Newly built PC constantly freezing

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Dec 16, 2017
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This will be a long read.

The Opening
My PC constantly freezes. These are either hard freezes (screen locks, keyboard unresponsive, sounds goes out, mouse unresponsive)

or display black screens (sound goes out, keyboard may or may not respond, mouse freeze).

Occasionally (like 5% or so) my machine restarts itself abruptly and I've had 1 BSOD. (Yesterday)

History
The PC was built on December 9th. It worked ... ok for about 3 days. (The GPU fan had to be manually turned on, but I wasn't freezing or crashing at This point) Things went bad when i decided to try mess with my drives.

My old PC was a prebuilt. It had a 500gb HDD. I ran out of space and decided on a 1TB Seagate firecuda SSHD in February of 2017. I used both of these drives. When the time came to build my current PC, I decided to clone my HDD over to my SSHD just for the operating system. ( to help with boot times, game load times, and I wanted both machines to be functional.)

I successfully cloned the drive and put it in my new build. It ran fine for a few hours. It then told me that my Windows 10 was not activated. I put my old HDD back into my PC, because it bad the original copy of Win10. Still it said my OS was not legit. I contacted Microsoft support and after a while, I convinced them to give me a serial for Win10.

It was at this point that I began having issues. Constantly freezing. The PC always continues running. The CPU and case fans continue spinning like nothing has happened. 100% of the time (unless the 5% chance that it resets itself) I have to hard reset the machine.

For the first week, I've been doing basic research on other people who report similar problems. I've tried everything that I know. The Event Viewer hasn't been very helpful. I don't really know what to look for there. Kernel Power 41 IS pretty common, but I assume that's from me hard resetting my machine.

Today i decided to write down a personal log of what I've done in this morning alone.

Started the PC at 6:00 am

  • Scanned all drives. No issues found.
    Changed PCI link state power management to "off".
    Turned off fast boot.
    Turned off Background Apps.
    Ran Maintenance Tasks.

At this point I decided to play a game. Played it for roughly 1 hour. Crashed (hard freeze) at 7:54am.

Rebooted at 8:00am

  • Ran Event Viewer. Nothing obviously responsible found.
    Crashed (black screen. Keyboard responsive) at 8:19am

Rebooted at 8:24am

  • Checked event viewer. Showed event 158 @8:15am. (No idea if relevant)
    Began typing this forum post.
    Crashed at 8:42am

Rebooted at 8:45am.
Crashed at 8:46am.

This is a constant trend. My first boot of the day lasts roughly 2 hours. Subsequent boots get shorter and shorter in between crashes. To the point where it sometimes fails to boot at all.

PC specs
CPU: Ryzen 5 1600
GPU: Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8gb
Mobo: ASrock ab350m pro4
RAM: 16gb (2x8gb) G.skill Trident Z DDR4 3200
PSU: Corsair CX550M
OS: Win10 Home x64
Drives: 500gb Toshiba HDD (2014, from previous PC) + 1TB Seagate Firecuda SSHD

What I've done so far

I've read that these issues are usually PSU, RAM, or GPU. So I've:


  • Reseated the RAM several times.
    Ran memtest. No issues found. (Only 1 pass admittedly)
    Reseated/ensured all connections are secure in the GPU.
    Ensured all PCI/SATA connections are secure into the PSU.
    Ensured all general cables are secure into the mobo.
    Ensured all mobo settings are "default".
    Ensured no overclocking is enabled.
    Unplugged 2 of 3 monitors to minimize power usage.
    Changed the outlet the PC is plugged into.
    Swapped out power cables for the PC.
    Monitored temperatures of the GPU and CPU. CPU idles at 30c. GPU at around 40c.
    Removed HDD and tried booting+running strictly on the SSHD. Constant 100% disk usage and continues to freeze.
    And all the things i listed in log for today.

I'm desperate for help. I've spent nearly $1000 on this. I am not intelligent enough to diagnose and address this problem myself. Please help me.
 
Solution
T
Hi RAM has nothing to do with it. I had exactly the same issue with the ab350m pro4. Increasing the voltage of the CPU seems to stabilize the system a bit so try something like 1.4v it might work for you. For me it didn't work so I had to return the board for a refund. Bought the MSI Tomahawk instead, now everything works fine.
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I think you need to start with a basic fresh install of Windows before you can assume anything else is wrong. Now that the board has an electronic activation on the windows servers you can install either without a key or use the one they gave you.

porting over a Windows install from another platform can be and is problematic at times.
 
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So basically you used your old pc’s boot drive in a new pc without reinstalling windows... right?

If so, that’s likely your problem. Make sure your ram and gpu are firmly seated then reinstall windows from scratch. Get the latest chipset drivers from mobo site.
 
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I've reinstalled windows and went ahead and formatted my drives. Now I can't connect to the internet. It says my Ethernet can't find a valid IP.

Worst of all, I'm still freezing. Just as frequently as before. I've basically just made things worse for myself. The machine lasts about 3 or 5 minutes before freezing.

UPDATE: I managed to fix the internet issue. Updating drivers now.
 
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I forgot to list that in the original post. My BIOS is newest. (3.30).

I will try using 1 stick now.
 
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So far I've tested each stick in slot A2. (My mobo calls for A2/B2 when using 2 sticks.)

Both have frozen within a couple minutes.

Not sure if this is any help, but I've started to notice it freezes mostly when my machine attempts to load/scan something.

Like when device manager tries to get a list of all my devices, or when I check my drives for errors, stuff like that. Not sure if that is helpful information.

At this point; I'm at a loss. I have no idea what to try now. I'll just wait for more replies. Thank you guys so much.
 
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We went for the low hanging fruit because it's obvious, now you have to do some serious trouble shooting.

Remove the board from the case, put it on a cardboard box or other totally non conductive surface, the only thing that should be plugged in is the power supply and one stick of ram and in your case the video card. Nothing else. You can short the pins for power switch to turn the unit on and test.

Boot it from a memtest USB stick and start testing, adding in one thing at a time as you get a pass until at the end of the process, you plug in the SSD and try and boot your windows install.
 
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What do you mean by "adding in one thing as you get a pass"?

And Also, are you telling me to re-reinstall windows again?

Does it matter in what order I reconnect the parts? Do I have to remove the CPU? I'm scared to honestly.
 
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Starting now. Thanks again. Talk to you soon.
 
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The first question is no. Unless I'm reading this page wrong. (https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/AB350M%20Pro4/index.asp#Memory)

DDR4 3200 is not on that page. The second question is idk. These parts originated from PCpartpicker and it detected no compatibility issues.

UPDATE: https://www.gskill.com/en/product/f4-3200c16d-16gtzb

My ram is also not showing my mobo on it's qvl. Please double check my links. I may be reading this information entirely wrong.

I will say this, my ram is rated at 1.35v but my mobo slots have "1.2v" on them. I'm not sure if that is bad, but I've read that my mobo just considers them "overclocked". If I'm understanding this correctly, my RAM is too fast for this mobo?
 
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Did you change the voltage settings in BIOS to match the 1.35 volts that your memory requires? I don't think your ram is too fast. the Gskill website had stock memory speeds up to 3066. While your memory is rated @3200, that doesn't mean that it can't run slower. However, you may not be able to run it at full 3200 speed. Getting memory that is not on either QVL to work can be a challenge, even for old pros. 😀 which I am not! Can you see if you could exchange the ram for a kit that is on one of the QVL's? I think you would have more success with your machine.

 
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I did try changing my voltage in bios but I don't think it let me save the setting when i changed it to 1.35v. I can try again though. However, After spending a while looking at the qvl's, I decided to buy more Ram. I bought

Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 2666MHz (PC4 21300) C16 Desktop Memory Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2A2666C16)

It arrives Monday. I seriously hope this will solve my problem! I'll be so mad if I spent more money for nothing lol. I guess I'll just have to wait and see!
 
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Hey, I just want to add I've got a similar issue with the same MOBO and CPU. Another guy on Reddit posted about the same thing.

That's for sure bias and probably not important, but I'll throw the info in.
 
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Can you link the post please? How similar is your problem to mine?

 
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Sure. No answers from either link though, except possibly being RAM compatability issues. I'm hoping not.

the reddit link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/7k8p39/display_freezes_cpu_left_running_only_way_is_to/

toms hardware link I just posted here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3595448/started-freezing-time-game-odd-time-browsing.html

 
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Maybe it's the mobo. I will say my machine is seemingly more stable with this different RAM.

It's frozen twice so far. Both after a game of Rainbow Six Siege ends. I'm currently watching YouTube and my machine has yet to freeze. I'm expecting it at any second, lol I've become conditioned to expect my PC to be terrible
 
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My bad, clicked downvote on a post when I noticed there's upvotes and downvotes, I guess it can't be reversed. Not trying to be a hater here.
 
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Same lol. It's sporadic enough for me to get into a game or some work, but then out of nowhere it stops. Sometimes 2 hours, sometimes within 10 minutes it's gone. It just seems weird cause I stressed the hell out of the thing to diagnose and it worked fine throughout the tests.

Before buying the MOBO I did hear about issues with it but people said it was patched up and not to worry

I don't really want to go out and buy new ram if the issue isn't gonna help, ya know?

I'll let ya know if I find anything out.
 
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Yeah. I'll probably end up buying a new mobo if it continues to persist. I've been stressed the last week because my pc is crapping on me while I've spent over $1000 on this machine. My heart sank when my pc froze today after buying another component for $200 that didn't fix my problem

Good luck man. Hopefully we find a solution
 
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with the ram you can return it under 30 days for shipping fee. download hardware info 64 bit set it to logging and sensor make sure the 12v rail on the power supply is holding. on the mb make sure the newest bios is on it. intel mb make sure you have the newest intel chipset drivers same for amd mb.
 
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