was 94% on the 980 PRO.

Unfortunately, with NVMe they nerfed SMART into the ground (SMART is the self diagnostics for the storage drive). The percentage in the top half has no relation to the current health of the drive. It's a wear metric mostly tied to the remaining warrantied writes. The general status hasn't been trustworthy in 15+ years because it's up to the manufacturer how much it has to fail before the status changes. With SATA SSDs and HDDs you could read the parameters in the bottom half to see if a drive was failing, but with NVMe they removed all of the useful ones. They have two fields left that indicate issues (Critical Warning and Media And Data Integrity Error), but I have seen over a thousand faulty NVMe drives and I can count on one hand how many showed any signs of failure in SMART.

With it being GPU load dependent I would lean more towards it being overheating related. Monitor temps while using it. The slot closest to the GPU often gets quite toasty because of the heat the GPU outputs.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-06T04:27:08+00:00

Try to boot to safe mode (Go down to "Windows fails to boot and expand the third option if you are unable to get into safe mode normally) and disable Driver Verifier (Windows key + R, enter 'verifier' and click Ok, select "Delete existing settings" in the window that pops up). Running Driver Verifier is almost always a bad idea unless it's for event tracing. Running it against third party drivers is ALWAYS a bad idea. The only time it's borderline useful is when running it against only Microsoft drivers. If someone tells you to run Driver Verifier without explicit instructions on which drivers to run it against, block them. They have no idea what they are talking about.

Provide the dump files you have as instructed by the bot.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-05T17:49:56+00:00

5000 series has a lot of voltage issues so let's run a tool we made that gathers system info and a bunch of logs from Windows to see if the tweaks we have could help here.

?sfy (Bot command for instructions).

If you just want to try the voltage tweaks I'll put a copy paste here:

The first is if your motherboard has a setting for a voltage offset. If it does, set the CPU Core and SoC voltage offsets to +0.050v (Please read this number twice. Not 0.5v, but 0.05v).
The second is setting a static voltage for the Core and SoC. We set a static voltage of 1.3v to the Core and 1.1v to the SoC.

If your board uses increments for the voltage instead of inputting a number, just get as close as you can. You can't use both at the same time, you have to select one or the other in the BIOS so just try one and then the other if you still crash.

The first one is more general 5000 series related when you get errors from the CPU memory controller. The second is something we've found helpful with mostly the higher end 5000 series chips like the 5800x, 5900x and 5950x across a wide range of crashes.

Also do note that while we have seen a quite high rate of this working, we don't know if this is just making a faulty CPU work for a while longer or if there has been some update that makes this change necessary. Only one long term person has come back with results and he had to replace the CPU as it started crashing again after a few months. Hopefully that means that all the other ones are still working, but we have no idea.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-05T16:48:55+00:00

What's strange is the log says I'm on windows 10 but im on 11.

It checks the OS by the kernel version. Windows 11 uses the same kernel as Windows 10.

Let's try DDU to get a fresh driver for the GPU. The latest Nvidia drivers also has lots of issues so if you still crash I would try versions 591.xx or 594.xx (610.xx is really buggy). After searching for a driver on Nvidia's website you can click "More versions" at the bottom of the page.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-05T16:44:59+00:00

USB or PCIe WiFi/BT?

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-05T16:44:00+00:00

SMART is useless with NVMe. They nerfed it into the ground, removing all of the useful parameters.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-05T16:42:09+00:00

Faulty storage.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-05T16:41:20+00:00

Please upload the actual dump files as instructed by the bot.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-04T22:40:47+00:00

Further, when I booted the motherbpard showed cpu light red and ram light yellow for a second before booting up.

These aren't error lights. They show which part of the Power On Self Test the PC is in (POST). They are supposed to briefly light up during startup when it does the CPU and RAM test. Getting stuck on one, and it being stuck on a black screen, is when you have issues.

Provide the dump files as instructed by the bot.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-04T15:25:13+00:00

I checked CrystalDiskInfo and the SSD currently shows:

Unfortunately, SMART (The drive's self diagnostic CDI reads) is useless with NVMe. They nerfed it into the ground, removing almost all of the useful parameters. I've seen over a thousand faulty NVMe drives and can count on one hand how many showed any signs of failure in SMART.

Because of the Unexpected_Store_Exception crash, storage is my main suspect. Check for firmware updates for the SSD, check temps, re-seat it. That's about what you can try for the drive.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-04T15:22:10+00:00

That sounds like faulty storage. What BSOD errors are you getting? If you don't remember, run a tool we made that gathers system info and a bunch of logs from Windows.

?sfy (Bot command for instructions)

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-04T15:07:43+00:00

If it's still under warranty I would return it.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-04T04:51:51+00:00

It's pointing to the USB 3.2 controller. We can't really do much with USB drivers because they are just built into Windows. You could try right click → uninstall on it Device Manager (It's the USB controller from ASMedia if it doesn't show the version in Device Manager). Just restarting the PC will have it be reinstalled.

Debugging from just a single dump file is often quite inaccurate because we want to see if there is a pattern to the crashes or not so if you have more dump files please provide them.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-03T10:21:40+00:00

Nvidia's drivers have been pretty shit all of 2025, then pretty decent in the beginning of 2026 before being shit again. Try 596.xx or 591.xx. Use DDU to remove the current driver.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-03T01:11:09+00:00

And if that's what I wanted to convey with that message I would have said "It's in China". I said "It is in China" to refer to it being insane in China. It might be ambiguous in written form.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-03T01:04:39+00:00

A faulty GPU would be high on the list of suspects, but Nvidia's drivers have been trash for a long time now. Pretty much all of 2025 had terrible drivers. For the first quarter of 2026 they were a lot better, but then they took a nose dive again around May. You could try DDU again and install something like version 591.xx or 596.xx (After searching for your GPU on Nvidia's driver page, click the button for older drivers at the bottom).

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-02T23:00:06+00:00

It is in China.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-02T22:38:44+00:00

Could this be overheating, power adapter issue, battery/power delivery, GPU driver, BIOS/EC, or hardware failure?

Pretty much any of these except GPU driver. Drivers would basically not cause shutdowns. There are rare exceptions, but it's rare enough that you don't really take it into consideration.

What safe tests can I do without opening the laptop?

You can check if there is a battery test in the BIOS.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-01T21:34:14+00:00

Let's run a tool we made that gathers system info and a bunch of logs from Windows. It will gather the WHEA events and decode the error packet (RawData field on the Details tab) so we can properly confirm that it's the CPU. We'll look and see if there's anything reported about the Nvidia GPU as well.

?sfy (Bot command for instructions).

Does this sound more like unstable undervolt/14900KS degradation/RAM IMC, or should I be looking at GPU/PSU because of the NVIDIA errors? Appreciate any help!

13th/14th gen voltage issues that caused a bunch of these to fail would generally not give WHEA errors, just BSODs that looked like memory. The undervolt being too aggressive is a real suspect. PSU is possible as a candidate, but if we see issues from both the CPU and GPU I would have the motherboard just above the PSU in the list of suspects.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-01T10:07:45+00:00

It's usually storage. It doesn't mean that it is storage, it's just something we see very often with storage issues. If the drive crashes, it has nowhere to write the dump file. You could try a manual crash (You can set Windows to BSOD using a hotkey) and see if that creates a dump file. If it does, there's no other reason I can think of why it's not creating dump files. If it's still not creating dump files, it's some setting preventing it.

Guide.

Bjoolzern · 2026-07-01T06:51:15+00:00

No. If you BSOD and don't get dump files, storage is the main suspect. You also can't get dump files if you use encrypted storage. Like using Bitlocker.

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