Question PC freezes, goes blackscreen, fans still spining, restarts, BSODs

Ureus04

Honorable
Aug 8, 2017
12
0
10,510
Greetings everyone,

Recently i've bumped onto problem i have no idea how to solve and even troubleshoot. Everything seem to have started around 1,5 ago when after cleaning my PC wouldn't POST. What's weird about this, is the fact how it acted back then. At 1st boot try it would go into boot loop with low light on fans. After powering down it and starting again it would just not show any display on screen. The even weirder thing was the solution for this problem. If i would boot from my current RAM it wouldn't post. I decided to test my older 2x4gb kit to see if it will work and it did. I swaped into my recent kit and still it wouldn't post. I had to plug one stick, boot into BIOS, close the system and add the second one to make them work properly. Worth to mention that my old RAM kit worked from start if plugged both sticks. Memtest86 didn't show any signs of problem with sticks so i suspected problem might by lying in booting the machine after draining capacitors which i did prepare it for safe cleanup. I didn't worry much about this stuff since it could be simply an oxidation problem on ram contacts and it didn't occur everytime at cold boot.

However, recently problem become to escalate. After standard gaming session my PC just froze to a state i had to restart it by reset button. At next boot up it would simply hang after 4 - 5 mins of gameplay. After quick succession of 3 fast restarts by reset button, it would completely go black screen - No matter where. Game, browser. It needed like 2 min, to go black.

Initially i thought it's a RAM related issue. I switched for my good old kit and run heaven for about 30 min and nothing happend. I RMA'd my RAM and call it a day. However, After switching RAM to new kit my problem persisted but with much less frequency. After couple of hours of playing Gwent my display gone black without any warning. I've also tested my RAM with memtest but nothing seems to show up.
Initially i thought it might be problem with GPU driver installed by Windows (problems started to show up about couple of hours after installing this) but neither DDU, and new driver haven't resolve this issue.

What's worst, is the fact how to even produce the system crash. Recently, it runed Heaven for about 7 hours, or played Arkham Knight for around 8 - 9 hours and nothing happened. However, i've noticed this issue occurs not under load but going into IDLE state. It kept freezing in game pause menu, after long Heaven session that got minimalized to taskbar by Steam update, using browser after very long gaming session.

So far i tried:
Memtesting the RAM - tests show it's ok. Also i don't believe in 2 dead RAM kits and one right from the box also giving the same issues as the previous one.
Updating Windows - nothing have changed
Updating GPU drivers
Changing PSU outlet power cord for different one
Updating BIOS
Turning off XMP profile and setting it manually.
Checking discs for bad sectors with HDTune
Checking temperatures (They seem normal outside OCCT or Prime95. This stuff gets them pretty hot fast. I was afraid to keep using it longer than few minutes)

The issue seem to evolving in some way since it started as total freeze, then kept giving black screens and classic Kernel 41 error, then hanging, going black screen and rebooting, but today it gave bluescreen. It was 0x0000003b (0x00000000c0000005, 0xfffff80526d771bf, 0xffffb90371ccde90. One of my logs also shows error bugcheck 59

My config:
CPU: Intel 9600k
MOBO: Asrock z390 Extreme4 (4.30 BIOS)
RAM: Corsair 16GB (2x8GB) 3000MHZ CL15 Vengeance LPX Black
PSU: Seasonic Focus plus 550W Gold
GPU: Zotac GTX 1660 Ti (Currently 516.94)
OS: Windows 10 22h2
Honestly i have no idea which part could be causing trouble since it's relatively fresh config (about 3,5 years old) and it's not working under heavy load. Even when cleaning im not touching motherboard or CPU socket to repaste. I suspect either PSU or memory banks on motherboard.

I'd be glad for any kind of direction or help :) Thank you a lot in advance
Have a great day,
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
If you're on 4.30, there's a listing for a a 4.30 Beta BIOS, see if that helps you out of your predicament.

PSU: Seasonic Focus plus 550W Gold
How old is the PSU? Have you tried working with another PSU that's branded, reliably build and has slightly more power than what you currently have(advertised on your unit)?

CPU: Intel 9600k
How are you cooling the processor?
 

Ureus04

Honorable
Aug 8, 2017
12
0
10,510
If you're on 4.30, there's a listing for a a 4.30 Beta BIOS, see if that helps you out of your predicament.

PSU: Seasonic Focus plus 550W Gold
How old is the PSU? Have you tried working with another PSU that's branded, reliably build and has slightly more power than what you currently have(advertised on your unit)?

CPU: Intel 9600k
How are you cooling the processor?

I will try BETA BIOS but honestly i doubt it would be a case. I was using 1.90 BIOS before and had the same issues after update to 4.30 I think it's either some of the components or recent driver update, since it was the only one new thing that appeared on this RIG from a long time.

PSU is the same age as the entire machine. About 3,5 year. I didn't swap PSU. It's the only PSU im using and currently i dont own any different or spare one, to check if he's the troublemaker. Cables seems to be fine. I didnt see any lose conections or melted plastic.

Im using air cooler. SilentiumPC Spartan 3 LT HE1012 to be exact and i never encountered any problems before. Temperatures are around 31c in IDLE and around 57 -60 when playing the game. While using OCCT during power test those hit 95c pretty fast.
I guess it's related to something started to fail recently, rather than something simply doesnt work.
 
Last edited:

Ureus04

Honorable
Aug 8, 2017
12
0
10,510
Things got more interesting today. I pulled something around 10h of playing Arkham Knight and everything seemed to be ok. However, as expected after next boot up sequence PC froze on screen after couple of minutes. I decided to check again RAM with memtest and it froze again around test 7 during 1st run. I think this sorts any doubt it could be fault of either GPU, Windows, or recent drivers. After that i decided to sort things out and determine if fault lies in memory slots dying slowly. I switched memory slots from A2/B2 to A1/B1. My PC went black screen after couple of minutes. What's weird is the range of reactions that kinda exclude themselves at the same time, which makes me believe it's somehow related either to RAM (either on CPU controller or Motherboard side) or PSU
 

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