PC freezes under load and while leaving it idle

[melvinrld94]

Hey guys!

I've suddenly gotten an issue with my homemade PC. It started about a week ago out of the blue. My PC suddenly froze completely and I was unable to do anything. My monitor display froze on the same image, all of my leds and fans were still on and spinning but the little light that flickers on and off suddenly stopped. I turned off the switch on my psu and started up my PC again.

This same issue has been going on for a week now and happened close to 20 times now. In only 2 instances of this issue, when I turned my PC back on, the fans started for about a sec and then my PC turned off again. This loop continued for about a minute before it booted up normally. This only happened 2 times but will mention it just in case.

The weird thing is that it freezes while playing games, but also while leaving my PC idle for a couple of minutes. All parts of my PC are about 6 years old now, except for my graphics card (MSI GeForce GTX 970) and my 1TB HDD from Western Digital which I installed merely 6 months ago.

I was thinking about re-installing windows from scrap but I'm not sure if this is a software issue.
I was hoping someone could advise me what to do next or tell me where the probable issue of this problem is.

Thanks in advance!

Other PC specs:

Intel Core i5 - 2500k @ 3.3GHz
MSI P67A-GD65 (MS-7681) motherboard
2x 4Gb RAM ddr3

 

[vapour]

1. Check CPU/RAM/HDD usage during idle and gaming, if suspicious process, run malwarebyte
2. My money is on PSU, 6 years is enough time for PSU to go bad, which model is it?

 

[melvinrld94]

Checked all those but nothing suspicious at all unfortunately.
And I hope it's not my PSU, think it's a good one, at least 6 years ago it was. It's a Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800W.

But if the psu is broken, wouldn't it start up my PC at all since it wouldn't have any power outage in that case? And when my PC freezes, all the leds and fans are still working, would that be possible as well if it's a broken PSU?

 

[vapour]

Checked all those but nothing suspicious at all unfortunately.
And I hope it's not my PSU, think it's a good one, at least 6 years ago it was. It's a Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800W.

But if the psu is broken, wouldn't it start up my PC at all since it wouldn't have any power outage in that case? And when my PC freezes, all the leds and fans are still working, would that be possible as well if it's a broken PSU?

Not broken, just age. You know when pc is under load and idle, it draws very different level of power? I speculate the PSU can not output enough when it is under load. If you can borrow a PSU from friend, try it out

 

[melvinrld94]

Alright, thanks for your advice! Appreciate it. Any chance it could be either my motherboard or my RAM as well? Been looking around the forum for a while and those seem to be common reason for freezes as well. What do you think?

 

[vapour]

Alright, thanks for your advice! Appreciate it. Any chance it could be either my motherboard or my RAM as well? Been looking around the forum for a while and those seem to be common reason for freezes as well. What do you think?

To me, probability of PSU is the cause > MB > RAM

 

[Snipergod87]

Lockups (not black screens) are often from driver issues a reinstall may help..

 

[melvinrld94]

Thanks Sniper. I think I'll try and reinstall like you mentioned before I purchase a new psu as none of my friends have one lying around. Will follow up on Vapour's advice if a reinstall doesn't work. Thanks to you both!