AMD PC and WoW only crashes

[Rïzu-whitemane]

Hey everyone,

I’m running into some frustrating issues with my Alienware R10 Ryzen setup:

• CPU: Ryzen 9
• RAM: 32GB
• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800XT
• Storage: 2TB SSD + 2TB HDD

Whenever I log into WoW Retail, my PC completely shuts down (hard crash) roughly every 5 minutes—especially during Mythic+ keys or under moderate load. It’s not a typical crash; it’s a full system shutdown.

Additionally, when I tab out of WoW (leaving it running in the background), the PC sometimes freezes entirely. It’s worth noting that I’ve:

• Updated all my drivers
• Uninstalled AMD Adrenalin software
• Installed only the updated GPU drivers (no extras)
• Monitored temps — all seem normal
• Taken the PC to a local shop — they updated the BIOS and said everything looks fine

What’s really strange is that I can play games like Black Ops 2 for hours without any issues. No crashes, no freezes.

My Questions:

1. Would forcing DirectX 11 in WoW help at all?
2. Why would WoW, a relatively low-resource game, be causing full system shutdowns when heavier games are completely fine?
3. Could this be an issue specific to WoW and AMD drivers or something else entirely?

Any help would be hugely appreciated. I’m really at a loss and getting pretty frustrated with how unstable things have become

[Zungar-silver-hand (Zungar)]

@Rïzu-whitemane

WoW, a relatively low-resource game,

This is a faulty assumption. Wow heavily drives a few threads on the cpu, often harder than more modern games.

Are you tracking cpu/gpu/ system temps when this happens?

Can you post a dxdiag report?

[Ailus-andorhal]

That’s remarkably false, have you ever even looked at your performance for WoW before? It’s pretty easy to do with task manager…

[Zungar-silver-hand (Zungar)]

Wow utilizing more cores?

In Windows, the CPU usage percentage is the total CPU usage - not per core. Since you have a 6/12 processor (6 physical cores, 12 logical), that means 100% load on a single core is 1/12, or approximately 8.33%. WoW is still fairly heavily dependant on a single thread for its performance. So as soon as one of those cores reaches 100% load (potentially just 8.33% CPU load) it won’t be able to run any better. 20% is likely to be one core at full, one fairly heavy, and the remaining 10 with smal…

[Ailus-andorhal]

You’re trying to claim WoW pushes the CPU harder than modern games, that’s absurdly false. Point still stands.

[Zungar-silver-hand (Zungar)]

No, I’m not.

I’m claiming that it can push a few cores harder due to being coded for fewer cores/threads. That pushing can cause heat issues and instability.

More modern games are programmed to take more advantage of multiple cores and thus don’t stress individual cores as much.

[Elocin-mugthol]

@Rïzu-whitemane

Would forcing DirectX 11 in WoW help at all?

You would need to try that to find out.

@Rïzu-whitemane

Why would WoW, a relatively low-resource game, be causing full system shutdowns when heavier games are completely fine?

Nothing pushes the CPU as hard as WoW, except maybe crypto mining.

@Rïzu-whitemane

Could this be an issue specific to WoW and AMD drivers or something else entirely?

Yeah, it could be. I’m hoping WoW is not installed on the HDD?

[Putridhunter-area-52]

WoW has one of the worst CPU utilization of any game that has ever existed. If it was properly optimized, a 9800X3D could run at 300 fps on outdoor world bosses with multiple raids on max settings.