Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems BG3 shutting down PC entirely

I have witnessed a Sapphire RX 6800 XT Nitro+ that would reliably crash the system the moment its junction temperature reached 110°C (not 109, not 111, always precisely 110). The initial symptoms looked a lot like what's described in this thread: most games were totally fine, but some games (the ones pushing this particular part of the GPU a little further) would cause a system crash after some play time. The issue would also appear if the card was moved into a system that was perfectly before.

I concede that this is not a hard proof of an issue in the GPU BIOS (we could not attempt an update to test with a newer version). But given how repeatable the issue was, and the fact that the card was part of one of the first production batches, I remain convinced that this was a bug in the thermal throttling mechanism.

For the chipset issue, I have also been able to fully and reliably reproduce the issue on completely distinct B550-based configurations on Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD (also tested with various BIOS versions). That was about 7 months ago.

As much as I want to support the underdog, gotta say I have not been impressed with AMD's QA those last few years.

Leaving a PC shut off like that to get it to come back on is either a heat issue or a PSU.


This is a fairly high junction temp and sounds like a cooling issue. Try removing the side panel and see if the card stays cooler (want to see around 80C or so for junction, below 90C is okay. If the card is till getting to 100C plus on the junction contact manufacturer support as it sounds like the card is having a cooling issue.

The shutdown could still be from a PSU, as a CPU or GPU hits these higher heat numbers they can have increase power draw and it could be the PSU is not keeping up. However I would first look at that GPU temp.

From what I read at the time, 110°C for the junction hot spot was fairly common for factory-OC cards and not considered an issue by AMD. My own 6800 XT that I had at the time occasionally reached the infamous 110°C and just throttled down without issue. It was from a newer production batch though (thanks the chip shortage crisis for that !). Also noteworthy; the other sensors of the card would stay within the 70°C - 80°C range.


I don't think so. During our tests, we moved the card into my own system where it would exhibit the same behavior.

In the end, we "fixed" the issue by installing 2 extra fans blowing directly on the card.

If your having to add fans to blow directly on the card the issue is air flow.

That really tells that the GPU has HW issues and/or AMD has drivers issues. Cooling the card makes it not crash. Proper behavior would have been automatic throttle like you mentioned.

So it would be AMD and/or Sapphire issues you originally claimed I guess.

Hi this issue has been happening to me for a couple of months now. In trying to fix this issue I've changed a lot of hardware and the issue has seemed to persist.

Build is currently:
-AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT
-Ryzen 7 5800 X3D
-32 GB Corsair (2 16GB sticks)
-850W Corsair gold PSU
-ASUS TUF x570 plus wifi motherboard
- 850W Corair gold power supply

Initially I was using a 750W PSU and changed it out for another 750W PSU. My experience was that the shutdowns stopped for roughly 3 weeks before becoming a daily issue again and onyl with Baldurs Gate 3.
I eventually moved up to an 850W PSU which once more after several weeks began to experience the same shutdowns. Usually after 1-4 hours of BG3. This occurs whether my settings are at low, medium, or ultra.
In desperation over the past week I have tried a new motherboard (Same model but brand new board), New RAM, Upgrading to Win 11 with a clean install, and uninstallign and then reinstalling my GPU drivers.

I can't fathom what could be causing the issue at this point. Temperatures do not exceed 72-75 degrees on the CPU nor 77-80 on the GPU end. No power kernal errors in the event viewer following these shutdowns.
Please can someone help with this issue?

@proyal upping your power supply only helps if there is enough actual power so if your mom is turning on the microwave to cook and your sister is running the washing machine there may not be enough to also run your gaming at the same time

Thank you for the reply. I don't think I'm short on wattage however. Wattage calculators put my system between 600-699 watts. At 850W I should have more than enough power, and when I've asked others for help on the matter I've been told my 850 PSU should definitely be more than enough.

To Those who still have this problem i suggest :

- Run BG3 on Administrator mode

- Use ThrottleStop app , set overall as low or battery , disable turbo and speed step on the 2 checkboxes. WARNING : setting ThrottleStop with Performance mode WILL cause the computer to turn off in BG3

Hi
This is not hardware issue given the fact that I'm using an Intel i5 12600 + 5700XT AMD and I get these shutdown.
There are not reboot but clean shutdown however as mentioned before unexpected (windows event logs)
I've for my part be able to fix it.
* I've uninstall the last windows update it was (2023-10 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 for x64-based Systems (KB5031358))
* flash my bios for mainboard (z690 gigabyte) to last version
* update AMD driver to last version 23.10.1
* Run windows check for system integrity see here https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/...system-file-checker-in-microsoft-windows (this found error and repair)

Since this no restart anymore.
Hope it can help

Software cannot shut down a computer. It's impossible. What is happening is you are overheating. The same would happen with any other modern game that you run. You need to resolve why that's happening (it'll be a hardware issue). Check that all your fans are working, check that you don't have exhaust fans pulling air in instead of pushing it out, make sure your case has enough airflow for the hardware you are using, check that your heatsinks are properly seated, etc.

Use Throttlestop to stop your cpu / gpu running wild

look at the left side of the app and disable speedstep and disable turbo

this will help

https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/

Sorry but this is just not true. Software shuts down a PC all the time, how do you think Windows can shut down a computer? Over the years I have seen Windows cause system shutdowns through file corruption as well. It is not common but it can and does sometimes happen.

Windows is a special case as it's the OS. A video game cannot and will not ever be responsible for your PC shutting down. That is always a hardware issue (overheating, insufficient power, improperly seated components, dying hardware, etc.).

These posts are common on the forums of every game. They are always hardware-related.

also one thing ppl who trouble shoot computers sometime missed ..

- Cables (HDMI , Power extension . VGA) , Power Plug extension , unstable power (not using stabilizer/UPS) sometimes contribute to these random turn off..

- i would replace HDMI cables with higher quality cables for starter , not necessarily the most expensive but make sure it support the 4K

- also check if you used too much device on a single power chord extension , a cheap power extension unit can be bad for electric stability

I managed to resolve this issue by replacing the PSU ultimately. I decided to go for an ATX 3.0 model: Corsair RM850e.

I know the ATX 3.0 PSUs have better management of power fluctuations for the GPU so I don’t know if that’s why it’s fixed the issue completely but I haven’t had a single crash/power down since I did the upgrade (and it’s been a couple months since I originally posted!)

I also note I’m still on driver 537.34 currently (not the latest but I left it as long as possible to be sure it wasn’t something that was patched out of a faulty nvidia driver issue. This was the drivers I was on when the problem first occurred, so it was definitely the PSU at fault - not GPU or drivers.

I can now play the game on max settings with zero issues even if I have twitch and Spotify open on a separate monitor.

Hope you guys having the same issue manage to resolve it also.

Hi all. For those with AMD cards I might have found a solution that has been working for me. I have a Radeon 6750XT and even after swapping in 3 different PSUs the issue occurred. GPU temps never exceeded 77-80 degrees HOWEVER based on some research on other forums BG3 seems to create short bursts of heat at the junction temps. Enough to trigger shut downs. This happens regardless of playing on ultra or even low with all settings down.

My solution turned out to be MSI afterburner. My default core clock speed is 2680 however turning down the core clock speed to 2580 has completely solved my issue and I haven’t had a single shutdown even with all graphics settings maxed out.

You will lose frames turning down the clock speed but it does seem to solve the issue. I would suggest anyone having this issue still to give this a try as it doesn’t require swapping out any hardware.

I want to reiterate that although this is a hardware issue, BG3 is the only game that forces this issue. Even cyberpunk maxed out and in 4K does not cause this issue for my system. Whether this means it’s an optimization issue or something else entirely is well beyond my knowledge.

Yep, I read Proyal's post and in fact, lowered my core clock speed with MSI Afterburner and I've had zero shutdowns since! I was chasing this bugaboo with "Spiderman 1" and had been simply turning off Turbo Boost on my Asus Strix Z790 motherboard. However now, with the core clock lowered, I no longer have to do this and can run everything at full speed with no reboots!!!