Question PC won't boot after freeze

[atrom]

Hello everyone,

Today, out of nowhere my computer did not boot. All I got was a black screen. I tried restarting it several times.
After a few tries, I got a message that Windows was not able too boot and it sent me to the Windows Troubleshooting Screen.
I booted it in Safe Mode, and everything was fine.

Just to make sure, I shut the PC down, removed the GPU and started it. Everything worked without an issue. I shut it down again, put the GPU back in and it booted without an issue.
After 15-20min of idling (only had the Browser open), my System froze and shut down by itself. I tried rebooting it, but all I got was a black screen and fans going crazy. So I shut it down again and removed the GPU, same result as with GPU.

After trying it again, I could not get the PC to start, well, it starts for about 1 second, then shuts down again and continues doing that in an endless loop. No beep signals or anything.

What I tried so far:

• Removing GPU
• Replaced CMOS Battery
• Tried Ram Sticks and Slots separately
• Tried to start the system with CPU, 1 Ram Stick and PSU only

Everything resulted in the same restart loop.

My best guess is that the PSU is the problem here, but I am wondering why the system worked in the first place and I could get it to work by removing the GPU. Maybe you have some advice for me.

My System:

Mainboard: Asus Z87-A
CPU: i5-3570K
RAM: 2x 8GB TeamGroup Xtreem Vulcan DDR3-1600 DIMM
GPU: MSI Radeon 470 Gaming X 8G
PSU: 600W Be Quiet System Power 7
SSD1: 120 GB Samsung 840 Evo
SSD2: Kingston A400 240GB
HDD: 1TB Samsung

System is 7 years old, so I guess at some point, something has to break. Thanks for your help

 

[Adizzle23]

This same exact thing happened to me a couple days ago. It's strange that we both had the same exact problem at the same time. My parts are different than yours but symptoms are the same. I have an i7 10700k CPU, Asus Strix Z490 A gaming Mobo, Gigabyte RTX 3080 gaming OC GPU, Corsair RM850x PSU, and 2x8gb G.Skill DDR4-3600 Ram. I thought it might be a power supply problem so i tried another one i had that i know works and nothing changed. I also ordered new ram. It will be here in a couple days so i will try that and update u if it fixes my problem. I really don't think both of my ram sticks went bad at the same time though so I'm thinking it is either a bad CPU or Mobo. It is weird how my system worked fine and then all the sudden freezes, then boots and works fine in safe mode and finally stops booting all together, all within a 30 minute period. I will update u if i figure anything out.

 

[atrom]

I had the opportunity to check my PSU and I figured, the issues are not coming from the PSU but from the Mobo. I guess thats also why Windows was not able to be loaded and my GPU was not detected. Tomorrow I'll be able to test another Mobo (was hard to find one with 1150 socket - my system is 7 years old). Will let you know if it really was the Mobo.

 

[Adizzle23]

I had the opportunity to check my PSU and I figured, the issues are not coming from the PSU but from the Mobo. I guess thats also why Windows was not able to be loaded and my GPU was not detected. Tomorrow I'll be able to test another Mobo (was hard to find one with 1150 socket - my system is 7 years old). Will let you know if it really was the Mobo.

I got my system to boot into bios now. It was a dead cmos battery of all things... I decided to just change it for the heck of it and to my surprise, it booted up and into the bios. So then i tried to go to windows and i was back to the original problem of freezing up after a few seconds. So i reset all my overclocks and still kept freezing. Now i have removed one ram stick and now no more freezing. So I'm happy to say that i think it is 100% ram related. Now i just need to figure out if it's the ram itself, or if it's the motherboard ram slots, or maybe the cpu memory controller. But i have been up and running now for about an hour so hopefully I'm good now. I would check the motherboard battery on your board and see if that's the problem for u too.

 

[atrom]

I got the new Mobo today and put it in. Everything is working again, so it was the Mobo in the end.

 

[Adizzle23]

I got the new Mobo today and put it in. Everything is working again, so it was the Mobo in the end.

I actually started having the same freezing again after thinking it was fixed. I finally found out that my problem all along was that my CPU cooler was on too tight. Once i adjusted it the problems seem to have went away. I'm happy u got everything fixed !