PC freezing after 10-15 minutes

[raiidy]

Hi everyone,
I've seen a lot of threads describing how people's PC crashed after a few minutes playing games.
However, I have a "freeze/crash" problem that I struggle to explain, and it is not related to games at all.

It's been about 2 months now, everytime I turn my PC on, I do my things, browse the Internet, or even stay on the desktop, it freezes after about 15 minutes. At the beginning, I can still move my mouse and go through my opened windows, but I have no more Internet and I can't open any new window. Then after a minute of fiddling with my mouse, it starts freezing completely until I can't even move my cursor anymore.

What I tried so far :

• 
  - Restart my computer (really?).
  - Perform all Windows updates that may have had a problem at some point.
  - Update my graphic card, processor, WiFi drivers.
  - Open my computer and vacuum/tissue clean it from any dust.
  - Reinitialize my computer (I tried every kind of reinitialization, even the one that erases basically everything on your hard drive and "cleans" it).
  - Reinitialize my computer without applying any update with a date posterior to when it started bugging.
  - Go through Windows administration tools to check my hardware : performance monitor, memory diagnostic, performance analyze. Everything went well and no problem was detected.
  - Install Speccy who seemed to say that all my components were fine, running and not heating hard at all.

Since I've reinitialized everything and I'm still facing this problem, I suspect it to be a hardware problem. However, the administration tools I used told me that everything looks fine in my memory and my processor.

Any help would be appreciated. If it's relevant, I will edit this post to add information about my system, components etc, as soon as I get home from work. My objective is either to identify and solve a software problem, or to identify a hardware problem and replace the misbehaving component.

Thank you very much and good day to everyone,

Pierre

 

[PC Tailor]

Does the freeze still occur in safe mode?

If it does still occur in safe mode, you're probably looking at hardware, if it doesn't occur in safe mode, you're probably looking at software.

Your full system spec will be very useful here too, including PSU make and model.

What are your component loads /temperatures like when the crashing begins to occur? Are they maxing out?

 

[raiidy]

Does the freeze still occur in safe mode?

If it does still occur in safe mode, you're probably looking at hardware, if it doesn't occur in safe mode, you're probably looking at software.

Your full system spec will be very useful here too, including PSU make and model.

What are your component loads /temperatures like when the crashing begins to occur? Are they maxing out?

Hi, I just tested and it still freezes when I'm in safe mode, so it seems indeed like a hardware problem.

My components are in the following image (I used Windows built-in tool to find them): https://imgur.com/a/oayI8
Sorry if some words in here are in French. I also add that my motherboard is: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z87X-UD3H-CF

I don't know what my PSU is and I'm not sure how to find it. I opened my computer but I'm not familiar with hardware so I can't find which component it is.

When the crashing begins to occur, there is absolutely nothing special going on with the component temperatures, that's what I find weird. I used CPUID HW Monitor and it indicated low temperature (nothing above 40°C) on all my components. Same for memory usage.

 

[PC Tailor]

Effectively it will be the large box situated in one of the corners of the case (usually rear bottom or top). It will be plugged into all your other components giving them power. And there should be a label on it suggesting the brand (if any), model, and wattage output.

 

[raiidy]

Effectively it will be the large box situated in one of the corners of the case (usually rear bottom or top). It will be plugged into all your other components giving them power. And there should be a label on it suggesting the brand (if any), model, and wattage output.

Hi, sorry about the delay, things were quite crazy at work.
My PSU is the Cooler Master V850. The output power is apparently 850W according to the component specs here: http://www.coolermaster.com/powersupply/v-series-psu/v850/

 

[PC Tailor]

Some options I would consider:

- Download a HDD analysis tool (I.e. Crystaldiskinfo, or HDDExpert) to identify if there are any major concerns with your storage drives.
- You could also run an Intel CPU diagnostic tool (assuming it doesn't freeze) to identify any major CPU problems
- Reset CMOS / BIOS to default, by removing the motherboard battery and waiting for 30 seconds, then re-installing.

I'm running by the "non-invasive" options first, because swapping out each component.

Following that, realistically the best option is to swap out each component and see if the problem can resolve. The Cooler Mater V850 is a decent PSU, and it does supply enough power, but if it has become faulty, it may not be supplying the right power.

Are you able to remove the GPU and run off integrated graphics?

 

[raiidy]

Some options I would consider:

- Download a HDD analysis tool (I.e. Crystaldiskinfo, or HDDExpert) to identify if there are any major concerns with your storage drives.
- You could also run an Intel CPU diagnostic tool (assuming it doesn't freeze) to identify any major CPU problems
- Reset CMOS / BIOS to default, by removing the motherboard battery and waiting for 30 seconds, then re-installing.

I'm running by the "non-invasive" options first, because swapping out each component.

Following that, realistically the best option is to swap out each component and see if the problem can resolve. The Cooler Mater V850 is a decent PSU, and it does supply enough power, but if it has become faulty, it may not be supplying the right power.

Are you able to remove the GPU and run off integrated graphics?

So I ran a HDDExpert analysis, here are the results: https://imgur.com/a/aYrV5 and https://imgur.com/a/Gr7JG
I also ran a CPU diagnostic from the Intel tool you adviced, here are the results: https://imgur.com/a/XkHW6

Everything seems fine about the CPU at least, I'm unsure how to interpretate the results for the HDD though.

Anyway, I'm indeed able to run off integrated graphics (at least I think so... I plugged my screen's VGA on the other VGA port of my computer, which is not my graphic card, I guess that's it right?). It still froze with this configuration unfortunately.

Swapping components seems like the most efficient, but also the most costly so I'd like to avoid changing all my components. I'm okay to try it, but only if nothing else worked before. Maybe I can find an expert next to my place who could lend me some components so I can make my tests.