22 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

the only program that had a problem was MSFS. Even the stress tests that the company did showed no problem. 

as "research has shown" conducted extensively by IgorsLab (The battle of graphics card against power supply – power consumption and peak loads demystified):

RTX 3090, unlike its successor RTX 4090, exposes extreme load spikes (current overload, up to 250% above rated value) for a few milliseconds, which PSUs below 900-1000 watts could not sustain, resulting in hard PC crashes and reboots. maximum PSU loads like this can not be tested nor revealed with cheap power meters nor replicated through the standard stress tests used in your case, because all they do is create long term maximum rated power draw on the CPU/GPU and power supply, unlike MSFS which can create such extreme power load spikes in the GPU for a few milliseconds = 1/1000 seconds.

solution options:

• don't use MSFS, play x-plane instead 😊
• RTX 4090, greatly reduced these current (Ampere) load spikes
• stronger power supply of 1000 watts
• new PCIe 5 ATX v3.0 Power Supply (can sustain 200% rated overloads for a few milliseconds):

https://pcper.com/2022/09/a-general-overview-of-pcie-5-0-power-supplies-details-thanks-to-msi/

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/msi-meg-ai1000p-pcie-5-atx-v30-power-supply-review

https://www.igorslab.de/en/the-battle-of-graphics-card-against-power-supply-power-consumption-and-peak-loads-demystified/

https://www.igorslab.de/en/when-the-power-supply-suddenly-shuts-off-load-peaks-from-graphics-card-and-cpu-measured-and-evaluated-together-basics-practice/2/

https://www.igorslab.de/en/wonder-how-invidia-the-crashes-of-the-force-rtx-3080-andrtx-3090-will-be-removed-and-still-will-be-removed-even-from-the-power-supplies-analysis/

 

Edited January 3, 20233 yr by turbomax

On 1/2/2023 at 2:32 AM, Luke said:

You guys keep saying that, yet there's no blue screen. I can restart the sim and every 2nd or 3rd time it loads fine, and then it doesn't. It has no instability or adverse effects on other software, and I can run p3D for 12+ hours at a time with no instability what so ever.

Hardware errors are far more "graceful" these days, so it's quite rare to get a whole system freeze. For example a graphics driver can crash and restart and you will just see the screen go blank briefly. No blue screen doesn't mean no hardware issues (not saying you do have them, but they aren't ruled out). Overly aggressive memory timings often result in application CTD without an obvious cause, but the core system and OS remain running okay.

MFS taxes different parts of your hardware more than P3D, so again; no P3D issues doesn't mean the hardware and drivers are flawless.

A good first hand example I can give you of all the above is COD WZ and my overclocks; I can get the overclock on CPU and GPU to pass tests like Prime95, I can play various other video games without issue but COD WZ will Crash to Desktop (CTD) after a few minutes when things get busier on screen. Back off my overclock a bit and it fixes the issue and I have a stable game. There's something COD WZ is using that nothing else I have is.

I do understand it's very frustrating and without good knowledge of the logs and diagnosis techniques it can be infuriating trying to find the cause; it could be a USB peripheral, incompatible addon, corrupted data or cache, faulty or loose hardware, driver issue, setting issue, pushing too hard on your system, lack of clean power, or just some rare and unfortunate compatibility issue. My point is just because other software works fine, doesn't mean your hardware is without fault.

Edited January 3, 20233 yr by ckyliu

On 12/30/2022 at 12:56 PM, andyjohnston.net said:

I can't speak for everyone, but there are so many CTDs now that this program has become essentially useless.

I could help. I got them all the time and figured out why. Too many stupid mods and following bad advice. I use addon linker and got rid of a bunch of freeware stuff.....WeLoveVFR/Solar Farms, AI shipping etc etc and only use the airports that I will depart/arrive at. Otherwise, most of these are turned off until they get updated. 

I reset my Nvidia Control Panel to default except I turned on Gsync and High Performance. I turned my LOD/TLOD to 150 as I see a minimal difference when flying VFR/IFR. My 4k monitor is bumped down to "2k" using TAA and locked to 30fps. Everything is fairly smooth in a PMDG 737, FSLTL traffic at 20ish, GA traffic mod is on at 30% and Multiplayer is off completely. 

Also my DD Chicago landmarks and airport I have turned off as I found them causing major performance issues around the area.

No CTDs on long flights or performance issues. 

5 hours ago, ckyliu said:

 it could be a USB peripheral, incompatible addon, corrupted data or cache, faulty or loose hardware, driver issue, setting issue, pushing too hard on your system, lack of clean power, or just some rare and unfortunate compatibility issue. My point is just because other software works fine, doesn't mean your hardware is without fault.

^

This is a great point. USB issues can cause it as well. Have to set them to stay on at all time etc. 

On 1/2/2023 at 3:57 AM, sd_flyer said:

Let’s start with your pc config, os version. After that please share graphic settings and rolling cache size.

Windows 10 22H2. RTX3080, i7-9700K, 32GB at DDR3200 and a pair of M.2 SSDs. Video is at DX11, rolling cache 8GB. I've deleted it and it makes no difference.

Only thing in community folder is PMDG 738. Only other add-on is FSUIPC7, I've tried running with and without to test SimConnect connectivity. No difference.

 

14 hours ago, ckyliu said:

I do understand it's very frustrating and without good knowledge of the logs and diagnosis techniques it can be infuriating trying to find the cause; it could be a USB peripheral, incompatible addon, corrupted data or cache, faulty or loose hardware, driver issue, setting issue, pushing too hard on your system, lack of clean power, or just some rare and unfortunate compatibility issue. My point is just because other software works fine, doesn't mean your hardware is without fault.

The difficulty I have with this approach is that it is essentially non-falsifiable - what test can I do to rule out hardware issues?

Proper engineering is incompatible with non-falsifiable hypotheses.

5 minutes ago, Luke said:

rolling cache 8GB. I've deleted it and it makes no difference.

In MSFS' settings, delete the rolling cache again, set the limit to zero GB, then set it to off.

Edited January 4, 20233 yr by F737MAX

Just now, Luke said:

Windows 10 22H2. RTX3080, i7-9700K, 32GB at DDR3200 and a pair of M.2 SSDs. Video is at DX11, rolling cache 8GB. I've deleted it and it makes no difference.

Only thing in community folder is PMDG 738. Only other add-on is FSUIPC7, I've tried running with and without to test SimConnect connectivity. No difference.

 

Great you have plenty of RAM. Note my old PC was running on 16 gigs RAM MSFS run perfectly, but in certain "rich" graphic settings I would caused CTD. Let me tell you more. I had all hanging sim in loading MSFS, hanging sim after pressing "FLY" and other thing. There are always hardware/software conflict but it hard to pint point.

For the start lets start this. In your window desktop, at the right corner were your windows START icon  type search field  "view all problem reports". It should bring report app, run it and check for then run this app. Then check if there any entries for  MicrosoftFlightSimulator.exe .

Next look at  your device manager and check devices under your "sound, video and game controllers". Do you have any Realtek or Razer sound cards? Do you have any Razer free optimization software?

MSFS is more power hungry than any other game or programme I have. You might try a new PSU to start with. A cheap one used flat out and under maximum load will eventually fail or give these sorts of errors in my experience. (Or you could take the top off yours and look for things like white gunge coming out of a capacitor.) Just a thought. Also bear in mind that the stated power of many cheap PSU's is often grossly overstated. Peak power is very different to sustainable power. Cheap PSU's also have poor regulation and smoothing.

Edited January 4, 20233 yr by jarmstro

12 hours ago, Luke said:

Windows 10 22H2. RTX3080, i7-9700K, 32GB at DDR3200 and a pair of M.2 SSDs. Video is at DX11, rolling cache 8GB. I've deleted it and it makes no difference.

Only thing in community folder is PMDG 738. Only other add-on is FSUIPC7, I've tried running with and without to test SimConnect connectivity. No difference.

 

Most important, PSU?

 

13 hours ago, Luke said:

The difficulty I have with this approach is that it is essentially non-falsifiable - what test can I do to rule out hardware issues? Proper engineering is incompatible with non-falsifiable hypotheses.

That's many hundreds of thousands of lines of code and millions of transistors of engineering all interacting. If the logs (event viewer etc) aren't clearly pointing to a culprit, there are free stress tests such as MemTest86+ for the RAM, Prime95 for the CPU, Unigine Heaven or FurMark for the GPU and these software tools can rule a lot out but the weak point  is they load up components of the system individually and not collectively so they don't stress the PSU or all the data buses. AIDA64 has some similar benchmarking tools too. These tools wouldn't rule out configuration issues but they would tell you component was probably causing the CTD so you know where to look in more detail.

Preferable to the above though: could you partition your hard drive and place a fresh install of Windows and MFS on that to see if the problem persists? Don't put anything else on the install at all to being with. If this fixes it, then it is highly likely a configuration issue such as drivers, addons, software conflict etc and you would know the hardware is A-OK for MFS (assuming you run with the minimum of peripherals/controllers to start with) and that a worse case scenario is reinstalling everything should fix it. However, if you still have the same failure mode you can try some different graphics drivers, if that doesn't then fix it at that point there is some fundamental incompatibility with your hardware or it's failing/misbehaving so you can start to investigate things like setting BIOS to safe default settings instead of optimised stuff.

Hope this helps. I know the above is an arduous pain in the posterior but sounds like the most time effective option at this point if you've "picked the low hanging fruit"

Edited January 4, 20233 yr by ckyliu

13 hours ago, Luke said:

The difficulty I have with this approach is that it is essentially non-falsifiable - what test can I do to rule out hardware issues?

Proper engineering is incompatible with non-falsifiable hypotheses.

The best way to even get an initial direction to take further troubleshooting is to start with the logs. Windows event viewer. System, and Application. And as @sd_flyer said, "windows START icon  type search field  "view all problem reports"".

Getting some information to work with is always the best place to start. Otherwise, everything is a pot shot.

I can't think of a single test that taxes a system like MSFS. Maybe run a benchmark and a full memory test at the same time? Not being able to duplicate the exact conditions outside of the simulator for testing does not make testing as a whole non-falsifiable. It does make testing more difficult The simulator is the test. Use the results.  

2 hours ago, MDFlier said:

I can't think of a single test that taxes a system like MSFS.

NickN used to stress using OCCT because it was the closest to testing systems together as MSFS would use them. Back when I was actively overclocking I could pass MemTest and P95 and others and still fail OCCT. As I understood it from Nick, it tests the interaction of the GPU, CPU and memory together which is usually where MSFS hits hard.

On 1/3/2023 at 5:25 PM, Luke said:

Windows 10 22H2. RTX3080, i7-9700K, 32GB at DDR3200 and a pair of M.2 SSDs. Video is at DX11, rolling cache 8GB. I've deleted it and it makes no difference.

Only thing in community folder is PMDG 738. Only other add-on is FSUIPC7, I've tried running with and without to test SimConnect connectivity. No difference.

 

Got it. What else is running in the sim?

Anything else from the marketplace?

Any programs running in the background?

Are the USB settings set to where they do not go into an idle state?

Any Overclock including memory or gpu?

Edited January 5, 20233 yr by Sonosusto

9 hours ago, Sonosusto said:

Got it. What else is running in the sim? Anything else from the marketplace?

Nothing besides PMDG. It's a fresh, vanilla install.

9 hours ago, Sonosusto said:

Any programs running in the background?

Just regular Windows processes.

9 hours ago, Sonosusto said:

Are the USB settings set to where they do not go into an idle state? Any Overclock including memory or gpu?

Yes, no overclock beyond standard manufacturer OC on the GPU. No funny sound cards - basic HDMI out via the NV card to a separate AV system.

FWIW, every single version of MSFS worked fine on this machine before.

Cheers