Question New custom built PC mysteriously randomly freezing

[Super_Ismail]

Before you read, this is kinda long troubleshooting report here, so if you have an idea I can try pleas first read what I did so far because I might've already mentioned it (this happened before).

What do I mean by "Freeze"?
Basically everything in the screen stops moving all of a sudden, the mouse doesn't move, the keyboard doesn't work, but the Fans and RGBs are still running and the fans speed stabilize, so if I was in a game they immediately go back to base speed at idle
The only thing I can do is to hold down the shutdown/turn on button to force the PC to shutdown

PC Specs:

• CPU: Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• GPU: ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080
• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws M5 Neo 6000MHz DDR5 64GB
• Motherboard: Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite
• SSD: Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe
• AIO: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420
• PSU: Corsair RMe 1000e
• Fans: Eleven 140mm fans (AIO included)
• Case: HAVN HS 420

KEEP IN MIND: ALL THE PARTS ARE NEW EXCEPT THE GPU, PSU, DP CABLE AND MONITOR these parts where running on my previous PC (intel platform) for 3 months completely fine.

Long story short, after finishing building the PC I booted into windows and it freezes not immediately but at completely random conditions (Idle, gaming, checking temps, adjusting fan curves, running Youtube, installing software, windows setting...).
For 2 weeks I was trying to figure out the reason for this completely random freezing that happens

Some of the things I tried:

• Tried different Bios versions with different motherboards
• The classic "One RAM stick" trick
• Replaced the RAMs
• Replaced the SSD
• I even replaced the motherboard from Asus TUF B850 to Gigabyte Aorus X870 and still freezes!
• Tried windows 10, 11 home and 11 pro
• For each windows version I had tried looking at event viewer and liability viewer and none of them showed any event or error related to freezing
• run with and without HWinfo running
• running with and without fan curves
• AMD's Expo was never enabled
• installed all necessary drivers (AMD chipset, Nvidia, LAN, Bluetooth, Wifi, Audio, USB, SSD...)
• Ran the PC without a GPU and connected the monitor to my IGPU and it was stable for a while
• Left the GPU connected to the motherboard but not connected to a monitor and was also a bit stable

At this point I gave up and took it to a repair shop for 2 days and they said they fixed it and according to them they saw some missing visual C++ files and that's it.
they ran games for 16+ hours with no issues, BUT the moment I got it home it froze immediately again.

Things I tried that made the PC more stable and I don't know why! :

• I forced the motherboard to choose PCIe Gen4 instead of auto from Bios and was stable for a whole day but froze again next day
• I simply swapped my DP cable that allowed my PC to run at 155Hz (my monitor's native refresh rate) with an HDMI cable that limited my PC to 100Hz only. So far this was the best solution I've reached since I replaced DP cable that was running perfectly fine with the same GPU, PSU and monitor for 3 months with an HDMI cable that limited the performance to 100Hz.

With the DP cable to HDMI replacement my PC ran for 3 days so far and still stable but there was only one incident where it froze where it went to sleep mode (black screen, fans and RGB not running) and then I woke up the PC by pressing "space" on the Keyboard and then it froze but other than that I'm playing games perfectly fine but kinda limited to 100Hz which sucks because when it's not your monitors native refresh you'll get stuttering even with Vsync on and my monitor doesn't support Gsync.

I have to mention that the power supply I have was making a ticking noise at random intervals that sound electrical not mechanical (not fans) in both my old and new pc

Please if I'm being completely silly and the problem is obvious please tell what you think the issue is, it's getting supper frustrating and exhausting to deal with.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Thank you for creating a well laid out thread detailing things. We usually need to poke for answers and details.

Motherboard: Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite
What BIOS version are you on for your motherboard? Might want to try and disable the iGPU in BIOS, then use DDU to remove all GPU drivers(intel, AMD and Nvidia) in Safe Mode, then manually install the latest driver sourced from Nvidia's support site in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

SSD: Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe
Is this the only storage drive in your build? If not, disconnect all drives except for the one you wish to install the OS onto. I also tend to wipe all partitions off the drive so as to have a clean slate.

I even replaced the motherboard from Asus TUF B850 to Gigabyte Aorus X870 and still freezes!
Did you reinstall the OS after swapping motherboards? Recycling the OS onto a new board can also lead to hiccups.

Tried windows 10, 11 home and 11 pro
Where did you source the installers for the OSes?

AMD's Expo was never enabled
Enable it after you've finished OS installation.

Moved thread from Prebuilt & Enterprise section to Systems section.

 

[Super_Ismail]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Thank you for creating a well laid out thread detailing things. We usually need to poke for answers and details.

Motherboard: Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite
What BIOS version are you on for your motherboard? Might want to try and disable the iGPU in BIOS, then use DDU to remove all GPU drivers(intel, AMD and Nvidia) in Safe Mode, then manually install the latest driver sourced from Nvidia's support site in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

SSD: Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe
Is this the only storage drive in your build? If not, disconnect all drives except for the one you wish to install the OS onto. I also tend to wipe all partitions off the drive so as to have a clean slate.

I even replaced the motherboard from Asus TUF B850 to Gigabyte Aorus X870 and still freezes!
Did you reinstall the OS after swapping motherboards? Recycling the OS onto a new board can also lead to hiccups.

Tried windows 10, 11 home and 11 pro
Where did you source the installers for the OSes?

AMD's Expo was never enabled
Enable it after you've finished OS installation.

Moved thread from Prebuilt & Enterprise section to Systems section.

Hi thanks for the reply

For the Gigabyte X780 Aorus motherboard:
- I tried installing a fresh windows 11 and wiping all the partitions in the SSD and I didn't launch the PC from the already installed windows in the SSD I used a flash drive that had windows 11 from the media creation tool from microsoft.
- I got an error where it restarts before windows finishing download so then I updated the bios to F7c that was released Jun 23, 2025. and that fixed it
- I did not disable the IGPU from bios yet but it's on the list of things I will try
- Since every time I reinstall a fresh windows there are no previously installed nvidia drivers so I didn't try DDU while in safe mode before.

For The Samsung SSD:
- Yest it's the only storage drive i have and it's a replacement for an older SSD that I thought it could be the root cause of the problem, so I basically I tried different windows with different SSDs and different Motherboards and different Bios and they all had the same freeze thing

I never enabled Expo because I heard of some instability issues but now that you mentioned it I can try it

I have checked critical events happened around a freeze in reliability monitor and got a livekernelevent with the code 1a8 that could be related some drivers issues according to the internet