Many users buy a new gaming PC to finally play modern AAA games in full detail. But a gamer could only do so after finding a nasty error. Only then does the computer run as it should.
Anyone buying a new gaming PC typically wants to dive right into the latest games without much setup. That is the advantage of ready-made gaming PCs: You don’t have to do much yourself and save a lot of work.
However, for one user, it wasn’t quite that easy. This user had organized a new gaming PC, but he did not achieve high frame rates in any game. And this is important, because the higher the frame rate, the smoother and more enjoyable the displayed image appears.
Poor software prevents user from playing with new gaming PC
What exactly happened? A user had organized a new gaming PC. With a Ryzen 5600X as the processor, a Radeon RX 6600 XT as the graphics card, and 32 GB of RAM, the computer officially offers more than enough power for all current top titles.
Yet, despite powerful hardware, he only gets 15-40 FPS in most games, he explains in a post on reddit, which he titles ‘new PC drastically underperforming’ (via reddit.com). Here he explains that he has tried all sorts of things:
- He reconfigured the graphics card, uninstalled the drivers, and even mounted it on another PCIe slot.
- He even updated the BIOS.
- Adjusting the graphics settings only helped to a limited extent.
The user was quite unsettled by the poor performance because just a few weeks earlier, he had built a gaming PC with the same hardware. Here he was able to play most games at 120 FPS and above.
Where was the problem? There seemed to be mining software hidden in his new gaming PC. As soon as he connected the computer to the internet, this malware unknowingly used the computer’s performance to mine cryptocurrencies.
Instead of being able to utilize the performance for gaming, the malware used the computer’s power for other purposes. It was only after a tip from another user that he thought of checking the computer for such malware.
‘Without your help, I wouldn’t have figured it out!’
How did he arrive at the idea? A user on reddit asked him if he had checked his new PC for malware. Because crypto-mining malware steals the most performance from the graphics card, leaving hardly anything for gaming.
And indeed, the problems disappeared when he unplugged the internet cable from his computer. A little later, he also found the malware. What’s particularly crazy is that the user had joked that something like this could never happen to him:
I started laughing about it because I’m a software developer, and although I only have a minimum of knowledge about hardware, I am familiar enough with this kind of thing to look into it and recognize what’s going on. We joked last week about how one hacks into other people’s stuff and mines cryptocurrencies on their graphics cards. And then it happened to me!
Where does the nasty software come from? In his thread, he did not explain where the error originated. In the thread title, he wrote ‘new gaming PC’. In a post below the actual thread, he writes, ‘I have no idea where it comes from. Maybe I also downloaded it with something else at some point.’ In another post, he writes:
I’m not sure. On the date it was [the malware] downloaded, it said May 11, but I built the PC on May 12. So I have no idea.
What do you think? Has something like this ever happened to you, or do you protect yourself against dangers from the internet? Let us know in the comments!
Malware also threatens miners: Recently, miners have also fallen for nasty malware. This allegedly was supposed to improve the mining performance on Nvidia graphics cards. But instead, there was a nasty virus hidden in the software:
With a trick, miners want to earn more money, but instead they end up with nasty malware
