[SOLVED] PC random freeze, HARD RESET required

[idontfeelsogood]

Hello all! Yesterday for the first time EVER, I had this issue twice while gaming, would appreciate if yall have any insights or thoughts!

There's no specific moment or scenario that triggers this, or at least I haven’t found it yet. So I played Overwatch 2 and Dota 2 and while playing, the whole PC just randomly froze… The game sounds stopped, the only thing I could hear was my friends talking on discord, but they could no longer hear me. (External MIC stopped working apparently) The PC was completely unresponsive, mouse does not move, when pressing numlock/capslock, the LEDs on keyboard do not change. ALT-TAB; CTRL-ALT-DEL shortcuts do not work; I turned off the monitor with the button on it, turned it back on, and the monitor said it no longer detects DP input. The only thing left, was to hard reset my pc.

The only recent change to my PC was that I got the 240hz monitor, not sure if it can cause anything. Was using 75hz before.

To solve this issue I tried recently - Windows update, there was some Cumulative Update. Updated AMD Adrenaline to 22.10.3; Now always have Hwinfo logging everything to file when I game if it occurs again; Now always have second monitor hooked up to check its responsiveness if the issue occurs again.

Thought it was the GPU crashing or something, but it does not explain keyboard and mic stopping to work, also usually AMD Adrenalin shows some notifications afterwards, but not these two times..

---PC Specs:

• 8 months old build
• Windows 11 22H2
• MSI MPG B550 GAMING PLUS
• Ryzen 5 5600X
• AMD Sapphire RX 6600 8GB
• 2x 8GB DDR4 3600MHz
• 1TB Samsung 970 EVO SSD M2
• Phanteks AMP 80 Plus Gold 550W

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

Try reverting back to last gpu driver, see if it helps at all. Use ddu uninstaller (in my notes) to completely remove all gpu files before installation.

 

[idontfeelsogood]

Try reverting back to last gpu driver, see if it helps at all. Use ddu uninstaller (in my notes) to completely remove all gpu files before installation.

Hey, thanks for the tip. I think my wording in the post was quite off 😀 The GPU driver was updated in order to try and fix the issue, not that it could have caused anything cuz the GPU drivers were untouched.
Edited the original post.

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

It could have something to do with your monitor, did you change the refresh rate in settings to 240hz? Is there a driver to install from the monitor support site?

 

[idontfeelsogood]

It could have something to do with your monitor, did you change the refresh rate in settings to 240hz? Is there a driver to install from the monitor support site?

Yes, its set at 240hz, and yes I installed monitor driver from the official page.
I am having thoughts about Freesync Premium, it was on from the day I plugged in the new monitor. I will test now with Freesync off and check if it still crashes/freezes.

By the way, do you think Freesync could cause such system freeze issues?

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

Not sure anything is possible. You can check your virtual memory to make sure the system is being run by the pc and the amount is correct. Use Samsung Magician and make sure you have 10% overprovisioning selected/being used and the trim is being refreshed. Reinstalling the games is an option too since that is when you have the problem.

 

[phoerious]

Same thing here, though it's hard to say whether this is the exact same issue, since there could be a million different causes leading to the same result.
For me at least, I think it started after the Windows 11 22H2 update. I was suspecting the Nvidia driver first, but I updated to the latest version, uninstalled GeForce experience and other daemons known for causing trouble and it still happens. Also you seem to be having an AMD GPU. I tried disabling core isolation / memory integrity protection, since that tends to cause issues with AMD CPUs, I also tried disabling hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling. All without success. The freezes occur randomly during gaming sessions. I haven't had them anywhere else during normal operation.

Whenever the PC freezes, it freezes instantly and entirely, i.e., there are no log traces of it in the Event Viewer except that the PC somehow shut down improperly last time. It's a complete system freeze down to the ACPI level, so I cannot even reboot by long-pressing the power button. The only thing that works is cutting the power.

My system:
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
ROG Crosshair VIII Hero Motherboard
64 GB DDR4 RAM
Windows 11 Pro 22H2 (build 22621.675)
2x Dell U2723QE (4k, 60Hz) screens

The common denominator seems to be Ryzen CPU + Windows 11 22H2

 

[idontfeelsogood]

At the moment, I do feel like my predictions could have been correct, after I turned off Freesync on the monitor itself, my issues disappeared, haven't had a crash for a week. Will continue with Freesync off and see how it goes. So its either the monitor or my GPU that cant handle the Freesync.

 

[phoerious]

I don't have Freesync or Gsync, but I found that in my case Nvidia Reflex seems to be the problem. I disabled it and haven't had any freezes so far, let's hope it holds. Perhaps there is a general issue with GPU low-latency features.

 

[phoerious]

Apparently, this was not the solution. I am still having freezes, although maybe not as many as before. :-(

 

[phoerious]

After KB5020044 and another UEFI upgrade, it's been two weeks now without issues on my side. Looks like whatever it was has been fixed.

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

After KB5020044 and another UEFI upgrade, it's been two weeks now without issues on my side. Looks like whatever it was has been fixed.

Like you said all started after a Windows update. Glad it is fixed.