Question New build has random system freezing (monitor image freezes too) requiring power button shutoff ?

Dec 4, 2022
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Hello, my first time posting so I'm sorry if my formatting is bad.


BUILD:

I7-13700k (I flashed the BIOS for it to work)

32GB Trident Z5 - DDR5 6000 (Also tried Corsair Vengeance 5000)

Gigabyte 4080 (Also tried GTX 1080 ti)

MPG Z690 Carbon Wifi (Also tried MPG Z690 EDGE DDR5)

1TB 990 M.2

2TB Crucial M.2

XH1000 Corsair PSU


Let me know if there's anything else I'm missing.


Context: After installing Windows and my drivers I started playing Warzone with some friends, after thirty minutes or so the computer crashed/hung/froze, I don’t know the correct term but the monitors had the last images on them still and I had to hold the power button to shut the machine down. Note: For most of my troubleshooting it would take multiple restarts for the computer to reboot to Windows properly. It would often power up, half the mobo lights come on (sometimes check DRAM LED) and I would need to hold the power to restart.


I initially swapped out my new GPU with the old one, but I would still crash after 30 minutes or so of light to heavy loads. From gaming, to work video meetings, to watching youtube videos.


I then reinstalled windows, and redownloaded Discord/COD… Twice. Still, it crashed.


I then swapped out the RAM with the ram in parenthesis above, but still ran into the same issue, though I was able to play for close to an hour.


I then swapped mobos (I started with the edge and bought the carbon to replace it) to no avail. Still crashed after 30 minutes or so.


At this point, I’ll probably try replacing the PSU and then the CPU but I figured I’d check here for any advice. Has anyone run into a similar issue and found success? Any thoughts are appreciated :)
 
Dec 5, 2022
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Intel Core i7-12700F 2.1 GHz 12-Core Processor

Scythe Fuma 2 Rev.B 39.44 CFM CPU Cooler


Gigabyte Z690 GAMING X DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard


Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory


Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive


MSI VENTUS 3X OC GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB Video Card

Antec Dark League DF800 FLUX ATX Mid Tower Case


MSI MPG A850GF 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular AT

I just built a pc, all new parts, but it keeps randomly freezing.
The screen will just freeze and I have to restart it.

I searched for driver errors and storage errors, I disabled xmp, powers saving, fast startup.
Nothing worked though.

It also didn’t matter if the pc was under load or not.
5 to 30 minutes of the computer being open, wether a program was open or not it would freeze.
Also weirdly whenever I turned the pc off when it would freeze the rgb lights on the motherboard would stay on. Everything else turned off but the motherboard rgb stayed on.
I’m at a loss.
 

EZGGWP

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Dec 5, 2022
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I agree. Bought a 13700kf two days ago, brand new factory sealed. Put it into my Z690 Edge WiFi board and had it freezed in about the same time. However, I kind of "progressed" further and yesterday I started to get the freezes on Windows logon screen and currently I get the freeze the moment Windows booting animation starts. Spent last Sunday isolating the issue and it seems that the problem is in MB/CPU indeed. Windows' Safe Mode still has this problem. In BIOS, however, everything is okay and the system doesn't freeze. Seems like an issue that can only be solved by Intel or MB manufacturer, sadly.
 

Mozuna01

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Apr 14, 2021
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I've been dealing with random freezing for a while too looking for solutions. But its truly random. sometimes twice a day. Other times 1 after a month. Bizarre
 
Dec 4, 2022
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I bought a 12700k that gets delivered today. I’ll update y’all once I get it installed and tested. Seems like a 13700k/z690 compatibility issue at this point.
 
Dec 6, 2022
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just bought a i7 13700k and asus z690e motherboard. pc restarts and games crash randomly. i’ve spent over a week trying to fix this issue. i’ve tested ram. it’s pretty rare for a cpu to be damaged. im kind of thing it’s something to do with the motherboard. I’ve seen this happen to other people’s pcs that i’ve fixed and it was always a psu issue but i have a 1000 corsair psu and it was in my last build that had a i9 9900k and im still using the same gpu- (3080)
 

EZGGWP

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Dec 5, 2022
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Wow, more and more people. If it wasn't for Darkapple, I would be sure it's an 13th gen i7s problem, but the fact that Darkapple has (supposedly) same kind of issue on 12th gen kind of defies all the conclusions. It seems that we can only wait for Maati to share his results of going one generation down.
 
So to conclude what we know so far is that everyone is freezing and are all on z690 motherboards. Most people are on 13000 CPUs but one is on a 12000 CPU. One person with a 13000 CPU is getting a 12000 CPU to test.

To rule out the obvious I think it would be prudent that everyone flash the latest non-beta BIOS for your motherboards unless you require a beta BIOS for your CPU to "work." Something else that is obvious is that I think everyone should make sure their RAM is running on the default speed and timings for their CPU (no XMP). For the ones that can get into Windows please check Event Viewer for any critical errors and any errors prior to the critical event. This can give a clue if it is software and point to certain hardware in some cases.
 
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EZGGWP

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Dec 5, 2022
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I hope updating BIOS helps someone get out of this, but for me it didn't work. I tried all three BIOSes that support 13th gen Intel CPUs on my MB, but I always get the same freezing issue. I have yet to get my old 12th gen CPU back from my friend to check if my MB is not the culprit, but as soon as I'll get it, I will post the outcome here if Maati wont beat me to it.
 
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This is true, but the fact that we are all having the same problem makes me think otherwise... Who knows!
If the rate of a bad CPU getting through is 1 in 10,000 then there are hundreds of people out there with one. If its 1 in 100,000 then are tens of people out there with them. The odds of people having these strange types of issue are much more likely to congregate over to a website available all over the world to get their problems fixed. The odds are not anywhere near impossible. In my years here I have seen a confirmed 7 or 8 bad CPUs from both Intel and AMD. It happens.
 
So for everyone here, just to show you the prevalence and the types of issues people go through with bad CPUs.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/system-bsods-and-crashes.3787658/?view=date

The conclusion was that he had a bad CPU. Read the forum post but keep your comments on this thread about your issues. This guy went through hell and back and it was determined through a process of elimination that it was his CPU causeing all the issues. A process of elimination is usually the only way to figure out CPUs and MOBOs being the cause of problems.
 
Dec 4, 2022
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Update: Now my games are crashing... No longer getting computer hangs but every game I've tried has crashed multiple times randomly... Might be a different issue though.
 
Update: Now my games are crashing... No longer getting computer hangs but every game I've tried has crashed multiple times randomly... Might be a different issue though.
Sounds like RAM issues to me. Did you check the health of the drives? Did you run memtest on your RAM or just swap them with another kit? Since you have replaced the motherboard, CPU, and swapped the RAM I would like to know the exact configuration you are using right now. Try running an "sfc /scannow" command in an admin CMD for windows corruption.
 

EZGGWP

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Dec 5, 2022
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Update from me this time: I got my old 12400 back, put it in the system and it booted right away, typing this from the former problematic machine. I'm not 100% sure my MB is not the problem, I will let you know if the system starts freezing again with an old CPU. But currently it seems that it's a software issue on Intel + MB manufacturers' side. I recollect that I had a weird BSOD a few times with a 13700kf with an error code CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT. As the name suggests, it's a clock problem, which is pretty bad, considering the context. I'm not an expert, but I had this idea that maybe this comes down to "silicon lottery" and some CPUs have internal issues with timings. Newer 700-series MBs may have adjusted clocks and better management of these "issues" (or maybe it's a feature), therefore they don't have this problem present. If this is true, then Raptor Lake on Z690 is just a big and expensive lottery. But it's just a speculation.
I have read a forum thread a few days ago, where people suggested installing a new BIOS with a 12th gen CPU installed, and after BIOS is updated, they slotted in the 13th gen CPU and it started working. Sounds pretty unrealistic, but I might try it in the near future.
 

EZGGWP

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Dec 5, 2022
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Nevermind, just got three freezes, each time the interval between booting and freezing lessened. It seems I might have a bad motherboard (and maybe a bad PSU, but I logged the voltages via AIDA64 and they were all good). Weird that freezes appeared quicker on 13700kf, but currently I'm on the same scenario as when I first installed 13700kf - first I was all happy and played games for around 40-50 minutes, then it freezed, next time it freezed even quicker, and after a while it was freezing on Windows boot screen.
 
Nevermind, just got three freezes, each time the interval between booting and freezing lessened. It seems I might have a bad motherboard (and maybe a bad PSU, but I logged the voltages via AIDA64 and they were all good). Weird that freezes appeared quicker on 13700kf, but currently I'm on the same scenario as when I first installed 13700kf - first I was all happy and played games for around 40-50 minutes, then it freezed, next time it freezed even quicker, and after a while it was freezing on Windows boot screen.
Memory issues can cause corruption in windows OS critical files when they are loaded. This can lead to progressively worse problems like this. I highly suspect memory issues or potentially motherboard issues.
 

EZGGWP

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Dec 5, 2022
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I don't want to claim this forum thread, but one more update from me. Bought a brand new MB today, slotted in the CPU and... still freezes. Tried it with 1 stick of RAM - freezes. According to helper800's advice I thought that maybe my OS drive is bad, so I put a Windows 11 installer on a USB drive, started booting into it and... got a freeze. A few days ago I ran a 4 hour memtest on RAM, finished with 0 errors on all four sticks. I'm slowly losing it, frankly. This small CPU upgrade has now cost me $850 in one week. And the issue is still there. Last possible culprit - PSU. Going to spend another $200+ tomorrow on a new, more powerful one.
If the PSU doesn't solve the problem, I think there's only one possible order of things: my PSU have gone bad, took out my first MB when I loaded it with 250W of 13700kf, and after it has gone bad, it took out the second brand new MB. Either that, or I'm totally out of options. Already tried three GPUs, two CPUs, two MBs, two PSUs (the other one was a cheap 500W one, but it had the same freezing, so I'm really scared that it's not the real culprit), with and without PCIe raiser. It's like this system, that I used literally every day, is now holding a huge grudge against me.
 
Dec 5, 2022
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I tried reinstalling windows and all the drivers but that didn’t fix the issue.
So I looked at the bios versions for my motherboard and I noticed that a later version said it fixed a non-k cpu performance issue. Since I have a 12700f cpu I’m wondering if that might be the issue.
 
I tried reinstalling windows and all the drivers but that didn’t fix the issue.
So I looked at the bios versions for my motherboard and I noticed that a later version said it fixed a non-k cpu performance issue. Since I have a 12700f cpu I’m wondering if that might be the issue.
I mean, it certainly may help.
I don't want to claim this forum thread, but one more update from me. Bought a brand new MB today, slotted in the CPU and... still freezes. Tried it with 1 stick of RAM - freezes. According to helper800's advice I thought that maybe my OS drive is bad, so I put a Windows 11 installer on a USB drive, started booting into it and... got a freeze. A few days ago I ran a 4 hour memtest on RAM, finished with 0 errors on all four sticks. I'm slowly losing it, frankly. This small CPU upgrade has now cost me $850 in one week. And the issue is still there. Last possible culprit - PSU. Going to spend another $200+ tomorrow on a new, more powerful one.
If the PSU doesn't solve the problem, I think there's only one possible order of things: my PSU have gone bad, took out my first MB when I loaded it with 250W of 13700kf, and after it has gone bad, it took out the second brand new MB. Either that, or I'm totally out of options. Already tried three GPUs, two CPUs, two MBs, two PSUs (the other one was a cheap 500W one, but it had the same freezing, so I'm really scared that it's not the real culprit), with and without PCIe raiser. It's like this system, that I used literally every day, is now holding a huge grudge against me.
@Darkbreeze can you give us a sanity check here? Besides attention to details errors in the building process I cannot think of anything obvious.