Question PC Hangs, Requires Hard Restart

[deiviux90]

Hi,
So my system has decided to simply kill itself, essentially. Within 3 or so minutes of booting, it locks up entirely; no movement on-screen from anything, no input response from anything, no audio. I waited to see if it would pass as my system has been freezing up, black screening and returning to normal since the first day I got it (just over a year ago now), but this is different.

I've toiled for the last 3 hours to try and troubleshoot my system and figure out what's going on.
I've searched through over a dozen different articles and forum posts detailing what appeared to be the same issue but nothing that helped them showed any signs of helping me.

I have tried disabling all autoloaders. That seemed to work, but then one reboot later and the problem came back
I have tried checking connections; all seems well and good inside the case
I have tried to fiddle with some Defrag task scheduler; no avail
I have tried to install some new drivers but the system hangs halfway through installation
And last but not least, I have tried to reinstall the OS but my M.2 is incompatible with the installer because of some GMT or something issue, and my SATA drive just doesn't let itself be used.

In the BIOS menu under the "boot order" I only see my M.2 drive and my USB which has the OS installer on it. The USB also shows up in the order if it's plugged in.
My SATA is nowhere to be seen unless I go to the "boot menu" and select it there to load up the system.

I have absolutely no clue as to why this is happening or what is happening. The only thing that I can think of that may have triggered this cascade of problems is totally, 100% legally acquiring Substance Painter and installing that.

That's about as much as I can tell you guys from memory, but it looks like that's all.

System (nothing over-clocked):
CPU - Ryzen 5 2600X
GPU - Powercolor Vega 56 8GB (Red Dragon I think it was)
Mobo - ASUS Prime X470-Pro
RAM - DDR4 3600 I think

 

[mdd1963]

Try defaulting/resetting your BIOS, and let a conservative set of RAM timings/speed be tested in a bootable Memtest86 (Do you have a flash drive you can put Memtest86 on, perhaps made from another functioning laptop or PC?)

As you did not mention a PSU, some brands can be subject your components to partial brownouts, but, you'd not really expect that to happen merely booting to desktop, vice under a veavier gaming load that stresses the GPU.

No one likes to nuke and pave, but, you might try it with only one SSD installed at a time, testing each with a fresh install of WIn10, and, if needed, only one stick of RAM testing for stability.

Is your mainboard sporting an up to date BIOS?

Do you perhaps have an older GPU you can test fresh install with, just to rule it out as being an excessive power hog fault-maestro, possibly inducing brownouts? (A weak PSU could cause or allow this with some GPUs and not others)

 

[deiviux90]

Hi, I'm very thankful that you gave so much advice in one reply. I will try to see through all of it but as most of it I haven't done before it's going to take me some time.
I need to finish 3 uni projects off before the end of the month and I'm currently using a spare PC, but I'll try and get back to you when I get around to testing anything you recommended.

Also, I didn't list the PSU because I've forgotten the make and wattage. I think it was around the 550W mark, I know it was rated 80+ Gold for efficiency, and I definitely remember when checking the specs before building the PC that the PSU could handle everything the rig required and it had room to spare for another GPU, should I have gotten one.

Also, does defaulting the BIOS ruin anything, system-wise? I haven't changed anything other than the boot order so that the system loads up the M.2 first and the SSD second when I got those set up, I turned off the RGB and that was it. Would it just remove the changes I made and that's that? I've never fiddled with the BIOS before so it seems a little daunting. For some reason I think it would be like wiping the entire OS to default, in that messing with it would wipe the entire system :/

And as for the Memtest86, do I just have to boot up the USB and it'll run by itself, as if you were installing Windows?