[SOLVED] Displays freezing but everything else still working ?

[cinemaremedy]

I've had this PC that was built by a friend for about a year and a half and there has been an occasional issue where the PC stutters for a second, then the images on both monitors freeze completely. Sound will continue playing after the initial stutter and I can still seem to control the PC with mouse and keyboard, but neither replugging the monitors or attempting to relaunch the graphics driver with Ctrl-Win-Shift-B have any affect on the displays, giving me no choice but to restart. This first happened a couple of times over the last year or so, infrequently enough that I wasn't desperate to fix it, but it's now occurring fairly often, and very frequently during games, which I just generally avoid now. Currently I have an AutoHotKey macro just to force a restart when this happens just so that I don't have to hard shutdown with the power button, but now the display will sometimes freeze during restart, forcing me to switch it off by the power button anyway.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling graphics drivers with DDU, monitoring temperatures, using different monitors, reducing peripheral power usage and just avoiding having too many processes running at once, but none of these seem to have made an impact. I've looked for similar results but I can only find cases where the screen also goes black or the audio also breaks, but neither of these things have happened to me despite this problem having occurred dozens of times now. While I suspect it's related to either the graphics card or the power supply, I'm finding is that it's hard to tell what works and what doesn't when the problem is only occurring occasionally, and I'm quite apprehensive attempting anything serious when I'm a total novice at computer hardware. So any assistance in figuring this out would be greatly appreciated.

OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home, 10.0.19042 Build 19042
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
Motherboard: ROG STRIX B450-F
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
PSU: Corsair RM (2019) 750W
SSD (main): Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB)
Monitors: S24D330H (x2)

 

[Koekieezz]

I've had this PC that was built by a friend for about a year and a half and there has been an occasional issue where the PC stutters for a second, then the images on both monitors freeze completely. Sound will continue playing after the initial stutter and I can still seem to control the PC with mouse and keyboard, but neither replugging the monitors or attempting to relaunch the graphics driver with Ctrl-Win-Shift-B have any affect on the displays, giving me no choice but to restart. This first happened a couple of times over the last year or so, infrequently enough that I wasn't desperate to fix it, but it's now occurring fairly often, and very frequently during games, which I just generally avoid now. Currently I have an AutoHotKey macro just to force a restart when this happens just so that I don't have to hard shutdown with the power button, but now the display will sometimes freeze during restart, forcing me to switch it off by the power button anyway.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling graphics drivers with DDU, monitoring temperatures, using different monitors, reducing peripheral power usage and just avoiding having too many processes running at once, but none of these seem to have made an impact. I've looked for similar results but I can only find cases where the screen also goes black or the audio also breaks, but neither of these things have happened to me despite this problem having occurred dozens of times now. While I suspect it's related to either the graphics card or the power supply, I'm finding is that it's hard to tell what works and what doesn't when the problem is only occurring occasionally, and I'm quite apprehensive attempting anything serious when I'm a total novice at computer hardware. So any assistance in figuring this out would be greatly appreciated.

OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home, 10.0.19042 Build 19042
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
Motherboard: ROG STRIX B450-F
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
PSU: Corsair RM (2019) 750W
SSD (main): Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB)
Monitors: S24D330H (x2)

Maybe you could try this:

• Uninstall the driver using DDU again
• Uninstall all the processors on device manager (should be 16 on yours) like this:

• Restart the pc to bios, and update to the latest bios(download, extract the files and copy it to flashdrive, plug it on top rear usb slot)
• boot up to windows and install the latest AMD Chipset driver, reboot, and go to power plan and choose amd ryzen balanced power plan.
• Install the latest nvidia driver.
• And check windows update (and optional updates) if there is any.

*do this all offline until reboot after installing amd chipset driver, also you may reboot to bios after all of this to set the XMP, make sure your ram is on slot 2 and 4.

also, what model is your 1660Ti? Make sure to use the primary PCIe Cable (not the one that branches from the 1st cable) like this:

 

[cinemaremedy]

Maybe you could try this:

• Uninstall the driver using DDU again
• Uninstall all the processors on device manager (should be 16 on yours) like this:

• Restart the pc to bios, and update to the latest bios using mflash on the bios settings(download, extract the files and copy it to flashdrive, plug it on top rear usb slot)
• boot up to windows and install the latest AMD Chipset driver, reboot, and go to power plan and choose amd ryzen balanced power plan.
• Install the latest nvidia driver.
• And check windows update (and optional updates) if there is any.

*do this all offline until reboot after installing amd chipset driver, also you may reboot to bios after all of this to set the XMP, make sure your ram is on slot 2 and 4.

Thanks for your response, I'll give this a try.

also, what model is your 1660Ti? Make sure to use the primary PCIe Cable (not the one that branches from the 1st cable) like this:

It's apparently an MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti G6 Ventus XS OC Video Card with just the 1 power connector, but looking at the wiring it seems to be connected in reverse to how it's shown in the diagram, with the single end plugged into the GPU and one of the split ends (I assume the primary end) plugged into the PSU. Is this OK or should I try to fix this?

 

[Koekieezz]

Thanks for your response, I'll give this a try.

It's apparently an MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti G6 Ventus XS OC Video Card with just the 1 power connector, but looking at the wiring it seems to be connected in reverse to how it's shown in the diagram, with the single end plugged into the GPU and one of the split ends (I assume the primary end) plugged into the PSU. Is this OK or should I try to fix this?

Yeah you should give it a try, just dont use the split plug that branches from the main head.

 

[Vic 40]

but looking at the wiring it seems to be connected in reverse to how it's shown in the diagram, with the single end plugged into the GPU and one of the split ends (I assume the primary end) plugged into the PSU. Is this OK or should I try to fix this?

Can you elaborate on that? Maybe even show a picture using Imgur.

The single end should usually need to be in the psu side and the split ends as you call it at the gpu side, especially since you only use the 6 pin portion of one of them if i read well.

 

[cinemaremedy]

Can you elaborate on that? Maybe even show a picture using Imgur.

The single end should usually need to be in the psu side and the split ends as you call it at the gpu side, especially since you only use the 6 pin portion of one of them if i read well.

The actual PC interior is a kind of a mess so I've labelled an equivalent cable I had lying around

It's likely that I was just confused about which ends were which since the actual cable branches in a different way to how it was shown in the diagram. I'm sure it's clear by now that I have very little grasp of computer hardware and I probably should've made that clearer in the OP, so thank you both for your patience with me

 

[Vic 40]

The above picture shows the right way of plugging it in.

 

[Koekieezz]

Yup, the one you marked GPU is the one you should use, not the "hanging around" one 😀

 

[Vic 40]

Already updated the bios as asked? If you don't have the latest alreadyn and make sure to read the notes, sometimes you need to install in between bios. And would be good to update the chipset drivers first,
AMD Drivers and Support for Radeon, Radeon Pro, FirePro, APU, CPU, Ryzen, desktops, laptops

 

[cinemaremedy]

Thanks a bunch for the clarification. I wanted to make sure the problem wasn't something silly involving the cable before updating the bios first, because while I looking for guides on how to do that I found a lot more anecdotes about why not to. But seeing as that wasn't the case, I suppose it's the best next step.

 

[Vic 40]

Just put the unpacked file on an empty usb stick (FAT 32) put it in the pc, start the pc and go into the bios the follow the steps on page 73,


https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/...ING/E14401_ROG_STRIX_B450-F_GAMING_UM_WEB.pdf

do use the bios tool, i do not recommend the internet option.

 

[cinemaremedy]

Alright, maybe I shouldn't bump for this but it's been about a week since I did the update and I've had no problems since, so I'm happy to call this solved. I have no way of knowing if it was the bios update, chipset update or just replugging in the power cable that fixed the issue, but I doubt I would've tried any of them without your help, so thank you both!