MSFS kept crashing.. due to my GPU not getting enough power

Hi all, just thought I’d share this..

 

Some of you may know that I upgraded my pc last weekend. New motherboard, CPU and more DDR4 ram.

I would be using the same RTX2080ti GPU which I bought earlier in the year.

 

I got got the new build working & installed MSFS. I actually had a few problems installing it, which is a first for me. Being a former alpha tester, I have uninstalled & reinstalled MSFS many times previously and never had a single download or installation problem. Anyway, for some reason it took a few attempts this time.

With the sim installed I went to my local airport EGNM (Leeds/Bradford) and it crashed! “FlightSimulator.exe has stopped working”

This happened a few times over the next couple of days. I decided to wipe the lot again... not only MSFS but Windows too.

I kept getting the error followed by the inevitable CTD. I couldn’t even start a flight as it would crash within seconds of getting to the welcome page.

It was starting to bother me now, so I did a bit of googling and it became clear that I had been a bit stupid. When I installed the RTX2080ti, I had only used one power lead from the CPU. The lead had a splitter on the end so it had all 16 pins were into the graphics card as required, but presumably doing it this way wasn’t giving enough power. Now I had been using the GPU this way for the last six months and never had any issues. Still.. I plugged in a second lead from the psu into the graphics card. After all what have I got to lose?

What a difference! I reinstalled MSFS without any problems.. and it now runs brilliantly! No crashes whatsoever! :)

Once thing which you can’t really not notice is the (now very loud!) GPU fans!

I can’t believe I’d been that stupid. Maybe if MSFS (Alpha) had crashed when I first bought the card then I might have done this earlier but it always worked fine. Maybe the much faster CPU has meant the GPU now needs more power? I don’t know.

What I do know is that flight simulator is working and the problems were my own doing.

 

One other interesting thing... I only use two M2 SSD drives now. Windows is on one & flight sim the other. When I installed flight sim it asked where I wanted the initial download to go & then again for the rest of the sim. So not only is the main core of the sim installed on my second drive, but the first bit is too (or at least that’s we’re I told it to install)

 

 

Regards

Steve

Edited September 24, 2020 by g7rta

Glad you got it sorted!

Good!

Make sure your Powe Supply unit is also the recommended for CPU and GPU

I think your will be higher than 650watts REAL ? make sure its real output and not nominal

Good!

Make sure your Powe Supply unit is also the recommended for CPU and GPU

I think your will be higher than 650watts REAL ? make sure its real output and not nominal

 

Absolutely:)

When I bought the 2080ti I also bought a 750w psu.

Last week, to make sure I’d have enough power for when I eventually upgrade to the 30 series, I also bought a 1000w psu, so I’m good to go now.

 

Regards

Steve

After the last update, my GPU demand jumped from ~56% up to ~65%. That might also have created more power demand for your card? My CPU hasn't budged from ~16-17%.