Question New PC build shutting down....kind of

Mar 19, 2019
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First off, here are the specs of my (first pc build)..

Asrock AB350m Pro4
AMD Ryzen 5 1600
Old Geforce GTX 560
EVGA 500w bronze psu
Corsair 16bg ddr4 2400mhz
Samsung 860EVO M.2 ssd
WD blue 1TB hd

Okay so first off I want to mention that I have not played any games on this setup, only used it to browse the web.

What happens is the screen goes black, and the pc acts like it is rebooting but never boots back up. Screen stays black and ALL fans are spinning at 100%. It will set like that for days until it is rebooted or sometimes have to completely do a hard shut down. It seems to be completely random, but I have noticed if the pc has been shut off for a couple of days that I can usually keep it running for 5-6 hours. After it starts shutting down and I bring it back up I usually only have a few minutes before it shuts down again.

What I have tried thus far..

Removing 1 ram stick at a time
Moving both ram sticks to different slots
Constantly monitor temps and voltages
Monitor Event Viewer (Found issues with Com Server errors during shut down times, went into services and stopped Com+Event System
Re-seated ALL connections in the system
Updated bios to 3.4

Other things to note...

I had trouble when installing a copy of windows purchased from Kinguin, the key failed. So I purchased straight from microsoft and loaded that key in....I'm not a 100% sure that I did it correctly, but windows seems like its working fine.

I have also noticed that the pc doesn't shut down while in the bios.


I know I am long winded but wanted to be thorough, as I have been troubleshooting this pc for almost a year and I haven't gotten anywhere. ANY help will be greatly appreciated!!
 
Mar 19, 2019
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Okay so I put the pc in safe mode, "it did not shut down while in safe mode". I uninstalled my graphics card, rebooted and installed the latest driver for it. I also then ran a benchmark Cenabench and monitored temps and voltages, it did get up to pulling 98A but no issues during the stress test. Ten minutes later while just setting at the desktop....same thing, screen goes black and all of the fans run full blast. I am wondering a few things..
  1. Could my psu be having some crazy spikes that I am not able to catch?
  2. My gpu is like 7 years old and is the only used piece on my pc.
  3. It looks like my motherboard is know for having some voltage irregularities....
 
Here are the first steps to take when trying to solve these kinds of hardware problems. If you have already tried these steps, all of them, exactly as outlined, we can move along to more advanced solutions.

If there are any you have NOT done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that possibility.


First, make sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed. If it does not, then update. This solves a high number of issues even in cases where the release that is newer than yours makes no mention of improving graphics card or other hardware compatibility. They do not list every change they have made when they post a new BIOS release.

Second, go to the product page for your motherboard on the manufacturer website. Download and install the latest driver versions for the chipset, storage controllers, audio and network adapters. Do not skip installing a newer driver just because you think it is not relevant to the problem you are having. The drivers for one device can often affect ALL other devices and a questionable driver release can cause instability in the OS itself. They don't release new drivers just for fun. If there is a new driver release for a component, there is a good reason for it. The same goes for BIOS updates.

IF you have other hardware installed or attached to the system that are not a part of the systems covered by the motherboard drivers, then go to the support page for THAT component and check to see if there are newer drivers available for that as well. If there are, install them.

The last thing we want to look at, for now anyhow, is the graphics card drivers. Regardless of whether you "already installed the newest drivers" for your graphics card or not, it is OFTEN a good idea to do a CLEAN install of the graphics card drivers. Just installing over the old drivers OR trying to use what Nvidia and AMD consider a clean install is not good enough and does not usually give the same result as using the Display Driver Uninstaller utility. This has a very high success rate and is always worth a shot.

If you have had both Nvidia and AMD cards installed at any point on that operating system then you will want to run the DDU twice. Once for the old card drivers (ie, Nvidia or AMD) and again for the currently installed graphics card drivers (ie, AMD or Nvidia). So if you had an Nvidia card at some point in the past, run it first for Nvidia and then after that is complete, run it again for AMD if you currently have an AMD card installed.

Here are the full instructions on running the Display driver uninstaller and CLEAN installing new drivers.

 
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Reactions: jmad06
Mar 19, 2019
19
0
10
Here are the first steps to take when trying to solve these kinds of hardware problems. If you have already tried these steps, all of them, exactly as outlined, we can move along to more advanced solutions.

If there are any you have NOT done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that possibility.


First, make sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed. If it does not, then update. This solves a high number of issues even in cases where the release that is newer than yours makes no mention of improving graphics card or other hardware compatibility. They do not list every change they have made when they post a new BIOS release.

Second, go to the product page for your motherboard on the manufacturer website. Download and install the latest driver versions for the chipset, storage controllers, audio and network adapters. Do not skip installing a newer driver just because you think it is not relevant to the problem you are having. The drivers for one device can often affect ALL other devices and a questionable driver release can cause instability in the OS itself. They don't release new drivers just for fun. If there is a new driver release for a component, there is a good reason for it. The same goes for BIOS updates.

IF you have other hardware installed or attached to the system that are not a part of the systems covered by the motherboard drivers, then go to the support page for THAT component and check to see if there are newer drivers available for that as well. If there are, install them.

The last thing we want to look at, for now anyhow, is the graphics card drivers. Regardless of whether you "already installed the newest drivers" for your graphics card or not, it is OFTEN a good idea to do a CLEAN install of the graphics card drivers. Just installing over the old drivers OR trying to use what Nvidia and AMD consider a clean install is not good enough and does not usually give the same result as using the Display Driver Uninstaller utility. This has a very high success rate and is always worth a shot.

If you have had both Nvidia and AMD cards installed at any point on that operating system then you will want to run the DDU twice. Once for the old card drivers (ie, Nvidia or AMD) and again for the currently installed graphics card drivers (ie, AMD or Nvidia). So if you had an Nvidia card at some point in the past, run it first for Nvidia and then after that is complete, run it again for AMD if you currently have an AMD card installed.

Here are the full instructions on running the Display driver uninstaller and CLEAN installing new drivers.


This is great info! I will follow all of these steps and report back. I have a newb question...when you say to make sure all of the hardware is up to date, does the cpu, my m.2 ssd, and the ram have drivers or anything that needs to be updated? Of course I have already updated the gpu driver, but i did not try it with ddu, and for some reason im having trouble finding bios updates for my exact model mb, but I will keep looking.
 
Start by making sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed.

If it does, great, move on. If not, update. There are plenty of video and other tutorials on updating specific motherboards or chipset families within any given brands series of motherboards. If there is not a tutorial that explicitly details how to update YOUR exact model, there WILL be one for a similar model using the same chipset from the same brand. For example, a guide for updating the BIOS on an ASUS Z370-A is going to pretty much be exactly the same as updating the BIOS for an ASUS Z370 Maximus Hero aside from the fact that the Hero likely has a BIOS flashback port on the back of the motherboard for updating even if you can't POST, while the lower tiered board won't have that. They will however both support downloading the latest BIOS firmware, unpacking it and copying it to a USB flash drive and then going into the BIOS and finding the BIOS update utility and pointing to the files on the flash drive. Tutorials will usually show exact step by step instructions.

After BIOS is up to date or it's determined that it doesn't need to be updated, then move on the motherboard drivers. GO to the product page for your board, find the latest chipset, audio, network adapter and storage controller drivers for your OS version and board model, download them, install them.

Next, after you've finished with those and restarted the system at least once move on to using the DDU and then installing the latest GPU card drivers for your card model.

BIOS firmware releases for your board are here: https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/AB350M Pro4/index.asp#BIOS

Audio driver: http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Drivers/All/Audio/Realtek_Audio(v8308_FF00).zip

Network (Ethernet LAN) drivers: http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Drivers/All/LAN/Realtek_LAN(v10023).zip

AMD all in one chipset package: http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Drivers/AMD/AllIn1/Allin1(v18.10.20_NHDA).zip

Nvidia driver: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/132845/en-us
 
  • Like
Reactions: jmad06
Mar 19, 2019
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Start by making sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed.

If it does, great, move on. If not, update. There are plenty of video and other tutorials on updating specific motherboards or chipset families within any given brands series of motherboards. If there is not a tutorial that explicitly details how to update YOUR exact model, there WILL be one for a similar model using the same chipset from the same brand. For example, a guide for updating the BIOS on an ASUS Z370-A is going to pretty much be exactly the same as updating the BIOS for an ASUS Z370 Maximus Hero aside from the fact that the Hero likely has a BIOS flashback port on the back of the motherboard for updating even if you can't POST, while the lower tiered board won't have that. They will however both support downloading the latest BIOS firmware, unpacking it and copying it to a USB flash drive and then going into the BIOS and finding the BIOS update utility and pointing to the files on the flash drive. Tutorials will usually show exact step by step instructions.

After BIOS is up to date or it's determined that it doesn't need to be updated, then move on the motherboard drivers. GO to the product page for your board, find the latest chipset, audio, network adapter and storage controller drivers for your OS version and board model, download them, install them.

Next, after you've finished with those and restarted the system at least once move on to using the DDU and then installing the latest GPU card drivers for your card model.

BIOS firmware releases for your board are here: https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/AB350M Pro4/index.asp#BIOS

Audio driver: http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Drivers/All/Audio/Realtek_Audio(v8308_FF00).zip

Network (Ethernet LAN) drivers: http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Drivers/All/LAN/Realtek_LAN(v10023).zip

AMD all in one chipset package: http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Drivers/AMD/AllIn1/Allin1(v18.10.20_NHDA).zip

Nvidia driver: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/132845/en-us


Okay, so I have went through your list and have succesfully completed everything. There were several bios updates since I updated last year, I installed the latest one with the chipset drivers, as well as the rest of the drivers. I also in stalled DDU and removed the old drivers and installed new. I will keep the pc up and continue monitoring and report back. Thanks again for your help, it has been much appreciated.
 
Mar 19, 2019
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20 minutes after making my last post here it does it again....It was also mentioned by another member to rule out windows, load linux on a usb and run off of that for a while.
 
Yes, that's always a good diagnostic tool. I like USB bootable Ubuntu for doing that. If you have no problems with that, then I'd say do a clean install of Windows and follow this procedure in my guide EXACTLY as outlined. Make certain there are NO other drives connected except the flash drive or optical drive containing the Windows installer and the target drive the OS is being installed on. You can reattach other drives, if there are any, after the installation is complete.


Windows 10 Clean install tutorial


But before you do that, you should read these and make sure your copy of windows is attached to YOU via a Microsoft account.



 
Mar 19, 2019
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Just an update. I loaded Linux Mint 19.1 on a bootable external hard drive. It is still doing the same thing, monitor goes to sleep and pc fans running full blast. So tonight I cleared the cmos and removed the battery for 5 min while my 24 pin connector was unplugged. I will let it run and report back with any changes. If I am still getting the same shut down, which piece of hardware would you test first? I’ve seen in the forums that the Ryzen cpus are picky and like fast ram. Is mine at 2400 fast enough? I haven’t messed with any voltage changes or over clocking on anything.
 
IF you still have problems, I think the first thing I'd do is remove the CPU cooler and the CPU, and check to see if there are ANY, even one, bent pin. Then if there is not, we can go from there. Obviously this is going to mean you will need some thermal paste and isopropyl alcohol. The ISO alcohol is easy, most stores carry 90% ISO alcohol which you will need to clean the old paste off the top of the CPU and the bottom of the heatsink, but I don't know if you live near anyplace where you can get a quality thermal paste so you may have to order it.

If you already have some, great, if not, I'd recommend something basic like Arctic silver 5 or Arctic MX-4 for now because you might have to take the cooler back off again if it turns out to be a motherboard issue in the end, and no sense using an expensive paste like Thermal grizzly Kryonaut if you're just going to have to remove it anyhow. Later once it's good you can always apply a better paste if you wish.

2400mhz memory is VERY slow for Ryzen. 2933mhz should be the mimimum recommended memory speed for most Ryzen systems, with 3000-3200mhz being the optimal recommended speed. I WOULD recommend having sticks in that range, but since you have that memory already I'm not sure I can tell you that you ought to worry about faster memory until you get these issues sorted and memory speed isn't causing the current issues.

Is it the GPU fans or case fans that go full speed when it goes to sleep by itself, or is all fans?
 
Mar 19, 2019
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IF you still have problems, I think the first thing I'd do is remove the CPU cooler and the CPU, and check to see if there are ANY, even one, bent pin. Then if there is not, we can go from there. Obviously this is going to mean you will need some thermal paste and isopropyl alcohol. The ISO alcohol is easy, most stores carry 90% ISO alcohol which you will need to clean the old paste off the top of the CPU and the bottom of the heatsink, but I don't know if you live near anyplace where you can get a quality thermal paste so you may have to order it.

If you already have some, great, if not, I'd recommend something basic like Arctic silver 5 or Arctic MX-4 for now because you might have to take the cooler back off again if it turns out to be a motherboard issue in the end, and no sense using an expensive paste like Thermal grizzly Kryonaut if you're just going to have to remove it anyhow. Later once it's good you can always apply a better paste if you wish.

2400mhz memory is VERY slow for Ryzen. 2933mhz should be the mimimum recommended memory speed for most Ryzen systems, with 3000-3200mhz being the optimal recommended speed. I WOULD recommend having sticks in that range, but since you have that memory already I'm not sure I can tell you that you ought to worry about faster memory until you get these issues sorted and memory speed isn't causing the current issues.

Is it the GPU fans or case fans that go full speed when it goes to sleep by itself, or is all fans?

Okay first to answer your question, from what it looks and sounds like all of the case fans speed up, and I am pretty sure the gpu does also. Today I removed cpu cooler, and cpu. No bent pins. I went ahead and removed the mother board to inspect, no signs of burns or cracks anywhere. Of course I re-seated all connections to the MB. Its been up and running for the past hour, I will continue to let it run and post back.
 
I'd bet that something your reseated fixed the problem. My guess is something was not seated quite right. Could have been anything though. Sometimes just taking something out, that IS correctly installed, and reinstalling it, does for whatever reason make the difference. Who knows. Might even have been a combination of things including the BIOS and drivers.
 
Mar 19, 2019
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That's a fact. I see it all the time here, and occasionally on my work bench.

Well, I have spoken too soon. The pc ran great all afternoon Sunday, it of course went in sleep mode whenever I was not on it. As soon as I would move my mouse it would wake up and keep running fine. Yesterday I changed the settings so it wouldn't sleep and ran all day, I even downloaded a 100gb game with no issues. Tried to play the game for a few minutes (gpu terribly out of date, and graphics were terrible). So I later start looking at new gpu's on the pc and IT SHUTS DOWN AGAIN.....I am almost set on it being a faulty MB, but is there any way to prove that? I am going to rule out the gpu by probably going with a gtx 1660 ti. But it always seems to shut down when everything is at idle or me just browsing, not during downloads, or benchmarks when the cpu, gpu, psu should be under more of load.
 
About the only way to determine the motherboard is to blame, is to eliminate everything else. Unfortunately. The only exception to that is when there is something that is specifically only able to happen if there is a problem on the motherboard, like VRM overheating under normal conditions, or visual evidence that there are leaking or bulging caps or some other visual evidence on the PCB itself.
 

ReezyJeezy

Commendable
Jul 4, 2017
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1,510
there is a quicker way to determine if its the motherboard, swap motherboards and if it fixes the problems....well....
theres another guy on this forum with the same issue: https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...es-signal-all-when-loading-up-a-game.2999488/
my sons pc has done a similar thing and its only occassionally but his head phone dongle seems to cause some issue because when i take it out of the front usb port itll post fine
 
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Yeah, we usually don't just recommend replacing the motherboard in the spirit of it being "quicker", because, well, a decent board is rather expensive. But it's certainly an option. Worst case scenario, if it's not the board, you have an extra board in case you need a replacement later BECAUSE as we've found, boards tend to get MORE expensive as time goes on and you discover down the road your platform is still doing what you need it to but your board takes a dump, and then when you go to find one you find that they are about 50% more expensive (Or more) than when you originally purchased yours because nobody has been making boards with a compatible chipset for a number of years and now you are at the mercy of the Ebay sellers who have a back supply of new old stock, or used boards, and are extremely proud of them.

For example, try to find an LGA 1150 board, or an AM3+ board, for anything near the original pricing, especially an unused one. Good luck with that.

But as a method of diagnosing the problem, it might not be the idea I'd prefer. I'd rather eliminate everything else first until I was fairly sure all that was left was the motherboard. Still, getting a second board as a backup exclusive to the diagnostics idea, is always something that should be considered if you don't plan to upgrade again for a good long while.
 
Mar 19, 2019
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Okay, lets give this new gpu a try "which I doubt will fix my problem". I dont mind to try another board, if it turns out that both boards are good, then I guess Ill be building a 2nd machine!