7 Days to Die & Subnautica crashing.

[skullpoker]

Both Unity games. I can play 7 Days to Die for at least an hour after a cold boot, but other than that it crashes. Sometimes a freeze, sometimes my system shuts down.

 

Other games don't have that problem. I can play Fallout 4 for hours, Left 4 Dead, Borderlands games, ... It seems to be only Unity engine games crashing and I wonder if there is an easy fix I am missing.

[themirror]

Is your graphics card driver updated?

[skullpoker]

Yes, everything updated as of yesterday. This started suddenly about a week ago and I have only experienced it with these two games. Could be overheating or a PSU issue, but at this point I'm really thinking it's Unity because it happens on these Unity Engine games specifically. Before I installed my GPU, I had to do major CFG editing to get Fallout 4 running smooth at a low FPS, where 7 Days was simply "uncheck everything, reduce all settings to low, half textures" and it would run better than Fallout 4, except in 7 Days towns/cities.

 

Maybe I'm wrong, and I will need to replace a part soon. I hope not.

[SylenThunder]

Specs?

Settings?

Logs?

[Fox]

Knowing the specs would definitely be helpful here, but I'm already thinking maybe your ram is getting errors and causing crashes when under heavy load.

 

It's obviously not the game's fault since there's 2 games being affected here.

 

My suggestion would be to try a free memtest86 and post back with results.

[skullpoker]

It may come to that but for the moment, swapping out the keyboard that had a short circuit seems to have cleared it up. Meaning the keyboard light was flickering and then I noticed that I tried to type for and got fffffffff instead. Tried playing 7 Days after switching keyboards and it hasn't crashed so far.

[Fox]

It may come to that but for the moment, swapping out the keyboard that had a short circuit seems to have cleared it up. Meaning the keyboard light was flickering and then I noticed that I tried to type for and got fffffffff instead. Tried playing 7 Days after switching keyboards and it hasn't crashed so far.

Ya, that's a sure way to burn out the USB ports in no time... didn't know it could cause game crashes though.

[skullpoker]

Apparently so. My Mobo has individual fuses for the USB slots where most Mobo's have one fuse per group or just one fuse, so that wouldn't have been quite as bad for me. I was more concerned about it frying my PSU.

 

Not only making the game freeze, the computer would Shut Down half of the times it crashed and then the keyboard would not work until it was fully loaded into Windows desktop, so that was a clue.

 

I was going to flash the BIOS, so I had the PSU switched off looking at the RAM to get specs and model numbers when I tipped a large glass of water into the WIRED keyboard and surge protector. I got the surge protector unplugged while my lamp was still lit and the computer had no power, but drying must have left some mineral residue in the keyboard as it decided to short circuit. Luckily I bought the 2 year replacement plan so I just have to wait for their restock on the 16th to get my new keyboard. Which is a great argument for WIRELESS keyboards. Even if the keyboard gets a short it shouldn't get back into your USB ports or PSU.

[SylenThunder]

Yeah, except most wireless keyboards suck balls for gaming. Especially if you'll be pressing more than two keys at once, or any key for an extended period.

[Fox]

Yeah, except most wireless keyboards suck balls for gaming. Especially if you'll be pressing more than two keys at once, or any key for an extended period.

What do you mean most? I thought ALL wireless keyboards were bad for gaming due to latency, let alone reliability and other issues. I can't even imagine playing Overwatch (or any other competitive game) with a wireless keyboard.

 

There are some keyboards (especially old-school membrane / cheap keyboards) that are really splash resistant to the point where you can have the keyboard under the tap and still not affect it. You just need to look around to find those kinds of keyboards as they for some reason don't advertise splash resistant much anymore.

[FileMachete]

Worth mentioning that if you want to safeguard your mobo a bit while still possibly drenching your keyboard, try to plug kb into older USB ports & possibly use a port _not_ directly controlled by the SouthBridge.

Also I'd really avoid using a USB hub. They typically use wall power so if you managed to short one of those out, well, I wouldn't expect the board to survive.

 

Note: I'd choose to use a fuse/CB protected port first of course.

 

-older slots = lower wattage so somewhat less likely to cause major damage

 

-fry the Southbridge, mobo is toast. -might- still have a working board with a shorted accessory chip; depends what it does.

 

As Fox mentioned there was a period when there were a lot of membrane kbs around and they were basically waterproof. Were really just standalone laptop kbs, and at that point they had a horrible feel.

 

I've never spilled on mine while it was plugged in but I have water washed my real IBM mechanical kb several times without any issues.

Mind, it is approx ~16-18 yrs old, and -not- USB. Haven't looked in a few years but they were still around for $75-115.

[skullpoker]

The problem came back a couple days later so I decided to try without the GPU and the system ran fine. So then I cleaned the GPU, and looked at the size of it in relation to the case. I decided to look at airflow.

 

I moved my HDD's down because they were above my front fan, moved the fan up, and cleaned up the rest of the interior. After that the computer was taking about 30 seconds to show the post screen, and 7 Days to Die would run without crashing, but was showing stuttering and lag issues. I re-seated my RAM and that solved those problems.

 

So in cases of crashing, I think a solid step for anybody is physical maintenance. My problem was GPU overheating. Problem solved.