PC hard crashes under load – black screen, GPU fans 100%, only recovers with force shutdown

Posted by madmizu@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 7 comments

Hey everyone, I need help diagnosing a long-standing issue. My desktop PC has been crashing under load since the day I got it (Dec 2021). The crash behavior is always the same:

- Screen goes completely black (no signal)

- GPU fans ramp to 100%

- System becomes unresponsive

- Only recovers when I force shutdown or restart using the physical power button

Things I’ve already tried:

- The PC originally came with a Fingers cabinet PSU → same crashes

- Replaced PSU with Foxin FPS-500S (500W SMPS) → still crashes

- System previously ran 8GB × 2 dual-channel RAM → crashed even then

- Later 1 RAM slot on motherboard died, now running 1 × 16GB stick → still crashes (so RAM not the cause)

- Replaced CPU and GPU thermal paste multiple times, temps are normal and stable

- No overheating before crash

- Issue happens when doing anything heavier than idle (games, rendering, benchmarks, etc.)

- I have a video recording of the crash as well

Full specs:

- OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit

- CPU: Intel Core i5 10th Gen @ 2.90GHz (stock cooler)

- RAM: 1 × 16GB DDR4 2666MHz (single-channel)

- Motherboard: Gigabyte H410M H V3 (LGA1200)

- GPU: ASUS GTX 1650 4GB (desktop)

- Storage: 240GB SATA SSD + 1TB HDD

- PSU: Foxin FPS-500S 500W SMPS

- Display: Sony TV 1360×768 @ 60Hz

At this point, I suspect it’s either:

GPU instability / power starvation
Motherboard PCIe/VRM power delivery issue
Grounding/electrical instability

Would appreciate any insight. Happy to upload the crash video if needed.

Thanks!

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00Glitch@reddit

Did you figure out what was causing this issue and fix it? I am having the same issue right now and I'm just starting diagnosing it myself. I don't want to do a teardown! haha.

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I’m dealing with this right now after changing my case fans to stronger ones. My GPU is overheating and then the system crashes with Event ID 41 (“Windows detected the system lost power or rebooted without a proper shutdown”). The GPU gets extremely hot even when I’m not doing anything demanding just a game on Roblox or marvel rivals and YouTube openon web. Then i get a black screen then all fans full throttle for 5 min then shut down

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00Glitch@reddit

Did you ever figure out why your PC is doing this? I am getting the same issue and just starting diagnosing it myself. Are you on desktop or a laptop? Windows 11?

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GoldenWings87@reddit

Motherboard or memory to hot. I would take every piece apart and put it back together fresh paste for the CPU. Clean it and out it back together. Good luck

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madmizu@reddit (OP)

Thanks a lot! Temps seem normal most of the time, but I’ll still do a full teardown + fresh CPU thermal paste + cleaning (even though I've already done this before too) to eliminate any mounting or contact issues, though I don't think that's really the issue here. Right now I’m focusing on stability testing, especially the GPU swap.

Really appreciate the advice

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AstarothSquirrel@reddit

with a crash that is a black screen, always start with Win+Shift+Ctrl+B to restart your graphics drivers. If this solve the crash, you have a good guess that the issue is your GPU or driver related. Next, fire up windows event viewer and look for errors or critical failures just prior to crash.

If you haven't done it already, from terminal run sfc /scannow

You can also look at running a benchmark/graphics stress test to see if this can induce a crash, further pointing to a graphics issue.

Check that your bios is updated sufficiently and ram speeds are correct in the bios settings.

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madmizu@reddit (OP)

Thanks for the suggestions! I haven’t tried the Win+Shift+Ctrl+B yet, the crash goes straight to black screen with fans at full speed until I force shutdown, so I wasn’t sure if it would even recover, but I’ll test it next time it crashes.
I did run sfc/scannow and it showed no corrupted files. Event Viewer does show display/WHEA errors, right before crash so I’m suspecting hardware instability (PSU/mobo/GPU power delivery path).

I’ll also swap in a GT 730 (borrowing it from my friend's old pc) to see if the system stays stable and rule out the 1650. Appreciate the help