I’m running an MSI Core i7-7700 with 16GB Ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with 271GB free space on my drive. I experience crashes constantly on a fairly basic open world level build. I cannot figure out if my system is just not capable, or if something is conflicting in the hardware. The system does have the Intel graphics as well, but I have not changed configuration from how it came from the factory.
What are some of the common issues that I can look into to stop these crashes?
Your system specs look not great but okay (I recommend 32 gb and a GTX 1080). Unless you have for instance a faulty memory module, it shouldn’t crash randomly. The first thing you need to check is your crash log (also the running output log may offer clues), in particular recurring errors and the last parts of it. Based on this information I would start searching, if unsuccessful post here and or and AnswerHub. Good luck!
In the Nvidia Control Panel under the 3D settings make sure it’s set to use the Nvidia GPU for everything rather than allowing it to automatically choose between that and the integrated Intel GPU
Also check your power settings, if it’s trying to do power saving then it might throttle your performance so if you put it all the way to performance then it should help it work better, though the battery won’t last as long.