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I have been experiencing random system crashes on your Linux PC, accompanied by a small white light flashing on my graphics card.

This issue occurs regularly, but not consistently, and tends to happen within the first 20 minutes of use.

I noticed this issue started occurring after I installed a secondary OS (Linux) on a secondary hard drive, which installed a second grub. While I attempted to delete everything related to the secondary OS and grub, the crashes have persisted.

OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) x86_64 
Host: MS-7B89 1.0 
Kernel: 5.10.0-21-amd64 
Resolution: 1440x2560, 2560x1440 
DE: Plasma 5.20.5 
WM: KWin 
WM Theme: Qogir 
Theme: Breeze Dark [Plasma], Peace-GTK [GTK2/3] 
Icons: Dexie-Korla [Plasma], Dexie-Korla [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: konsole 
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (12) @ 3.400GHz 
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590

Thanks for any suggestions.

George G.
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1 Answers1

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A "small white light" on a modern high-performance GPU is most likely related to power input, although you'd want to check the GPU vendor's documentation to be sure.

Which power supply are you using, and how old is it? Maybe adding a secondary HDD put your power supply right at the limit of its capability. At times of maximum power consumption, it might fail to keep the voltages stable, resulting in a crash. The flashing white light might be the GPU's way of saying "My power feed was insufficient for a while".

telcoM
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  • Thanks for your insight. I will look on to this. Maybe I will remove a HDD or change the PSU. Any way to confirm this assumption from any kind of system logs? – George G. Apr 15 '23 at 09:49
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    When the PSU indicates the power is bad (by making its "Power Good" signal line inactive), a normal desktop PC will just stop any processing as any operations will be unreliable because of insufficient power. That obviously prevents any logging operations too. The best you can get is typically the OS determining on next boot that the system was not shut down properly, but it will have no clue why or how. A server-grade system with redundant power supplies and an independent management processor could log a message about low power in a IPMI hardware error log or similar. – telcoM Apr 15 '23 at 13:18