Computer black screens and crases when recording with OBS

Hey everyone so I have a rather serious issue when recording with OBS, around 20-30 minutes into a recording both of my monitors go black and the computer crashes. I also hear my gpu fans to up to max speed when this happens.

When playing games without obs turned on this never happens, but when recording I get crashes regularly. I've also noticed that this only happens when I'm playing games that are a bit more taxing on the system, stuff like Tarkov, Fallout, Ghost of Tsushima and so on, where as "lighter" games don't suffer from these issues (like project zomboid, I recorded 38 40-minute videos of it with no problems).

At first I thought this might be an issue with my gpu or my system but this only happens when recording with obs, I did a number of stress tests on my system and I've had no issues, my temperatures are ok across the board so I figured it has to be something for obs and maybe my GPU driver (I have an AMD 7900XT) I tried rolling back to the previous version of the driver and I get the same issue. I also tried using different encoders when recording and that didn't help either.

Looking at crash logs, there isn't one in obs whenever this happens and in the event log, I can't really see anything special that might lead to a crash. I've attached the event long down below.

Can someone please help me?

Instability and computer crash under taxing load is a sign of some hardware issue. Common causes are overclocking, overheating, bad power supply, defective memory, defective GPU, defective CPU/Mainboard or just a rare case of motherboard versus gpu incompatibility. Perform a system memory test and make sure the memory is listed as compatible in the motherboard RAM compatibility list.

If you ruled that out, and you tried different graphics drivers and made sure your motherboard Bios is updated to the newest available from motherboard vendor, hardware remains as issue. Check expansion card/memory seating, but that's probably not really the cause.

koala said:

Instability and computer crash under taxing load is a sign of some hardware issue. Common causes are overclocking, overheating, bad power supply, defective memory, defective GPU, defective CPU/Mainboard or just a rare case of motherboard versus gpu incompatibility. Perform a system memory test and make sure the memory is listed as compatible in the motherboard RAM compatibility list.

If you ruled that out, and you tried different graphics drivers and made sure your motherboard Bios is updated to the newest available from motherboard vendor, hardware remains as issue. Check expansion card/memory seating, but that's probably not really the cause.

Click to expand...

I did all those checks, updated bios, and it's all fine. I've also had this PC for around a year, and I've never had issues with it crashing under any circumstances, unless I'm recording with OBS. I also did loads of stress tests on the PC, and I never had any instability. I get that OBS and generally recording is fairly taxing on the system but it shouldn't cause problems on a PC like this, and if it was a hardware problem I figured it would cause crashes regardless of OBS if I'm running super taxing games, I've played Ghost of Tsushima for example in 4K and I didn't have any crashes. Could it be an encoder issue not working well with AMD GPUs?

If this was a general issue, there would be much more reports in general and much more consistent/similar reports on the forums. But it's a very rare topic, and all existing reports taken together suggest computer lock up is a random issue, happening randomly, not an issue with a specific computer part and not a single definite operation that initiates it. Exactly what would be the result of the occasional defective computer or not properly designed computer. Having such a defective computer is really awful and nobody wants one, but you have to realize that it is exactly this after all.

In all these years, there was just one real software issue with computer lock up. A graphics driver (one specific manufacturer) issue that resulted in a Windows kernel issue. It started to happen for some users, consistently, the same for all. See https://obsproject.com/blog/the-tale-of-a-legendary-hotfix
But don't expect that to happen such thing again any time soon.

mine goes to blue screen crash after latest obs update, the one from last month and prior never crashed for me but now when i run in admin mode it crashes & i have to do a total restart. computer has always been fine & stress tests come back fine.

I tried using the software encoder with less cpu usage and larger files, so far, I haven't had a crash, but I'll do more extensive testing.