Question New PC Built, Freezing / Stuttering / Crashing without any load (Started happening after 5 days)

[flushin]

Hello,

I recently assembled my PC approximately 5-6 days ago. Initially, everything seemed fine after installing Windows 10. However, I encountered a peculiar issue on the first day where, upon alt-tabbing out of a game and returning, my frame rate would plummet to 1-20 FPS for a few seconds before returning to normal. I attempted to address this problem by restarting my PC and updating my GPU drivers, which temporarily resolved the issue.

Unfortunately, after four days, the problem resurfaced and escalated. During gaming sessions, I noticed my frame rate dropping from 400-500 FPS to a mere 30 FPS for about a minute. Sometimes, the game would even crash, or my PC would freeze without recovering. Additionally, my mouse would intermittently stutter every 20 seconds for a few seconds (without any games open), and my PC would unexpectedly shut down / freeze and I would have to restart it. Initially I thought it was an overheating issue since i saw my CPU reaching high temps of around 100 C max, but then i changed my fan settings from Silent -> Normal, and the issue still persisted without any heavy load on the CPU (Desktop with no apps open).

To troubleshoot this issue, I have undertaken the following steps:

1. I updated all drivers through Windows Update, and utilised Geforce Experience for the GPU driver updates.
2. I ran a Windows Memory Diagnostic test, which did not detect any problems with my system's memory.
3. I created a fresh USB installation of Windows 11 using the Media Creation Tool. (Also tried Windows 10)
4. I flashed the BIOS to the latest version and disabled XMP. Enabling XMP caused the PC to fail to boot, requiring a CMOS reset.
5. I conducted tests with each RAM stick separately, but the issue persisted. I also tried swapping the RAM slots, but this did not resolve the problem.
6. I ran memtest86, and it passed all the tests.

I hope this structured summary helps in diagnosing and resolving the issue I'm facing with my PC.

Specs:
CPU: Intel Core i9-13900k
GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti VENTUS 3X 12G OC, 12GB GDDR6X
Ram: Kingston Fury beast RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 6000 CL36
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z690I AORUS ULTRA - Intel Z690
SSD: Samsung SSD 990 PRO, M.2 - 2TB
AIO CPU Cooler: Cooler Master ML240L V2 RGB
PSU: ASUS ROG LOKI SFX-L 850 - 850W

Thank you to anyone reading this in advance, if you have any questions please feel free to comment.

 

[flushin]

The issue turned out to be a faulty GPU. I tried with another GPU, it had no issues.

 

[rickypicky5]

Glad you figured it out.

If I were you though, I'd still monitor your temperatures at the new fan settings.