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.
 
I've fixed it. The motherboard did not play nice with windows 10. I've upgraded to windows 11 and the freeze is gone. No need to replace any component.