Question PC Freeze

Iseltius

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Jan 29, 2017
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About 2 months ago I bought a new PC and I've been having freezing issues. It manifests as a gradual freeze. Let's say I play football manager on 1 screen and I have a youtube video running on my second screen. When the freeze begins, the computer becomes unresponsive: I click on buttons but nothing happens, the video freezes while the audio continues for the data that has already been downloading. When I try and open new windows/apps, they don't load information anymore. If I try to restart from the start menu nothing happens. The only remedy is to manually shut down and then everything is fine.

The freezes are irregular: things can be fine for 1-2 weeks then it happens again and sometimes twice in a day. I've looked at metrics with HWMonitor and I did not see anything that stands out. During a freeze the CPU was at 23% and RAM at 37%. Temperatures were fine. I can't confirm for every instance since I can't predict when it happens and I don't always have it open.

My first instinct was to suspect one my 2 RAM sticks since they are new (alongside the motherboard & CPU). I ran memtest a few times and I found no issues. I took one out, then swapped them but I still get the freeze. Also, no crash reports so no luck there 🙁. I think it is unlikely to be the GPU and SSDs since I moved them from my old machine. Drivers are up to date. I now supect either the motherboard or the CPU but I can't tell what the source of the freezing is. Can anyone help?

OS: Windows 10
Motherboard: ROG STRIX Z790-A Gaming Wifi II
CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K
GPU: nVidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
RAM: 2x16GB DDR5 Corsair Vengeance
PSU: Corsair 850W RMx Series Modular 80 Plus Gold
 
Last edited:
About 2 months ago I bought a new PC and I've been having freezing issues. It manifests as a gradual freeze. Let's say I play football manager on 1 screen and I have a youtube video running on my second screen. When the freeze begins, the computer becomes unresponsive: I click on buttons but nothing happens, the video freezes while the audio continues for the data that has already been downloading. When I try and open new windows/apps, they don't load information anymore. If I try to restart from the start menu nothing happens. The only remedy is to manually shut down and then everything is fine.

The freezes are irregular: things can be fine for 1-2 weeks then it happens again and sometimes twice in a day. I've looked at metrics with HWMonitor and I did not see anything that stands out. During a freeze the CPU was at 23% and RAM at 37%. Temperatures were fine. I can't confirm for every instance since I can't predict when it happens and I don't always have it open.

My first instinct was to suspect one my 2 RAM sticks since they are new (alongside the motherboard & CPU). I ran memtest a few times and I found no issues. I took one out, then swapped them but I still get the freeze. Also, no crash reports so no luck there 🙁. I think it is unlikely to be the GPU and SSDs since I moved them from my old machine. Drivers are up to date. I now supect either the motherboard or the CPU but I can't tell what the source of the freezing is. Can anyone help?

OS: Windows 10
Motherboard: ROG STRIX Z790-A Gaming Wifi II
CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K
GPU: nVidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
RAM: 2x16GB DDR5 Corsair Vengeance
What psu you use.
 
PSU: Corsair 850W RMx Series Modular 80 Plus Gold

I will update my original post with this information. I've already done the memtest a few times with no errors found. I will attempt to update my BIOS in the meantime.
 
The PSU is from the old machine (end of 2016). As for storage I got 2 Samsung SSDs: 1TB EVO 850 and 2TB EVO 870. The 850 stores the operating system. They are both from the old machine.
 
The PSU is from the old machine (end of 2016).
I suspect you've had it for a long time.
Unplug the disks from the power supply.
Just keep the first one with the windows.
If you have a smaller graphics card, put it in your system and see if it freezes.
I think your power supply is causing the problem when it has a heavy load.
 
I have updated my BIOS first, now I wait and hope that fixed it. The PSU should be able to handle my setup. I used pc part picker to build the pc and estimate the usage. Also I didn't do anything that would be power intensive. I'll keep that and the disks in mind if it happens again though I lean towards something being wrong with the CPU right now. The annoying thing is I have no way to replicate the problem, it just happens.