Understanding and Troubleshooting Random Game Crashes: A Comprehensive Guide for PC Gamers
Experiencing sudden and unpredictable crashes while gaming can be both frustrating and perplexing. If you’ve encountered scenarios where your PC disconnects from your monitor, and peripherals such as controllers, mice, or keyboards also become unresponsive, you’re not alone. This article aims to provide a detailed overview of potential causes for such issues, based on common experiences and troubleshooting steps, and offers guidance for resolving these problems effectively.
Recognizing the Symptoms
Many gamers report that during gameplay, their systems suddenly “crash.” This often manifests as:
– Disconnection of the monitor/TV
– Peripheral disconnects (controllers, mouse, keyboard)
– Need for a complete system restart
– Possible screen glitches or static post-restart
Interestingly, when accessing the system remotely via tools like Remote Desktop, the display often appears fine, suggesting the issue may be hardware-related or related to the connection rather than the core system performance.
Variability and Specificity
Crashes may occur at varying intervals, from as short as 2 minutes to over an hour into gameplay. Notably, certain titles are more prone to these disruptions—for example, Metaphor: ReFantazio and Risk of Rain 2 tend to trigger crashes, whereas others like Elden Ring or Resident Evil 4 Remake do not exhibit the same behavior.
Common Troubleshooting Strategies
Gamers and tech enthusiasts have attempted numerous solutions, some of which include:
1. Adjusting Frame Rate Settings
- Problems like out-of-sync frame rates can cause monitor disconnections. Adjusting in-game frame rate caps (e.g., setting to match your monitor’s refresh rate) is a common first step.
- Result: In some cases, this does not resolve the issue.
2. Power Supply Overhaul
- Suspecting insufficient power delivery, upgrading to a higher wattage PSU is recommended.
- Result: Often, this does not eliminate crashes.
3. Resolution and Render Scale Adjustments
- Changing game resolution or render scale can sometimes stabilize performance.
- Result: No significant improvement observed in many cases.
4. Driver Reinstallation
- Fully uninstalling and reinstalling the latest graphics drivers, preferably a few days before the crash episodes.
- Result: Usually no effect on recurring crashes.
5. Game Files Verification
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