[SOLVED] Computer Freezes at Random Intervals While CPU idle

[adrik0622]

Hopefully someone can help, because I'm at an absolute loss.
PC worked flawlessly for about a year before experiencing this problem, no changes to build
The past month, my pc has been freezing when the cpu is at or near 1% usage.
I can play video games indefinitely, this only occurs when the pc is idle, or I'm doing low load work like browsing firefox.
I can also confirm that I can leave it on indefinitely if I have something like prime95 running on it.

I can verify that none of these components are the problem with strong confidence:
DIMM's
SSD
Motherboard Settings

I can verify that these components aren't the problem with near certainty:
GPU
PSU
OS

Here are the troubleshooting steps I've been through:
DIMM:
Memtest x86 for 7 passes, 0 errors.
Dropped to 1 DIMM, when problem continued I swapped it to my other DIMM, problem continued so I put both DIMMs back

SSD:
I'm already fairly certain it's not the SSD (because freezing doesn't make sense for an SSD as far as I'm aware) but I also wiped the SSD and installed a different Operating System on it. (I know there are more things I can do for this particular device, but I'm not suspicious of it.)

BIOS:
Flash update
Reset to defaults
Reset CMOS

GPU:
Swapped to a known good GPU, problem persists

PSU:
Swapped to a known good PSU, problem persists

OS:
From windows 10, upgrade to windows 11, problem persists
From windows 11, change to beta build, problem persists
Swapped to a different OS, problem persists. Windows would sometimes bluescreen instead of freezing on a watchdog error, then at 100% it would freeze.

I'm honestly so tired of troubleshooting this. I've even gone as far as doing silly things like unplugging connected USB devices. I'm at a loss here, any help is much MUCH appreciated. I have tried following a few other threads but nothing turned out to be any help. Seriously, even if it's a silly idea I'm willing to try it at this point. Thanks


Specs:
CPU: Ryzen 9 5950x
GPU: Geforce RTX 3080 ti
PSU: 850 Watt Corsair RM850x
Memory: 2x 16gb ddr4 @ 2133 MT/s
Motherboard: MPG B550 Gaming Plus

Final Edit:
SOLVED:
After narrowing down all the components to be certain it was the CPU, and testing a lot of other things I won't even mention here, I found a solution to this strange behavior.
Freezing when idle seemed to me to be some sort of setting or option that was toggled, but because I had switched operating systems and the problem persisted as well as resetting the bios and the cmos and flashing the bios, I knew that the setting would have to be somewhere in the bios, which struck me as strange because the problem didn't start happening until recently, but I digress. The solution was in setting power supply idle control to typical && global c-state control to off.

For those who don't know,
Power supply idle control is for older (or cheaper) power supplies that shut off if the idle wattage is too low. If there's no problems with the PSU only at idle, leave it alone, it'll do nothing for you. Once there's a load on the PSU, it does nothing, and on Ryzen, true idle states are not very common as any program running in the background that monitors the CPU can keep it from idling.

Global c-state control
is related to c-states/core states, enabling it simply lets the OS put idle cores to sleep, which users have noted that it causes performance issues (i.e. stutters) while gaming. It's best to disable it, it's really not important and it doesn't really work properly, same with AMD Cool N Quiet, an older version of it.

I believe the solution was only in disabling global c-state control, but I haven't verified that yet, and I see no harm in leaving both settings as they are for now.

Thanks @punkncat for taking the time to even view my question and give a response, and until next time I wish everyone a great night!

 

[punkncat]

By process of elimination, it appears there are only two parts you haven't tested (via replacement) and/or feel confident about.

 

[adrik0622]

By process of elimination, it appears there are only two parts you haven't tested (via replacement) and/or feel confident about.

I'm pretty sure it's the CPU, just don't know how to fix the problem

The CPU works, I can game, I'm looking for insight and potential solutions to the freezing at idle because I do need to use this as a work device too.

EDIT: I swapped out the drive the OS is on, and am now actively waiting to see if it freezes or not. Will update thread if that solves it, but I would be surprised if it were the ssd that was causing this issue. Honestly though, I kinda hope it is the ssd because that's an easy fix.

 

[adrik0622]

I can now confirm with certainty it isn't the SSD

 

[adrik0622]

SOLVED:
After narrowing down all the components to be certain it was the CPU, and testing a lot of other things I won't even mention here, I found a solution to this strange behavior.
Freezing when idle seemed to me to be some sort of setting or option that was toggled, but because I had switched operating systems and the problem persisted as well as resetting the bios and the cmos and flashing the bios, I knew that the setting would have to be somewhere in the bios, which struck me as strange because the problem didn't start happening until recently, but I digress. The solution was in setting power supply idle control to typical && global c-state control to off.

For those who don't know,
Power supply idle control is for older (or cheaper) power supplies that shut off if the idle wattage is too low. If there's no problems with the PSU only at idle, leave it alone, it'll do nothing for you. Once there's a load on the PSU, it does nothing, and on Ryzen, true idle states are not very common as any program running in the background that monitors the CPU can keep it from idling.

Global c-state control
is related to c-states/core states, enabling it simply lets the OS put idle cores to sleep, which users have noted that it causes performance issues (i.e. stutters) while gaming. It's best to disable it, it's really not important and it doesn't really work properly, same with AMD Cool N Quiet, an older version of it.

I believe the solution was only in disabling global c-state control, but I haven't verified that yet, and I see no harm in leaving both settings as they are for now.

Thanks @punkncat for taking the time to even view my question and give a response, and until next time I wish everyone a great night!