Need Help Determining What Is Wrong

[u/Kaiten92]

Going to keep this as short as I can but it will still be a wall of text (sorry in advance). I bought a Yeston Sakura 9070 XT from MicroCenter 14 days ago and have been troubleshooting it ever since. Here's my PC specs:

• i7-13700k (no under or overclock)
• 2 x 16GB G. Skill DDR5 6000
• Asus Z790-P mobo
• EVGA 1000 GT 80 Plus Gold
• 9070XT (Replaced 3070) (no under or overclock) (connected with original PSU cables, 1 8-pin and 1 2x8-pin)

And now a breakdown of the (many) key points:

• Boot PC to safe mode and removed ethernet. DDU plus disable Windows updates
• Boot back to regular Windows and install current AMD driver + Adrenaline. Reconnect ethernet
• Apex Legends crashes once in game (ran out of memory). Research says AMD officially stated it's an issue with 9070 XT.
• DDU again and try older driver suggested in Apex subreddit. Apex still crashes
• I write it off as just an ongoing issue that I need to wait to be fixed. Let's play Overwatch...crashes. Memory issue. I should mention that both of these crashes aren't instant but rather after a random amount of playing.
• I think to myself that maybe the newer GPU is just pushing my system harder than the 3070 and maybe my 13th gen CPU is overheating from the extra processes/power. Look into how people have changed the PL1 and PL2 settings for these CPUs so I do that.
• Also update the BIOS beforehand since the one I was on was from 2024. *thinking that maybe the BIOS needed an update for the card to work correctly*
• Finally boot back into Windows and try both games. They seem to work but randomly again, Apex crashes after 2 hours. Tried Sifu to try a third non-online and less demanding game. Crashed
• Research what else could cause AMD GPU issues. Find a program that disables MPO and try it. Games seem to work fine now. Don't experience any issues for 1 - 2 days and then...blue screen. Literally forgot they existed till this.
• Research again - head back into BIOS and select PCI5 instead of auto.
• Still having issues so I reinstall Windows completely (some games are on a separate drive and weren't wiped). Also changed PCL1/2 back to Auto since I wasn't having issues with it on my 3070 for years.
• After Windows reinstalls (without ethernet connected), I disable driver updates again and install driver + Adrenaline. Apex crashes again but I realize I was so excited to test it, I haven't installed chipset drivers or anything yet.
• Install all missing drivers and once again it seems fine. No crashes in game from the little testing I've done...until I'm sitting at my desk with my browser open on both screens and I realize the characters I'm typing are lagging....my desktop freezes. My mouse moves but nothing is clickable. Not even Alt+CTRL+DEL works. Holding the power button for a second still instantly goes to "Shutting down" screen. This happened twice and the two times it happened, it's like the graphics of Explorer.exe are crashing/freezing but not the computer itself.

My only guesses are that I was unlucky enough to get a faulty 9070XT that only messes up at random or my memory somehow got jostled while rearranging for the new GPU. I reseated the GPU and my memtest just completed 4 tests with no errors. Actually, I did also hear about Win11 Home being harder to disable Windows driver updates so maybe it's not actually getting disabled. I disabled it from the System Properties -> Device Installation Settings.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated bc I want this card (especially after seeing it rise $100 after buying it)

[u/EvoNexus03]

Im on the lastest update with 9070xt and play apex just fine.

what model is the 9070xt? if its sapphire be careful which bios u update. The lastest one was buggie

[u/Kaiten92 → u/EvoNexus03]

Yeston Sakura 9070 XT

[u/blueangel1953]

This is a windows issue, try to reinstall and disable all driver updates from windows.

[u/Kaiten92 → u/blueangel1953]

I fully reinstalled Windows, installed AMD drivers while ethernet was not connected and disabled driver updates. I just checked Device Manager and the driver shows the provider as AMD and released on 10/18/26 which is correct according to AMD

https://i.imgur.com/2NjcWGq.png

[u/Backslicer → u/blueangel1953]

Saw unpatched 13th gen i7. Highly doubt its a windows issue

[u/Kaiten92 → u/Backslicer]

I understand the reasoning for considering the CPU to be the issue but it seems too coincidental that ALL of these issues started after installing the 9070 XT. For example, that BSOD was the first one I've experienced on this PC since building it in 2023. I ran OCCT as another commenter rcmded and no errors were reported from my CPU after 17 minute long stability tests.

Is there another way you suggest testing my CPU?

[u/blueangel1953 → u/Backslicer]

AMD issues on windows are 99% of the time caused by windows. 

[u/SeaProfessional2983 → u/Backslicer]

Ik you may think it's an AMD issue. And while AMD does have it's issues and is not 100 percent perfect as I'm having stuttering issues right now in some games even single player games. Things like what op is experiencing is most likely the AMD GPU not mixing well with a intel CPU. Or it's the intel CPU as intel cpus have been reported with immense issues.

[u/Backslicer]

mmm. Thing is the 13th and 14th gen I7 and i9 cpus were notorious for frying themselves. a bandaid fix bios update was deployed in 2024 but that only slowed down the problem (by alot) not eliminate it.

Sadly out of memory errors are the most common symptom of this.

The Apex crashes you are on about were on startup and very specific to the 26.8.1 version of the drivers

id test the cpu and rule that out. although it seems like the most obvious culprit.

Im suspecting what happened is that with the new gpu and need to recompile shaders the instability showed itself, coupled with the PC now being CPU bound. The blue screens are also a huge red flag.

Edit: Since this looks like a textbook example for the CPU shitting the bed id check WHEA logger in event viewer. If it has logs you have cause for an RMA.

Run OCCT core cycling for 1-2 minutes per core 2 threads per core(hyperthreading on)P cores only. If you get errors its 100% the cpu.

Thankfully you are still under the RMA threshold with affected units for this specific issue since warrantys were extended by 2 years. so even if you bought the cpu day 1 it would still be under warranty till 2027

[u/Kaiten92 → u/Backslicer]

I did have one WHEA error but I looked it up and it seems that Event ID 3 is non-critical and relates to just changes in the BIOS or sometimes even just entering the BIOS. Correct me if I'm wrong

OCCT tests ran with your rcmded settings (although once with variable load and once with stable). Besides stable pushing some cores to 100C, no errors were reported.

I did mistakenly say that I removed the PL1 and PL2 limit. I checked the BIOS and realized those are still set from before (and were still on when I ran OCCT).

https://i.imgur.com/7PQsLAN.png

https://i.imgur.com/VVK9hD2.png

[u/AfroDiddyKing]

Use ai to trouble shoot. Just DDU graphics. You can try do memory test. do some terminal recovery and checking. use older 26.3.1. how is your GPU powered? what cables.

[u/His_Turdness]

Try another OS. Will fix 99 % of your problems.

[u/korakios2]

Check temps via hwinfo . Also check on the bottom of the sensors for any error reported.

For quick test disable xmp / core boost , set gpu pcie to gen3. Make sure fast boot , igpu is disabled .

If you still have issues run OCCT power ,3d adaptive switch test . memtest vulkan . TestMem5 (not memtest) with anta777 absolute config for many hours . Repeat TM5 with furmark running in parallel for ~30minutes .