Question pc crashes, even when idle in bios.

Jun 26, 2022
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started happening 2 days ago whilst playing csgo. monitors lost signal, peripherals disconnected but the chassis/cpu fans kept spinning at idle speed.
yesterday the system was running for ~8 hours, played 2 hours of doom eternal just fine. went into a game of csgo and after a few rounds it crashed again. when it crashes i can't power it off by holding the case power button, i have to turn off/on the psu.
i can't even post if i instantly try to boot it up again. the system has to be unplugged for a few minutes to post again.
after the latest csgo crash my system crashes ~2min after being turned on. can't be a software issue. happens on win10, linux and even in bios.

things i've tried so far:
  • swapped powersupplies. used my brothers corsair cx600. i know that the psu is working fine because he games on it too. (behaviour doesn't change)
  • swapped gpus. used my brothers gtx960. (behaviour doesn't change)
  • tried to boot with the most minimal setup. switching ram sticks around didn't help either.
the system:
  • ryzen 5 3600
  • msi rx580 8gb
  • g.skill 2x8gb 3000MHz
  • asrock b450 pro4
  • bequiet pure power 11 600w
  • 1x adata 2.5" ssd 250gb
  • 1x samsung evo 2.5" 250gb
  • 2x seagate 1tb
at this point i've narrowed it down to be either the mainboard or the ram. i don't think that it's the cpu because the behaviour of the issue doesn't seem like a broken cpu to me?
unfortunately my brother still sits on an i5-4460 so switching my motherboard/cpu/ram with his parts is out of the question :/

just a sidenote: why is debugging (either through led or speaker) not an industry standard? at least include a speaker in the packaging. makes troubleshooting issues like this so much easier...

quick update: the system starts to crash after about ~8hrs runtime. shuts down, FANS SPIN WITH 100% SPEED (not idle speed, sorry about that). after about 30secs it restarts and boots like nothing ever happened. my guess would be that the motherboard thinks something is overheating? i closely monitored the temps with hwmonitor and both the cpu and the mainboard temps are absolutely fine. cpu is sitting at 35-45ish and the mainboard is sitting at 30-40. will switch my 3600 with a friends 3600 tomorrow to see if something changes.
oh and i got a mainboard speaker. whenever my pc crashes and i try to manually restart it the speaker won't give me any error codes.
all the info i gathered makes it pretty sure for me that's its the mainboard.
 
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If the PSU works then it is most likely motherboard that failed.
why is debugging (either through led or speaker) not an industry standard? at least include a speaker in the packaging. makes troubleshooting issues like this so much easier...
Back in the days buzzer was included with case. Nowadays when lots of motherboards have debug LEDs I suppose many case manufacturers think it is not necessary anymore. Still, it's the thing that didn't changed in last 30 years so if you had one, you still have one (and don't need more).
 
started happening 2 days ago whilst playing csgo. monitors lost signal, peripherals disconnected but the chassis/cpu fans kept spinning at idle speed.
yesterday the system was running for ~8 hours, played 2 hours of doom eternal just fine. went into a game of csgo and after a few rounds it crashed again. when it crashes i can't power it off by holding the case power button, i have to turn off/on the psu.
i can't even post if i instantly try to boot it up again. the system has to be unplugged for a few minutes to post again.
after the latest csgo crash my system crashes ~2min after being turned on. can't be a software issue. happens on win10, linux and even in bios.

things i've tried so far:
  • swapped powersupplies. used my brothers corsair cx600. i know that the psu is working fine because he games on it too. (behaviour doesn't change)
  • swapped gpus. used my brothers gtx960. (behaviour doesn't change)
  • tried to boot with the most minimal setup. switching ram sticks around didn't help either.
the system:
  • ryzen 5 3600
  • msi rx580 8gb
  • g.skill 2x8gb 3000MHz
  • asrock b450 pro4
  • bequiet pure power 11 600w
  • 1x adata 2.5" ssd 250gb
  • 1x samsung evo 2.5" 250gb
  • 2x seagate 1tb
at this point i've narrowed it down to be either the mainboard or the ram. i don't think that it's the cpu because the behaviour of the issue doesn't seem like a broken cpu to me?
unfortunately my brother still sits on an i5-4460 so switching my motherboard/cpu/ram with his parts is out of the question :/

just a sidenote: why is debugging (either through led or speaker) not an industry standard? at least include a speaker in the packaging. makes troubleshooting issues like this so much easier...
Take the side panel off the case.
Point a small fan at the innards.
Any diff?
 
update:
it was a faulty motherboard.
replaced my asrock b450 pro4 with an msi b450m pro-vdh 2 days ago and everything works fine again. even though the enermax ets t50 ripped my 3600 out of the socket. twice.
 
once again an update: buying a new motherboard did not fix the issue. it still persists. i simply can not understand why my system has such erratic behavior. it worked flawlessly for over a week, why is the issue suddenly coming back now? i switched pretty much everything besides the drives, the case and the cpu. i even switched my power strip.

well at least i have a bit more information now thanks to the ezdebug led. the pc crashes and it begins cycling through the debug leds. it gets stuck on cpu. but once again, this isn't always the case, sometimes it boots into windows and nothing happens for hours (or minutes), sometimes it crashes during the short POST screen (the one that says press x to enter bios). sometimes it just loops through the leds, trying again and again to post, until eventually getting stuck on the cpu led. this behavior is just so erratic, spontanious. it's as if there isn't a reason for it behaving that way. it's such a pain to troubleshoot it just breaks me. my absolute last guess would be that the cpu is somehow faulty. but a faulty cpu wouldn't behave this way would it? i don't wanna spend another 200eus for a 5600x just to be greeted by the same nonsensical behavior.

if someone with a deeper hardware-knowledge reads this: please help me. im losing my damn mind. please.

edit: switched out my 3600 with a 1600. ezdebug is stuck on cpu, with both of the cpus. doesn't even cycle through anymore. i'm thinking of just buying a new rig (except the gpu). seems like something keeps frying the motherboard or/and cpu.
 
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