Thanks for the reply.

I am aware of the TDP and thermal issues with the 14th Gen, which is why I put 4 140mm case fans, the NH-D15 and the better thermal compound on the unit, as well as making the fan curves more aggressive (both the CPU and case ones, forgot to mention that).

The CPU while running never gets above 50% load, but I'll put HW Monitor on it and see, as Task manager doesn't report CPU, only GPU temps. My personal belief is they didn't (or were not able to) fully test the impact of the recent changes made as it applies to the GFX system. All of the failures thus far not citing the game executable have been GFX related files, an only being within the month of Feb it was if anything a small oversight with not a large impact base. I do have a somewhat better than average understanding of the immense amount of work that goes into these things and testing is difficult.

The only thing I can say about the install location isn't very polite but, we are no longer in the late 1980's and early 90's. If the software can have potential serious repercussions if not on the system drive,. then maybe they shouldn't give you the option to install elsewhere, but that is of course an opinion born of someone with a range of good and bad experiences dating back to the 286/386 days..

My OS drive is reserved for the OS and such software that is still too stupid to understand we are in the 21st century. I do not have enough free space on that drive (as I keep them smaller than other drives) to do a full install of the game there. I keep it smaller so I don't run into a 'well I could put it there' syndrome.

I will be reaching back out to SE chat today. I shouldn't have to gimp my pc that was built for Dawntrail in order to play the game. And again, that none of my other games are having this issue is the biggest indicator to me it's something with FF14 sadly.

I do have some updates though after a little more playing around.

ON 2/26 Tried a new tact. Opened the nVidia GeForce app and had it 'optimize' the gfx settings for FF14 (as a test, I knew it would crash) and here are the results

Login + 10 minutes: Crash out while walking around in Kugane. Failed at d3d11.dll+17106B and ffxiv_dx11.exe+3CF9EA

Logged back in and reset some settings back.
Crash in less than 5 minutes on ffxiv_d11.exe+1037BCC

Logged back in, and set GFX to 'Highesktop'
Lasted 40 minutes before crash, was in Fannow working on society quests, direct crash, no error

Logged back in, locked the GFX to 60FPS max.
Crash in under 15 minutes, still in Fannow, crash out on nvgpucomp64.dll+1889372

I thank you for your suggestions and I'll try and nail down better data on the CPU temps. I do know the fan speeds were significantly less when I locked the game to 60 FPS in todays tets.