Question Motherboard lights and USB power cutting out...

[Strutter1982]

I have the following setup

Gigabyte Aorus Z270X-Gaming 7
Intel 7700K CPU,
G.Skill DDR4 2400 RAM,
MSI GTX1070 GPU
Samsung 960EVO M.2 Hard Drive
Coolermaster V1200 PSU
Corsair CPU Water Cooler

Several weeks ago I noticed that while gaming the game would suddenly drop back to the desktop and at the same time the LED lighting on the motherboard would drop out for several seconds and then would come back on and I could alt-tab back into the game and carry on. It only happened once every few hours but it has gradually gotten worse. I plug in an external HDD and it powers up then down then up then down and I cannot use it or any other external drives I've tried.

I thought it might be my old 850w power supply I was running as it had previously been replaced under warranty, but the new, bigger psu hasn't made any difference.

I've had to disconnect 4 of my 3.5" hard drives and any usb devices that aren't important, just so I can still use it, which I can still use for games but with occasionally being kicked back to desktop and then it comes good again, and I can also have a single external 2.5" hdd connected to backup files with.

I've tried reseating the cpu, ram...etc and makes no difference. Is it most likely to be the motherboard on it's way out?

Thanks for any help guys, it's doing my head in trying to work it out!

 

[cin19]

Do you try to disconnect all the external HDDs to see what happens?

After disconnecting the HDD:

1. If the pc does the same, update the drivers, like chipset driver, thunderbolt Driver ( if you used it), if you used win7, and update the USB3.0/3.1 drivers too. And you may consider to the BIOS too, if the MB does not have the newer one.
2. If the PC runs fine without those external HDDs, and one of them may have problem, test it. Mode info: https://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/

 

[Strutter1982]

Do you try to disconnect all the external HDDs to see what happens?

After disconnecting the HDD:

1. If the pc does the same, update the drivers, like chipset driver, thunderbolt Driver ( if you used it), if you used win7, and update the USB3.0/3.1 drivers too. And you may consider to the BIOS too, if the MB does not have the newer one.
2. If the PC runs fine without those external HDDs, and one of them may have problem, test it. Mode info: https://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/

Hi, currently I only have my operating system drive connected which is the m.2 ssd, I literally have only the bare basics running st the moment. I have also started to have problems with the audio suddenly dropping out and turning into distorted scratchy mono sounding noise and I have to restart the computer to have it return to normal.

I have updated all motherboard and GPU drivers and I run windows 10 pro which is up to date.