Back in the very beginning of February, 2021, I purchased a new PC. The only reason for buying a new PC, because my old one was working fine running P3D, was to move on to MSFS 2020. There was no way that I could run MSFS 2020 on my old rig. I brought the new PC home, and after installing Email, and a few other things, I purchased The Premium Deluxe Version  of MSFS2020. I was really impressed with all that came with it, a camera system, AI traffic, great looking scenery and terrain, weather, clouds, etc,etc,, Things that I had spent a fortune on with FSX and P3D trying to get them to look halfway decent, were already included. 

Now comes the bad part, almost immediately I started having CTDs. I would go sometimes for a few days, and then a rash of CTDs would start, sometimes every other flight. Most of these would happen on approach and landing. The other thing that would happen is AMD driver timeouts. I would get one of these about every 8-10 CTDs. I tried every suggestion that people made, on getting rid of these CTDs, and sometimes they would stop for a few days, and then start again with a vengeance. Now when I posted my problems, a few people said " There must be something wrong with your system"...Now the money I spent for this brand new PC, was alot for me, being semi retired and on SS plus a small part time consulting. So I denied that my new PC was a fault, it must be bugs in MSFS2020 because others were reporting identical problems. 

I then involved technical support from CLX, the manufacturer, and they were more than helpful, which really surprised me. I had always owned Dell PCs, and their tech support is beyond horrible. So the first two techs, remote visited my PC, and updated graphics drivers, and even GPU chipsets. The first tech spend about 1 1/2 hours checking everything on my PC, and even stayed around while I ran MSFS 2020, to see if it would crash again. Thinking maybe it was fixed, I bid him farewell, and for a few days it ran OK, and then the CTDs were back with a vengeance. Another Tech call, and the 2nd tech said he would ship me a new GPU, because I was still getting these AMD GPU driver timeouts . I got the new GPU, installed it, one flight and CTD. Call # 3 to tech support, and by this time, just launching MSFS 2020 would produce a GPU Driver Timeout within a minute or two. 

I then said to the 3rd tech, " I had never owned an AMD GPU before, only Nvidia, and never had problems like I am having now. Is there anyway, since my PC has done this from the beginning, that I can get a Nvidia GPU to replace this AMD GPU. He put me on hold for a couple of minutes, and got back and said he could do that, but the GPU would be an upgrade from what I had, it would cost me around $150. I immediately said yes, that is fine. He then said they would have to replace the PSU also with a 750 watt because the new GPU required more power, but that was only around $20 more. Now he said, they could ship me the GPU and power supply UPS air, and I could install them myself. I said, how about I ship the PC to you, and you replace the parts, and check it out to make sure it is fixed?  He said that was fine. He emailed me a UPS Air label, I packed up the PC in the original box which I had kept and shipped it to them. I explained to them that only MSFS 2020 was crashing the PC, so to make sure they used it to test the PC after the parts were replaced. He told me if I had any more problems, they would just give me a brand new replacement PC. A week later I get an email that my PC was repaired, MSFS 2020 was running fine on it, and they were shipping it back to me. 

I got the PC back, hooked it up, and started flyinging MSFS 2020 . I tried different aircraft, different regions, different airports, and last week I got the PMDG DC6 and I have about 20+ hours with that aircraft.  Not one CTD, no driver timeouts, MSFS is now as solid as a rock. All along it was either the GPU or the PSU, and I strongly suspect that the AMD GPU and MSFS2020 didn't work well together. 

So where does the apology come in, well that is because I argued with several people telling that the issue must be my PC, and not MSFS2020, and I would deny that this couldn't be true, because I had a brand new PC. So they were right, and I was wrong.  Anyway, I am so grateful for CLX fixing my problem, and now MSFS is a joy to fly.  

Edited June 28, 20214 yr by Bobsk8

No problem with that here Bob.  Thanks for reporting back, and I am pleased it is all working good for you now.

I think we can all suffer from the trait of being stubborn and thinking we are right against advice of others. It is just a human thing.

Edited June 28, 20214 yr by bobcat999

Glad you got it sorted!  Chasing computer gremlins can be an aggravating experience.

Apology accepted Bob lol 🙂  

I'd wager it was the original power supply.

5 minutes ago, Greggy_D said:

I'd wager it was the original power supply.

Good point has happened to me - forgot about that 🙂 

I'm impressed with your PC company !  Please provide link to research them.  Thanks !

3 minutes ago, vcarlo said:

I'm impressed with your PC company !  Please provide link to research them.  Thanks !

https://www.clxgaming.com/

29 minutes ago, Greggy_D said:

I'd wager it was the original power supply.

Yeah, I have thought about that. All voltages seemed normal, but an intermittent like that is rough to diagnose without just swapping it out with another part. 

I'm glad it worked out for you. Hardware is very complicated and frustrating business! And thank you for letting us know that problem have been identified and fixed! It will be good example for others who may experience similar problems!

Assuming that an add-on in the Community folder is not causing the CTD, I think a lot of MSFS CTDs happen because of overclocking of hardware.  But in your case, it was just faulty hardware.

It happens to everyone. I got a bad motherboard before that gave me a lot of blue screens but when I switched the motherboard, the blue screens went away and the computer became stable.  I also got unlucky recently with a bad power supply, despite the power supply being new.  Faulty hardware happens to a lot of people.

Having said that, MSFS will push hardware to its limit.  This is why it's not suggested to overclock your hardware, because overclocking can lead to instability and CTDs, especially with MSFS.  For me, MSFS has been pretty stable, albeit I prefer shorter flights, about 30 minutes to 1 hour long flights.

It's reports like this that help us all.

 C'mon Bob cheer up - we've all been through it,  

Cheers

bs

Glad to hear things are going well for you, and thanks for the detailed report, it will diffidently benefit me when I get a new PC.

Have fun flying Bob, also that shop sounds like a very good one.