Laptop freezes after about an hour of gaming, even though temps are normal

Troubleshooting Persistent Laptop Freezing During Extended Gaming Sessions

Introduction

Gaming on a laptop offers portability and convenience, but it can sometimes come with unexpected performance hiccups. Recently, I encountered an issue with my MSI Katana 17 B13U, a powerful gaming laptop equipped with an Intel Core i7-13th Gen processor, NVIDIA RTX 3050 6GB graphics card, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. After roughly an hour of gameplay, my laptop would suddenly freeze— the screen, taskbar, and desktop become unresponsive— while the game audio continues to play. The only solution was a hard restart. Notably, temperature monitoring revealed that CPU and GPU temperatures remained within a normal range of 70–80°C.

Symptoms and Observations

• The system operates smoothly during the initial gameplay for about an hour.
• Complete system freeze occurs, with the display and interface unresponsive.
• Audio persists, indicating the system is still processing.
• Hard reboot necessary to restore functionality.
• Temperatures stay within safe operational limits, ruling out thermal throttling as the cause.

Initial Troubleshooting Steps

To identify the root cause, I executed several diagnostic and maintenance procedures:

1. Stress Testing Components:
   I ran FurMark for GPU stress testing and Cinebench for CPU. Both tests completed without issues, suggesting that thermal or hardware stress isn’t causing the freeze.

2. GPU Driver Reinstallation:
   Using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), I fully cleaned previous GPU drivers and reinstalled the latest drivers from NVIDIA. This helps eliminate driver corruption or compatibility issues.

3. Updating System Software:
   I checked for and installed all available Windows 11 updates along with the latest device drivers, ensuring the system is up-to-date with the manufacturer’s patches.

Potential Causes and Considerations

Given that hardware stress tests pass and temperatures are normal, the freeze might be attributable to:

• Software conflicts or corrupted system files
• Background processes interfering with game performance
• Power management settings causing instability during prolonged use
• Faulty or unstable drivers or BIOS firmware
• Specific issues related to the game or its compatibility with Windows 11

Next Steps

To further diagnose and resolve the problem, consider the following:

• Monitor System Resources in Real-Time: Use Task Manager or specialized tools like MSI Afterburner to observe CPU, GPU, RAM, and disk activity during gameplay.
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