10-15-2024 05:08 AM
About 2 weeks ago my laptop (ROG Strix Scar 16 (2023) RTX 4080, i9-13980HX, 64 GB RAM), started having issues when booting up games. After like 2-3 minutes of gameplay, weird-colored pixels would show up on the screen, along with green and red pixels, and I would have to reboot the computer because it would crash completely. I thought this was an issue with Proton (as I have Linux and so have to run my games through this), but then it happened to me while browsing the internet and so I started looking for the cause. I though it might've been the GPU but I changed, updated, downgraded and reinstalled the drivers 20 times and the issue is not resolved.
Later, I tried the same thing on wayland (as I normally use Xorg), and was able to exit the application and check the statistics of my computer. The GPU usage was only 30% but the nvidia settings app stopped responding. At the same time the CPU usage was above 100%. When I checked the temperature, most of the cores were below 70 degrees but two of them were at 94 and 92. Since then my laptop has been freezing more and more, especially when watching videos, or when booting up. I don't know what to do anymore. This is a brand-new really expensive laptop (for me) and I was hoping I would not have any issues with it. I've already spent like 20 hours trying to fix this but nothing else comes to mind. Does anybody have any idea what the issue is?
10-15-2024 12:25 PM - edited 10-15-2024 12:27 PM
I have the same laptop, and it’s a beast. The CPU is even better than the i9-14900HX and works perfectly for me at the moment.
In your case, if nothing helps, the problem might be hardware-related because I don’t think a program could cause an issue like this. You could also try a clean installation of Windows 11, and you can test the newest version 24H2 to see if the problem still appears. You can see how to update it from this video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RM3srjj2KDI
Did you try disabling the Nvidia GPU and using only the integrated Intel GPU? Have you tried the ultimate mode to use only the Nvidia GPU? Did you check the GPU temperatures and memory temperatures? You can use HWINFO64 for that. Sometimes it’s normal for certain CPU cores to get hotter, but you can check which core it is and what the CPU usage is. Also, if your CPU is at 100%, what program is using it so much?
The GPU chip uses liquid metal, but the memory chip uses thermal paste, and if it’s not applied properly, it can overheat and cause your PC to shut down.
The easiest way to test whether it's a software or hardware problem is to create an image backup of your drive C. This will save the entire Windows system with everything installed. Then, reinstall Windows, install the most important drivers, and a heavy game to test it. If it works and you don’t have any issues, then it's a software problem. If not, it's a hardware issue. Also, it's very important to use a cooling pad or lift your laptop slightly, because without these things, your laptop will surely overheat.
Another thing you can do is check the temperature with MSI Afterburner. Set the graph to monitor the temperatures, power usage, frequency usage, and other stats.