[SOLVED] PC Freezes but sound still plays and I have limited control of other open windows

[wailey]

I've been having this problem for 2 years now and it has persisted even after switching from a GTX 1060 to a 1070.

My system specs are:
i5 6600k (oc to 4.2GHz but problem persists with or without oc)
Asus Z170M-Plus
Zotac GTX 1070 Mini (upgraded from Zotac 1060 Amp)
12GB Corsair 2133mhz ram
Kingston A1000 480GB SSD (boot)
HyperX Fury 120gb SSD
Seagate Barracuda 500GB HDD

The freeze is a bit hard to replicate but it happens at least twice a week, sometimes multiple times in the same day. When the freeze occurs, I can open go to the desktop and open task manager but the task manager window is just frozen and I cant click on anything. It requires a hard reset to fix and no errors are logged in the event viewer anywhere near the time the freeze happens. I doubt it is a graphics card issue as the problem persists on both cards and I've installed games on both my HDD and SSD. I've also reinstalled windows and the problem doesnt go away.

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

Have you done sfc /scannow in admin command prompt? What psu are you using(wattage)? What bios # are you using on motherboard?

 

[Ketchup79]

Does it only happen when gaming? In addition to power supply data, use a program like CPUID HWMonitor to tell us what temp your CPU Cores and video card are getting up to.

 

[wailey]

Does it only happen when gaming? In addition to power supply data, use a program like CPUID HWMonitor to tell us what temp your CPU Cores and video card are getting up to.

It only happens while gaming, usually games like Overwatch and Destiny 2 but not CSGO, Rocket League or Minecraft. The CPU Cores stay steady at 74 C but the card hits the max temp setting that ive set at 80 C to stop it from sounding like a plane taking off. I dont have any PSU monitoring software or hardware but I think it should be fine as it is 500W and 80+ Bronze rated.

 

[wailey]

Have you done sfc /scannow in admin command prompt? What psu are you using(wattage)? What bios # are you using on motherboard?

I've done sfc scannow, windows memory checker, memtest, updated all my drivers and updated my bios to the latest revision. My PSU is 500W and it seems pretty reliable to me as multiple of my friends are using the same one with no issues.

 

[Ketchup79]

It only happens while gaming, usually games like Overwatch and Destiny 2 but not CSGO, Rocket League or Minecraft. The CPU Cores stay steady at 74 C but the card hits the max temp setting that ive set at 80 C to stop it from sounding like a plane taking off. I dont have any PSU monitoring software or hardware but I think it should be fine as it is 500W and 80+ Bronze rated.

What do you mean you've set the max temp at 80? Are you talking about a BIOS setting? If so, push it up to 90 and see if it still freezes.

 

[wailey]

What do you mean you've set the max temp at 80? Are you talking about a BIOS setting? If so, push it up to 90 and see if it still freezes.

I used MSI Afterburner to set it. I tried maxing out the slider but it still freezes.

 

[Ketchup79]

Gotcha. If you disconnect the Seagate, does the problem go away?
Anything un common with the games mentioned (installed on the same drive, all from the same service, etc) vs the ones that aren't?

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

Are you overclocking using afterburner?

 

[wailey]

Gotcha. If you disconnect the Seagate, does the problem go away?
Anything un common with the games mentioned (installed on the same drive, all from the same service, etc) vs the ones that aren't?

I'll try disconnecting it. Theres nothing really uncommon about those two games, Overwatch is on the HDD and is launched via Battle.net and Destiny 2 is on the SSD and is on Steam. I guess they are both very CPU and GPU intensive compared to my other games as I play with max settings on both. I have tried dropping the settings before, which did fix the problem, but I feel it looks kinda bad at 900p on a 24 inch 1080p display.

 

[wailey]

Are you overclocking using afterburner?

It's running at stock speeds. For some reason anything over a 40MHz OC is unstable, for both my 1070 and 1060 even with the power and temp targets as well as the core voltage sliders maxed. Perhaps that issue is related too. Another thing, whenever it freezes, if I check the frozen GPU usage graph in Afterburner just before the whole system becomes unresponsive I see the usage is at 100%.

 

[Calvin7]

12GB Corsair 2133mhz ram

This does not seem to be a product Corsair would guarantee to work. Vague descriptions aren't much help. I suggest listing a part number or link to it.

 

[wailey]

12GB Corsair 2133mhz ram

This does not seem to be a product Corsair would guarantee to work. Vague descriptions aren't much help. I suggest listing a part number or link to it.

Its 2 sticks of 4GB Corsair Value Select DDR4 2133MHz and 1 stick of Corsair Vengeance LPX 4GB 2400MHz that i recently got from a friend which ive set to run at 2133MHz with the same timings as the other 2 sticks

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

Its 2 sticks of 4GB Corsair Value Select DDR4 2133MHz and 1 stick of Corsair Vengeance LPX 4GB 2400MHz that i recently got from a friend which ive set to run at 2133MHz with the same timings as the other 2 sticks

Yes so it is never a good idea to mix and match ram. I would pull the third stick and see if your problem goes away as a troubleshooting step. Also on the afterburner module, in the left upper corner there is a tab that has OC on it. You can use that and afterburner will do self tests and try to set the best settings for your system automatically. It takes about ten minutes or so so don't be impatient and stop it. Let it do its thing and see if that helps.

 

[Ketchup79]

Yes so it is never a good idea to mix and match ram.

This is a bit overstated around here (I'm not just picking at you ). The important part here is to make sure the SLOWER RAM is setting the RAM speed (slot 1 in most cases, but consult your manual). After that, as long as both are good sticks, you should be OK as far as RAM goes. But to your point, a bad stick of RAM could cause a freeze, however, it's very unlikely that it has NEVER caused a blue screen in the past two years, so unless the RAM is running faster than its rated speed, I personally don't think that's our issue.

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

Well not really, ram left to its own devices will always resort to the slowest ram on board. However ram that doesn't work together, or if one stick goes bad, that is not overstated to check as a troubleshooting step.

 

[wailey]

This is a bit overstated around here (I'm not just picking at you ). The important part here is to make sure the SLOWER RAM is setting the RAM speed (slot 1 in most cases, but consult your manual). After that, as long as both are good sticks, you should be OK as far as RAM goes. But to your point, a bad stick of RAM could cause a freeze, however, it's very unlikely that it has NEVER caused a blue screen in the past two years, so unless the RAM is running faster than its rated speed, I personally don't think that's our issue.

Okay, i've removed my Vengeance ram stick and the problem still occurs, but i think i have found a solution. I tried updating my MSI Afterburner and it seems to have solved the issue. No clue how but I'm thankful I dont have to worry about crashing in Competitive gamemodes anymore Thanks for your help guys! Also, overclocking my graphics card still causes it to be unstable, even if it's by a small amount, but i guess that can be attributed to my low-spec cards as they were the cheapest options for their particular GPU's at the time. Even using the settings provided by the OC Scanner my games still crash.

 

[Ketchup79]

Good to hear!