Question PC freezes constantly and can't shut down

[Wojciech_1]

PC Specs:
i5 12400f
Gigabyte B660 DS3H AX DDR4 WIFI
Corsair Ballistic DDR4 2x8GB RAM
MSi GTX 1060 3GB
Crucial P2 m.2 1TB
EVGA supernova G650

This is a somewhat new build with some parts (PSU and GPU) reused from my old PC and was built around April this year.

I've pretty much had some kind of problem with the PC since shortly after building it, with the current issue persisting for the past 4 months.

Previously I've had issues where my keyboard wasn't working with this particular PC and I'd get an error message saying that this USB device malfunctioned.

I've also had problems where the WiFi would just not work, as if the WiFi card just wasn't there at all.

I performed a clean install of windows at some point but can't recall if that fixed anything but I know that all those previous problems no longer occur ever since my PC started freezing up.

DETAILS ON PC FREEZING:
LIke I've said my PC has been consistently freezing for the past 4 months.
It generally goes like this; My PC, will randomly slow down momentarily and freeze in an instant, becoming unresponsive to any kind of input. It is impossible to shut down my PC using the power button and I am forced to switch off my power supply at the back. After doing so, it won't be possible to switch my PC back on for a good few minutes, sometimes up to 15 minutes.

Now, when I say randomly, I mean that the circumstances of it switching off are different every time.
Sometimes it happens at start-up, sometimes when watching YouTube, sometimes when switching tabs in chrome, sometimes when listening to music, sometimes when sitting idle.

The freezing us also different every time. Usually the entire PC freezes, but sometimes the display still remains responsive apart from all input devices, and sometimes it slows down to a sluggish pace for a few seconds before freezing again.

Occasionally, when it freezes and I unplug and replug a USB device, I get a USB device malfunctioned error message.

Restarting the PC also sometimes freezes and crashes it and I am forced to switch the power supply off again.

WHAT I TRIED:
Making hardware changes; plugging in and unplugging hard drive, switching graphics cards; seems to temporarily stop the problem for a few days. At some point I was too lazy to fix it and left the PC unused for a month, and after turning it back on I had no problems for almost a week. It seems like the freezing becomes more frequent as time passes by.

Oh, another thing is that I don't seem to get this freezing problem come nightime, or perhaps this is from my PC running for long enough without freezing, I'm not sure, but it runs fine then.

Anyway, I checked event viewer, ran sfc scannow, chkdsk, memory diagnostics, updated bios, whatever. Nothing fixed it.

For a while i thought it might've been my FiiO K5 headphone amp causing this since I had some driver problems and I didn't have the freezing before getting it, but even with it turned off, the freezing still can occur.

Right now, I'm wondering if it could be some driver issues, mobo issues, or PSU problem.


Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[Wojciech_1]

EDIT: I am also unable to restart my PC. Whenever I try to restart it, it gets stuck after shutting down. PC remains running and everything but won't turn back on.

 

[dennisr48]

I had a somewhat similar problem that took me months to solve. I put together a gaming pc. Initially it worked fine but then I experienced hard freezing always under low load, such as watching videos. This was a complete hardware freeze that required a hard power reboot. The freeze ups continued randomly about once every 2 or 3 days. I tried every type of troubleshooting software I could run but everything seemed to check out fine. I finally tried a different brand of memory - no effect. Next I tried a different SSD. I got a Samsung 970 model 2T, cloned it and swapped out the Samsung 1T 980 Pro. After that, the freeze ups stopped. In my case, it seemed clear that the cause of the problem was the Samsung 980. Of course, there are other possibilities but your problem seemed close enough that I thought I'd share my experience. In any case, if you get desperate as I did, and you have another SSD, it might be worth cloning your OS and swapping it out to see if the SSD is the source of your problem.