Question I upgraded my CPU. Now my PC is slow and keeps locking up.

[MilkTea_Boba]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to Tom's Hardware and I'm desperate to find any help that I can. So a week ago I upgraded my CPU and my RAM. I went from a Ryzen 3 1200 to a Ryzen 5 2600 (Below are my PC Specs). There are a number of possibilities I'm worried about that could cause this issue, and I will try my best to describe what has happened.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Msi Nvidia Gtx 1660
Msi Krait Gaming b350 motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8gb ddr4 3000mhz
EVGA 700w Br Power Supply
ADATA 128gb SSD
WD Blue 2tb Hard Drive
Phanteks p400s case


I swapped my CPU and my RAM in. The only problem I came across when installing was that the backplate fell off of my case so I had to awkwardly hold it in place while I screwed in the AMD stock fan. I plugged the cord back into my power supply, flipped it on, pressed the pc power button and... nothing. I realized maybe I had to update my BIOS, even though it was recently updated, so I had to place my old CPU back in. This is when things got messy and I hate myself for it. I pulled the AMD fan out and my new CPU followed it (I know I should've twisted it instead). Fast forward, I updated my BIOS with my old CPU and swapped it out again. I did have to drive to Best Buy to buy new thermal paste. I also clean reinstalled windows 10, and YES! It turned on, all the fans are spinning, Windows 10 is popping up. Now, the problem is that it is super slow and keeps freezing. I troubleshooted many things I found on this website: Checked the compatibility on my motherboard, reset the CMOS, etc. Frantic, I thought well I guess I bent a CPU pin so I opened up my PC again. And this time OH I used way too much thermal paste and it got everywhere. I cleaned it up as best as I could, but there is just a little paste on one side of the CPU and a few got into the socket. I looked at the pins on my CPU and to my surprise NONE were bent or damaged. I reapplied thermal paste better this time, just going for the small pea method, and my PC is still up and running. It is, however, still slow and still locking up. Sorry for the nightmare I placed myself in, like I said I am desperate for any solutions. Thank you.

 

[gingerrankin]

Try to calm your nerves. If your pc works, you have done nothing irreparable. But act calm and unhurried or you may make a mistake.

Open the task manager (for example with ctrl + alt + del) and check the cpu load and disk activity for any that have an exaggerated level.

 

[MilkTea_Boba]

My task manager shows that my CPU will idle around 2% and spike to 70+% at random times. My RAM sits at around 18%. I ran memtest86 last night and it shows there are no errors on my RAM.

 

[mdd1963]

remove power, and BIOS battery, clear CMOS

Reapply battery and power, reset BIOS to defaults, and do another fresh install. (At least that way you know your device manager is not confused over one CPU's threads with another...) Make sure you install all appropriate chipset and AMD drivers and GPU driver packages...

 

[MilkTea_Boba]

remove power, and BIOS battery, clear CMOS

Reapply battery and power, reset BIOS to defaults, and do another fresh install. (At least that way you know your device manager is not confused over one CPU's threads with another...) Make sure you install all appropriate chipset and AMD drivers and GPU driver packages...

Okay I cleared the CMOS, cleared off my SSD's partitions, and installed Windows 10 Pro. So far it's running smoothly, I will update if anything weird occurs while re-downloading all of my programs. Not sure, but should I be worried about my Hard Drive? It has some files on there and the permissions are under my old system's user (Before I put in my new CPU). I can always just share the files with my new user now, but I'm wondering if that is what can cause freezing and locking up?

 

[MilkTea_Boba]

Update: PC is starting to go back to locking up. It isn't as frequent as before but it mainly happens when I'm in an online meeting for class, installing programs, or small multitasking. Today, my monitors went to black and it restarted itself. I did not change anything in the BIOS.