Arch Linux

GaviTSRA

Member

Registered: 2026-03-10

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

For the past few months, I've been experiencing random freezes while playing games. This frequency of these freezes depends on the game I'm playing. Some examples:
- REPO: freezes about 30 minutes in, sometimes longer, only seems to happen on later levels (=larger maps), but thats mostly speculation
- No Mans Sky: freezes about 30 minutes in
- Minecraft: Only 2 freezes in about 20h of gameplay
- Modulus Demo: Freezes anywhere between 2 minutes to 50+ minutes after starting the game
- Dyson Sphere Program: Freezes 10 to 30 minutes in
- Factorio: No freeze yet
- Silksong: No freeze yet
- The last of us 1 & 2: No freezes (but tlou 2 experienced unrelated issues later)
- Dispatch: No freezes
- Detroit Become Human: One singular freeze about 1h into the game, no freezes in my 3-4h after
- Stardew Valley: No freezes
- Beat Saber: No freezes
- Subnautica: No freezes

When one of these freezes happens, I usually hear a short buzz, afterwards audio is dead. My monitors remain frozen on the last frame, numlock/capslock stop working. SysRQ doesn't work, an active SSH connection to the PC becomes unresponsive and trying to reconnect it is not possible (host not found). The only thing I can do is hard reset the computer.
I have not been able to retrieve any logs about this crash anywhere. Journalctl stops before the time of the crash.

I have a dual boot system, with one ssd for arch and one ssd for windows. After moving REPO to the windows system and playing it there, I have not experienced any freezes in it. In general, I haven't had any issue like this when booted into windows for the whole time I've owned this PC.

Some more system info:
Hardware:
CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K
Motherboard: MSI B760 Gaming Plus WiFi (MS-7D98)
RAM: 16 GB DDR5-4800 (2×8 GB Kingston KF548C38-8, JEDEC, no XMP)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 LHR (ASUS)
Storage:
Crucial P310 2 TB NVMe (Linux)
Micron 2550 1 TB NVMe (Windows)
Monitors:
Acer KG272 S3 @ 1920×1080 180 Hz (DisplayPort)
ASUS VY279HGE @ 1920×1080 144 Hz (HDMI)

Software:
Arch Linux
KDE Plasma 6.6.5
Wayland
NVIDIA nvidia-open 610

Things I've tried, that didn't change anything:
- Use nvidia-580xx-dkms instead
- Use lts-kernel
- Use X11 session
- Disable iGPU
- SSH connection trying to capture logs
- Stress test GPU
- Monitor GPU, CPU, RAM usage while playing games (mangohud, nvidia-smi) (no obvious change before the freeze)
- Disabled PCIe ASPM
- Probably a few other things i forgot

I am pretty new to arch (only have been using it for a few months) and somewhat new to linux in general, so please excuse any wrong/missing terminology.
I've looked for similar issues on here, but everything I've found had differing issues or solutions that didn't work for me.
Testing this issue is pretty annoying because sometimes I just get a "lucky session" where no freeze happens over a longer period than usual, which means it's hard to determine whether or not a change has actually changed anything or not. Testing the frequency of crashes is basically impossible. I have found no way to reliably reproduce them within a reasonable time frame.

Last edited by GaviTSRA (2026-06-25 18:04:38)

noesoespanol

Member

Registered: 2026-03-30

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

Could it "simply" be an overheating issue or a harddisk bad sector?

When I ran Arch inside VMware on Arch host, it randomly "froze" but it was actually running, just the graphics stuff "died". I had to restart the entire VMware. It was total random and I ended up simply not using VMware (it also happened on QEMU/KVM so probably some Wayland / Nvidia crap happening there) Mine "froze" on last frame too, it looked dead but it actually wasn't dead. I could ssh into it and reboot it from there.

Nothing in logs anywhere either, it just "froze".

My system:  Intel 14700HX, 96GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 4070 (laptop), so I mean, I don't think it was low RAM issue or anything like that, at least for me.

Last edited by noesoespanol (2026-06-13 13:33:53)

GaviTSRA

Member

Registered: 2026-03-10

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

I don't think it's an overheating issue, since the temperatures remain normal until the freeze happens (after which I can check anymore). In my case it's also not just the graphics that die, it seems to be basically everything, since even connected ssh sessions become unresponsive and SysRq doesn't do anything (even though I've successfully tested it when my system was running normally).
Also it's never happened on windows under similar or higher loads, so temperatures shouldn't be an issue.
I don't know about a bad disk sector, though i don't know how to test for that or why it would only become an issue when playing certain games.

Last edited by GaviTSRA (2026-06-13 13:42:35)

noesoespanol

Member

Registered: 2026-03-30

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

I don't think it's a bad sector but worth a check perhaps. You said you already checked your RAM so it's not a bad RAM either.

1. Identify Your Drivebash

sudo fdisk -l          # List drives and partitions
lsblk -f               # Shows mounted filesystems

Common targets: /dev/sda, /dev/nvme0n1, etc. Be extremely careful — wrong device = data loss.2. Recommended: SMART Tests (Non-destructive, Faster)Install:bash

sudo pacman -S smartmontools

Check health:bash

sudo smartctl -H /dev/sdX          # Overall health
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdX | less   # Full info (look for Reallocated_Sector_Ct, Current_Pending_Sector, etc.)

Run tests (safe for data):bash

sudo smartctl -t short /dev/sdX    # Quick test
sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sdX     # Full surface test (can take hours)

Monitor progress:bash

sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sdX

Extended/long test is similar to a read-only badblocks scan but uses the drive's built-in firmware.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Badblocks

3. badblocks (More Thorough Surface Scan)Install (usually already present):bash

sudo pacman -S e2fsprogs

Read-only test (safest, non-destructive, works on live/mounted drives)bash

sudo badblocks -sv /dev/sdX > badblocks.log

-s: show progress
-v: verbose

Non-destructive read-write test (good for data on the drive)Unmount the partition first!bash

sudo badblocks -nsv /dev/sdX

(-n = non-destructive)Destructive write test (most thorough, erases all data)bash

sudo badblocks -wsv /dev/sdX

Useful options:-b 4096: Use for large drives (>2TB) or to match your filesystem block size (faster).
-o badblocks.txt: Save list of bad blocks to a file.
-p N: Number of test passes.

For very large modern drives, alternatives like filling an encrypted layer with zeros can be faster.

wiki.archlinux.org

4. Mark Bad Blocks for the Filesystem (ext4)After finding bad blocks with badblocks -o badblocks.txt:During fsck (recommended for existing filesystems):bash

sudo fsck -vcck /dev/sdX1   # -cc = non-destructive read-write test

When creating filesystem:bash

sudo mkfs.ext4 -c /dev/sdX1          # Read-only
sudo mkfs.ext4 -cc /dev/sdX1         # Read-write (non-destructive)

Important Warnings

Unmount partitions before write tests or fsck -cc.
For the root filesystem, boot from a live USB (Arch ISO) and run tests from there.
Increasing bad sectors = drive is failing → back up data and replace the drive.
SSDs/NVMe: Use SMART primarily; badblocks is less relevant due to wear-leveling.
Manufacturer tools (SeaTools, WD Dashboard, etc.) can be more accurate for specific brands.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Badblocks

Start with smartctl -H and a long test. Use badblocks if you need a full explicit scan. Check the ArchWiki Badblocks page for more details.

Last edited by noesoespanol (2026-06-14 09:21:59)

noesoespanol

Member

Registered: 2026-03-30

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

I always keep my iGPU disabled though, the system was using that instead of my main and gave all kinds of nasty issues, but you said yours is disabled at well.

noesoespanol

Member

Registered: 2026-03-30

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

EDIT: I got confused there. I meant run nvidia-open-dkms, not "nvidia-open".

Old text:

By the way, I think better move away from nvidia-open, it's no good I think.

Install:
sudo pacman -S nvidia-dkms nvidia-utils nvidia-settings
# Then remove nvidia-open if installed
sudo pacman -Rns nvidia-open

Try disable GSP firmware (common workaround for lockups)
Create /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-gsp.conf:bash
options nvidia NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0

Then sudo mkinitcpio -P && reboot

Maybe kernel parameters (add to GRUB)
Edit /etc/default/grub → GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= and add:

nvidia-drm.modeset=1 ibt=off pci=pcie_bus_safe pcie_aspm=off

Windows uses a completely different driver stack (no GSP firmware in the same way, better power management handling for this hardware). This is extremely common with NVIDIA on Linux.Start with switching to nvidia-dkms + disabling GSP.

Last edited by noesoespanol (2026-06-16 16:40:47)

noesoespanol

Member

Registered: 2026-03-30

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

Also, if your current system and settings are important to you, better make a clone of the drive with CloneZilla, just in case, so you can tinker and test freely without worry, something goes wrong, you can just revert the entire thing back.

Alternative, make a clone, then yank everything and install a fresh Arch with KDE / Wayland and nvidia-dkms and see if things go smooth now.

noesoespanol

Member

Registered: 2026-03-30

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

Crackpot suggestion: move from Arch to Manjaro (it worked very very nicely for me) but I don't personally consider a distro that's based on another distro a distro so I prefer using Arch directly but I'm thinking if it's just a gaming machine, try Manjaro and see if it's any better, maybe they got different driver tweeks in it.

GaviTSRA

Member

Registered: 2026-03-10

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

Thanks for the responses. I've run a quick check on my drive which returned nothing. I'll be running a long test when I get the time. I'll also be running a long memory test soon, just to make sure.
Why would you recommend moving away from nvidia-open? Besides, I've experienced the same issues when I tried switching to nvidia-580xx-dkms instead.
I'm going to try disabling the GPS firmware, actually testing if that changes something is gonna take a bit though.
I don't want to switch distro, it's also just not a gaming machine, I also do software dev and a few other things, none of which have caused this issue though. Sadly i don't currently own a drive large enough to back everything up. Most things could just be easily downloaded again (like steam games), but due to a poor internet connection that would take me _very_ long, which is why I'd prefer not starting from a clean install if possible. Of course if everything else fails I'll have to try that.

noesoespanol

Member

Registered: 2026-03-30

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

I meant nvidia-open-dkms, sorry, my bad, got confused there.

Yes, switching distro is full crackpot suggestion. I don't like such suggestions myself actually. But sometimes, if really nothing works and you just want to get on with life. Of course, there is no guarantee Manjaro would work flawlessly actually and you might have the exact same issue there as well. This could be just some weird edge case bug in nvidia drivers for example, with no fix, because it seems to happen after a while of running games.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,349

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

The OP already tried the 580xx drivers, though the main aspect of that would actually be to disable https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … P_firmware
nb. that this is NOT POSSIBLE w/ the open drivers, the GSP firmware is critical for its function.

Can you run "dmesg -W" in a terminal and keep that in sight when causing the freeze?

The symptoms are a complete kernel halt - none of the synthetic stress tests has ever caused this? And it doesn't happen during "office use" (web browsing, text editing etc.)?
* Have you stress tested the CPU? Do you have https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Microcode ?
* How did you check the RAM? memtest86+? For how long? 16h or more?
* Are those all steam games? Do you get any of this w/ the https://aur.archlinux.org/packages?O=0&K=unigine demos?
* Is there any pattern to the likelihood of those games driving the freeze? Do the offenders tend to put more load on CPU or GPU or RAM?
*

so temperatures shouldn't be an issue

Yes "should" …
Can you blow a room fan at the system to cool it down and see whether that delays the freezes?

@noesoespanol, please use [code][/code] tags.

nvidia-drm.modeset=1 ibt=off

First is default anyway, second not required since years.

but tlou 2 experienced unrelated issues later

Yeah… the plot

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GaviTSRA

Member

Registered: 2026-03-10

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

Thanks for the response, I'll be trying the 580xx drivers again and disabling GSP firmware. Due to the nature of the issue it's hard to test, but I'll respond here again if I either think it's fixed or it happened again. I'll try to keep dmesg -W in mind, but i think i recall running that before and it not showing anything before the freeze.

The symptoms are a complete kernel halt - none of the synthetic stress tests has ever caused this?

No, I've not been able to reproduce this issue in any way outside of games, and with them it's really unreliable.
I have not directly stress tested the cpu, but there were a few packages that took like an hours to compile at max cpu and that didn't cause any issues.
I've run memtest for a few hours and it didn't show any errors, but it was nowhere near 16 hours.
Basically every game that has had this issue was from steam, but that's probably bias from me almost exclusively playing steam games. I think it's happened 1 or 2 times in minecraft, which would mean it's independent of steam.
I think the games that cause this issue are generally more graphics intensive, 3D games. However, games there are also some games that fit this description that didn't cause this issue (like tlou for example)

Yeah… the plot

noesoespanol

Member

Registered: 2026-03-30

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

By the way, maybe keep an eye on RAM usage, maybe a memory leak somewhere in some driver keeps eating up RAM until RAM is filled up and the system freezes? I had this issue in Fedora, for the life of me, I cannot remember what caused it, I think it was a Vivaldi bug, the system kept killing it because it ate too much RAM but sometimes the entire thing just froze as yours do. (although, I was running it inside a VMware) Just a thought.

GaviTSRA

Member

Registered: 2026-03-10

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

Although I haven't had much time to test recently, disabling the GSP firmware on the dkms drivers seems to have fixed the issue. Thanks for the help!

LinuxLover471

Member

From: Asia, India

Registered: 2025-02-23

Posts: 177

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

@GaviTSRA Since your issue is probably fixed, please edit the original post and add "[SOLVED]" to the start of the subject, so that others will know there is nothing else left to solve, but rather a possible solution to find.

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noesoespanol

Member

Registered: 2026-03-30

Posts: 45

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

...disabling the GSP firmware on the dkms drivers seems to have fixed the issue...

Could you tell how you did this?

Last edited by noesoespanol (2026-06-25 21:37:35)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,349

Re: [SOLVED] Random system freezes while playing games, no logs

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 4#p2301704
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … P_firmware will not work w/ any nvidia-open driver

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