Hard PC crashes caused by Affinity Designer

[MatthewBowker]

Hello,

In October I upgraded my desktop PC with the following components:

• AMD Ryzen 3800x
• Gigabyte Auros Pro B550m motherboard
• 32GB DDR3 3200MHz HyperX memory
• 1TB Samsung 960 Pro NVMe SSD
• 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD
• AMD Rx 5700 GPU
• Seasonic 550W 80 plus bronze PSU

Since upgrading I have experienced a number of hard crashes, similar to switching the PC off at the wall or experiencing a power cut, which have occurred multiple times a day without any warning. After returning a number of parts believing them to be faulty and other troubleshooting techniques I was still having issues. Here's a list of things I have tried to resolve the problem:

• I've tried two separate motherboards as I returned the first thinking it was faulty
• Updated the BIOS firmware on the motherboard from F1 to F4 and to F10
• Disabled and enabled XMP Profile 1
• Tried replacing my PSU for another 550W PSU which has the required power capability for this build
• Installed two separate dual memory module kits in the correct DIMM slots (as specified in the motherboard manual), both kits have been compatible sets
• Clean installed Windows 10 multiple times on two different SSD drives, both NVMe and SATA
• Updated Windows 10 to the latest version
• Updated all chipset and GPU drivers to the latest versions
• Used different power cables and sockets to rule out instability
• Used HWiNFO diagnostic software to analyse if there are any power spikes, overheating or other concerning components, with all results coming back completely fine
• Changed system power settings
• Disabled fast boot up
• Unplugged everything but the essential components
• Disabled motherboard and GPU audio drivers (recommended with Kernel Power 41)
• Run both system fans and the CPU fan at 100% constantly to ensure more than enough airflow. I have also monitored temperatures of all components up to the time of the computer crashing
• Changed the thermal paste (as a result of returning my motherboard)
• Disassembled and reassembled all components to ensure all connections were correctly seated

I ended up taking my PC to a reputable IT specialist who ran the system through a number of stress tests to find absolutely no hardware issues or any issues with Windows 10 itself. I was then told it was very likely to be a software issue with a particular program but was unable to pinpoint which one. Upon collecting my PC I decided to do a factory reset and have proceeded to install a new program every day until I experience another crash. It has been over a week now since my PC has crashed and earlier today I installed Affinity Designer as the next program on the list and within minutes of running the program for the first time my PC crashed. 

It seems as though, through troubleshooting over the last 2 months now that the cause for this crashing is in fact Affinity Designer. Please can someone advise the best route forwards? As a graphic designer this is my work PC and it has been an absolute nightmare over the last 2 months and so I am keen to have this resolved ASAP. The version of Affinity Designer I am running is 1.8.5.703.

I look forward to a response and I appreciate your help in advance.

[walt.farrell]

Windows Event Manager (or other built-in logging tool) should have information telling you what happened to cause the crash. If you could check that it might show something relevant.

But generally an application cannot do this directly, as they run at an unprivileged level of authority in the system. But an application can, for example, try to draw something on the screen. At that point, the graphics driver, with runs with a higher level of authority, can crash the system.

[MatthewBowker]

@walt.farrell thanks for your reply. 

Every time my PC has crashed since the upgrade it has been the exact some critical error in Windows Event Viewer, Kernel-Power 41 (63). I don't understand why it keeps crashing though for Affinity Designer. The last few crashes have been either when Designer is running in the background or if I'm actually designing something in the program. I can game on the system without any issue and after running multiple stress tests there hasn't been any issue with a spike in CPU or GPU load which has caused it to cut out. What would you recommend I do? 

[walt.farrell]

It probably is a hardware problem (power supply) or a problem with the motherboard or bios or graphics card or graphics card driver.

For example, here's one result from Googling for

windows crash kernel power 41 63

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/pc-crashes-kernel-power-41-63/1049eac8-b803-4509-8a23-0d3f57e85562

Personally, I have had errors on a PC that happen only with a particular program that turned out to be hardware or drivers. A program like Designer may do some little thing that is perfectly valid but is different from what all your other programs do. And that may trigger the error.

 

[ziplock9000]

Almost certainly a hardware, driver or OS issue. Applications should not be able to crash a system, only appear to be the cause.