How high are you running the game? I have a lesser processor and a 1660 Ti, it runs fine. I'm also not playing it for extended periods of time, maybe an hour here and there. I've even played it a few years ago on Steam Deck. It wasn't the greatest experience, but worked.. sort of. Idk what could be causing your PC to act indifferent.

I haven't overclocked anything and not running the game at highest settings, just enough to have a decent FPS.

I might install it again to see what my settings are and how it performs without 2K launcher.

A denuvo crash looks like this, game freezes for around lets say 5 seconds, then Desktop. No Unreal Engine crash screen, just just get kicked to desktop.

If you get a Unreal Engine crash report, that's the game crashing.

Bluescreem, shutdowns are pc related. (Power supply, video card)

If pc completely freezes on picture, that's a crash related to ram timings of cheap ram set more than they can actually handle. Also related to cpu problems.

Played on GTX1650 mobile 16gb 3200mhz ram here.

if the game starts and then it did not run i suggest try to reinstall the steam client as most people seems to solved it this way

1) in the main Steam folder, you delete all the files except:

-Steam.exe
-streaming_client.exe
- steamapps Folder


2) Delete any other folder and files except stated above.

3) Next, click the steam.exe and it will continue to reacquire files.
4) try run the game.

5) i usually did this to clear cache,shaders or anything that the Midnight Suns's 2K Anticheat detects that likely caused it to not run.

I know people like to blame that, but there is most likely a config issue with your system or perhaps a bad connection or a part going bad.

Click on your hard drive in the explorer, and check tools, and run check disk. If your running this game on a HDD, also run defrag.

What motherboard do you have? type sys info, look for base motherboard number, and bios number. Use this info to check to see what updates have been published for it. You can then check to see how many bios updates have happened, If you are on the first bios, more than likely that is causing the issue.

Use that to also get the latest chipset for your motherboard, just get the latest chipset anyway and reinstall, check windows updates, and reinstall your graphics drivers, Do it in that order.

Do a clean boot, Check start up and unclick all the other start up stuff outside of your graphics settings, even your virus scanner. then boot steam and the game to see if the problem persists to rule out a conflict.


Lastly, you could just have a faulty power supply, or maybe a loose connection. Pull off the side of the case and see if everything is tight, you said you opened up the case and installed more cooling, sometimes ram can unseat. I'd double check all connections and remove and re-seat the ram. You can also run a ram test just to make sure all your ram is working right.

Maybe one of those will help your issue, it's basically just normal computer maintenance, so worth doing anyway.

My board came in the kit with the i5 and only has h61 written on it. I've had the same Win 10 for years without formatting. Sometimes when I changed the board, I needed to format it to reinstall Windows.

The game simply closes, it doesn't give an error message, sometimes the screen to send data to support appears, but nothing else.

I keep the video drivers updated, keep the PC clean and check for problems whenever possible, I built this PC this year, it has been used for months.

The strange thing is that these crashes only happen with midnight suns, on reddit I've seen people with much more powerful PCs having problems with crashes.

Even with the graphics at minimum, Hogwarts Legacy runs well, God of War 2018 runs at 80 fps, Spiderman Man PS4 runs smoothly at ultra, even Assassin's Creed Origins, which is from Ubisoft, runs without problems. The Witcher 3 on the highest graphics without ray tracing and other next-gen stuff runs fine.

I've already cleared the game cache, forced Steam to change the files I deleted in the folder. Even though my HDD isn't new, the tests are normal.

I'm not the only one complaining about performance being compromised by DRM and denuvo.

Some of the things you mentioned, support asked me to do, when the tips work the game runs normally, I play for hours whenever I can, but after some time it crashes again, the strange thing is that sometimes it runs normally and barely crashes, other times it crashes several times in a row

Newer comps, mainly the 13700/900 and 14700/900 were crashing due to a micro code issue. There is a bios update for that. There was an issue with Unreal engine and intel.

If it run's normally sometimes, and then crashes that is a big red flag there is something off with your system. If it was the game causing the issue there would more posts about this. Granted some people have issues, but your problem does not sound like its a game issue. I've never had the game crash, my sys is 1060 GPU (very similar to yours), 64GB 2666 and 10600 cpu on windows 10, so sort of a similar system though slightly newer on the CPU side.

I'd bet your bios is out of date you updated, it's most likely not current. My board released an update just this summer and it's a 4 or 5 year old board. Stability was part of the update. Check the version and read the updates that have come after. more than likely you will see stability updates which are rather important. Flashing your Bios is not a hard thing to do, but must be done properly or you will wreck your comp. It's rather easy over all, but you do need to follow the steps exactly and youtube will most likely have a vid of your exact MB which is a big help for people that never have done it.

Also, while they do have online flashing, it's not the best idea. It's much better to use a USB drive. Your board is older so it could use a different flashing system than the newer stuff, like having to update bios in order verse jumping to the latest, but with out knowing your board i can't say for sure. If you post your board and bios i can check it out to see if it's worth doing and give you exact steps.

Outside of that, you might want to run some monitoring software, like Speccy to check your temps and your basic operations. You could also run some benchmarks and stress tests to see if there is something else going on. Run a ram test https://www.howtogeek.com/260813/how-to-test-your-computers-ram-for-problems/

Run check disk, Boot into your bios and reset to default though you might want to turn on XMP on the ram profile. You can enable boost if you want.

You could also install CCleaner, and check the driver update page. You could have some out of date .net, intel or other files that could need updating that windows won't flag. You just need to manually find the files with search and run the EXE's.

this game is new, so it's going to stress your system as you are on the lower end of the recommended specs, so that could be causing the issue with power, or stressing it in some other way that other games don't. Like the other person said, it kind of sounds like it could be a power issue or my thinking stability, or maybe a conflict, but it doesn't sound like that unless your the kind of person that likes to have 100 tabs open. Sometimes virus scanners can cause issues but i don't think it's that if you can run the game for a while and it randomly crashes.

When you added more cooling, did you remove and clean your CPU heatsink and replace the thermal paste?.

How many watts is your power supply, and what mother board are you running?

I cleaned the entire cooler, changed the paste, I use Artic Silver, my PSU is Cooler Master 700 watts 80 plus gold

The PC does not freeze, Windows remains normal and the game simply closes by itself.

Are driver update programs reliable?

PSU G700, I use paid Kaspersky with VPN, I have 24 GB RAM ddr4. I don't use a browser when I play, if I need to I use my cell phone

Originally posted by DKH:

Are driver update programs reliable?

I dunno about the auto update stuff, but CCleaner has a tool in it that will flag evey out of date driver. It's rather easy to use say duckduckgo and track them down. It's also a great tool to just clean up your drive though it can delete stuff you need if you just check every box. So if your going to use it to clean up your system, Make sure your checking the right options, and if unsure make backups. It's a really powerful and useful tool. Personally I use it simply to clean browesers 99% of the time or it's driver flag tool every few months.

Seeing you did all that with the chip, i'd defiantly check your ram. The game uses a lot and if your hitting a bad sector it can cause issues. There is a simple tester in windows. https://www.howtogeek.com/260813/how-to-test-your-computers-ram-for-problems/ Just like checkdisk, *(something you can run monthly) It's worth doing on occasion. Also you did take apart the system when you cleaned it. I would defiantly re-seat the ram. Just a couple months ago i had the side cover off and was wiggling something or other and the board flexed just the slightest bit and the comp was randomly having issues starting, then stopped booting, not even getting to post. I removed and resat the ram and it fixed the issue. sometimes they can be in just enough to work, but not enough so it can cause issues.

Also speaking of ram are you sure it's set up right in BIOS? with 24GB it's not the normal paired grouping, do you have 8+2 4s? or 3 8's? Ram likes to work in pairs I've always used pairs even going back to the 90's. If so maybe remove one stick, and make sure you are using the proper two slots with just 2. Sometimes it's slot 2 and 4 if you are paired. Also double check the ram settings in BIOS and put it on auto with XMP enabled for your 2666 boost.

I don't use Kaspersky but i have heard of issues with it in random games over the years. Just to rule it out just reboot and close the scanner, your not going to pick up a virus just launching a game. Your VPN should not be effecting things as it's not transmitting data, but i suppose it can't hurt to just turn them both off and try the game.

Unfortunately, I couldn't run the hirens boot on the pendrive, on my other motherboards it was possible to change the ahci to ide to boot hirens correctly, I don't think it's possible to do this.

I have two ddr4 RAM of 2666 mhz, one of 8 and the other of 16 GB, I think this motherboard does not have dual channel, it seems to be a generic board.

Thanks for the help, I'll check my ram.

I didn't mean automatic driver downloads, there are programs that check drivers and provide updates, but they are not always official drivers, they are compatible drivers.

I don't know which one is reliable.

The two 1TB HDDs are not new but are in good condition, they are slightly fragmented, 5 to 12% at most.

I dunno, as i never used one, but manually checking is easy. Did you run sys info? that will tell you the board and bios version even if it's not marked on the board. Is the timing on the two sticks the same? Might want to try removing the 8 and see if that helps.

As for the drives HHD's defiantly run checkdisk and defrag them. With HDD's i did that monthly, now as a backup every couple months.

Hey DKH, I've looked through your posts so if you've mentioned this then sorry but when does the game crash? Do you crash at the main menu or in game? Is there something that can reliably reproduce it or does it just happen after some time?

If it's on the menu then maybe reinstalling the .NET redistributables could help.

You mention you've run Steam's Verify Files in the OP.

Sounds like you know what you're doing with the hardware side of things.

Oh. One thing I've had with other games is crashes if I've enabled Data Execution Protection for all processes. I can't recall what the error is but there's a pretty distinct event in eventvwr, maybe that would give a clue. But maybe not.

Actually, just checked the DEP thing and I've got it enabled for this. Civ 4 needs it turned off but that's no help.