This situation has evolved quicker than I had anticipated. I will break it down in detail below, but here is a TL;DR with PC specs and some notes.
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TL;DR
Primary problem: random crashes; PC shuts down, as if I pulled the plug; Cannot boot for 15-20s; Everything is fine afterwards. Number of such crashes: 6
Secondary problem: GPU-bound crash; black screen; "No signal"; GPU fans at 100%; OS is still running in the background; audio is being received; Only solvable by hard shut down (physical button). Number of such crashes: 1
Tertiary problem: Cannot boot into Windows; no Windows logo or loading screen; A line of seemingly "dead" pixels; BIOS screen is fine; Booting into secondary OS (Ubuntu) doesn't reproduce the issue. Comparison videos for reference: Booting to Windows and Ubuntu 20.04 respectively
What I have already tried:
BIOS: UEFI
Motherboard (New): MSI B450 Tomahawk Max
CPU (New): Ryzen R5 3600, stock cooler
RAM (New): 2x8GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4 3600 MHz
GPU (used): Asus Strix GTX 970 4 GB GDDR5
PSU (New): Silverstone 650W 80+ Gold (SST-ET650-G)
SSD (New): Samsung 860 QVO 1TB 2.5"
HDD (3 yrs old, bought new): Toshiba HDWD110 1TB 3.5"
OS: Dual Boot (Windows 10 + Ubuntu 20.04) - both on SSD
Current status: I am bound to Ubuntu for the moment. GPU works as intended. Cannot boot into Windows.EDIT (12:35): Cannot turn on the PC. Before this, audio was crackling/had a bitcrush-type effect. Edit (12:43): It turned on again, sound is back to normal. I`m going to copy my important files to an external drive just in case.
Priority: My main priority was to solve the crashing problem, but now I want to fix Windows to boot again. What is the recommended course of action? I hope Ubuntu doesn't get corrupted as well...
Notes:
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Detailed description:
Previous month: My PC seemingly randomly crashed for the first time. I think I heard a click of the power supply (which is normal, as it also happens, when I shut down my PC, but not so much it crashing). There was nothing crazy, the screen just went black and everything came to a halt. I wasn't able to boot it up again for maybe 15-20s, but afterwards, it was fine, as if nothing had happened. Because of the timeout, I thought the PC was trying to cool itself, so I checked my CPU and GPU temps with a Blender classroom benchmark (GPU usage was at 100%, CPU at around 20%), but they were fine (60-70°C). From Googling, I was suspicious of my PSU, which is the weakest link in my PC, right after my GPU (because I bought it used - 4 years of previous uptime). Nevertheless, I continued using my PC with caution.
Saturday 28. 08. 2021 and Sunday 29. 08.: Then, the previous Saturday and Sunday the same thing happened. I saw the trend. The crashes were happening more frequently.
Monday 30. 08. 2021: Then, yesterday happened. I had it crash after 30mins of a trivial PC task (playing back a movie) in the morning and once in the afternoon (around 1 p.m.), while doing practically nothing. In the evening, I booted up Linux to try it out for a gaming spin with my friends and it too suffered the same fate. I thought it was overheating, so I opened my window and went back to gaming for another 30 mins or so (very foolish). 5 minutes after I closed my window, a new symptom showed up and a new crash. My screen went black, but I could still hear my friends over Discord. Then my GPU fans started howling like crazy (they were running at 100%, then slowed down to maybe 80% for half a second then back to 100% and so on in an aggressive sinusoidal fashion). I turned off my PC with the physical power off button and it shut down. I didn't touch the PC for the rest of that night (I thought: "Cool, atleast I didn't yank the power cable from the wall, so nothing could be wrong right?").
Today: I had plans to test my PSU and GPU to see, which one is causing this havoc, but they were thrown out the window, when I couldn't boot into Windows 10. I see the BIOS screen, but when the Windows logo should show up, there is just this line of spaced-out green pixels and some below it. You can see for yourself in the TL;DR section. I can boot into Ubuntu (dual boot on the same SSD) just fine though, so this can only be a sign of a corrupted boot loader or the Windows partition or something of that sort.
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TL;DR
Primary problem: random crashes; PC shuts down, as if I pulled the plug; Cannot boot for 15-20s; Everything is fine afterwards. Number of such crashes: 6
Secondary problem: GPU-bound crash; black screen; "No signal"; GPU fans at 100%; OS is still running in the background; audio is being received; Only solvable by hard shut down (physical button). Number of such crashes: 1
Tertiary problem: Cannot boot into Windows; no Windows logo or loading screen; A line of seemingly "dead" pixels; BIOS screen is fine; Booting into secondary OS (Ubuntu) doesn't reproduce the issue. Comparison videos for reference: Booting to Windows and Ubuntu 20.04 respectively
What I have already tried:
- Checked the PCI-e cable = normal
- Checked the power cable = normal
- Checked for PSU overheating issues = none
- Checked to see if PSU fan works = normal
- Checked for CPU and GPU overheating issues = none (60-70°C)
- Checked CPU and GPU fans = no coil whine, work as intended (except for the case in the secondary problem mentioned in TL;DR)
- Checked for malware = none
BIOS: UEFI
Motherboard (New): MSI B450 Tomahawk Max
CPU (New): Ryzen R5 3600, stock cooler
RAM (New): 2x8GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4 3600 MHz
GPU (used): Asus Strix GTX 970 4 GB GDDR5
PSU (New): Silverstone 650W 80+ Gold (SST-ET650-G)
SSD (New): Samsung 860 QVO 1TB 2.5"
HDD (3 yrs old, bought new): Toshiba HDWD110 1TB 3.5"
OS: Dual Boot (Windows 10 + Ubuntu 20.04) - both on SSD
Current status: I am bound to Ubuntu for the moment. GPU works as intended. Cannot boot into Windows.
Priority: My main priority was to solve the crashing problem, but now I want to fix Windows to boot again. What is the recommended course of action? I hope Ubuntu doesn't get corrupted as well...
Notes:
- Even though my PSU is rated at 80+ Gold, it brings continuous power output only up to 40°C, which is lower than other PSUs in the market at this rating, from my research.
- Excluding the GPU, my PC is relatively new (about 6 months)
- Between the first and second crash (previous month vs. Saturday), there were two power outages back-to-back, which made my PC crash two additional times in the same fashion, but I excluded this, since it is connected to the power grid.
- Edit (13:43): Disconnecting an external hard drive causes a crash in the same fashion as the one in the primary problem.
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Detailed description:
Previous month: My PC seemingly randomly crashed for the first time. I think I heard a click of the power supply (which is normal, as it also happens, when I shut down my PC, but not so much it crashing). There was nothing crazy, the screen just went black and everything came to a halt. I wasn't able to boot it up again for maybe 15-20s, but afterwards, it was fine, as if nothing had happened. Because of the timeout, I thought the PC was trying to cool itself, so I checked my CPU and GPU temps with a Blender classroom benchmark (GPU usage was at 100%, CPU at around 20%), but they were fine (60-70°C). From Googling, I was suspicious of my PSU, which is the weakest link in my PC, right after my GPU (because I bought it used - 4 years of previous uptime). Nevertheless, I continued using my PC with caution.
Saturday 28. 08. 2021 and Sunday 29. 08.: Then, the previous Saturday and Sunday the same thing happened. I saw the trend. The crashes were happening more frequently.
Monday 30. 08. 2021: Then, yesterday happened. I had it crash after 30mins of a trivial PC task (playing back a movie) in the morning and once in the afternoon (around 1 p.m.), while doing practically nothing. In the evening, I booted up Linux to try it out for a gaming spin with my friends and it too suffered the same fate. I thought it was overheating, so I opened my window and went back to gaming for another 30 mins or so (very foolish). 5 minutes after I closed my window, a new symptom showed up and a new crash. My screen went black, but I could still hear my friends over Discord. Then my GPU fans started howling like crazy (they were running at 100%, then slowed down to maybe 80% for half a second then back to 100% and so on in an aggressive sinusoidal fashion). I turned off my PC with the physical power off button and it shut down. I didn't touch the PC for the rest of that night (I thought: "Cool, atleast I didn't yank the power cable from the wall, so nothing could be wrong right?").
Today: I had plans to test my PSU and GPU to see, which one is causing this havoc, but they were thrown out the window, when I couldn't boot into Windows 10. I see the BIOS screen, but when the Windows logo should show up, there is just this line of spaced-out green pixels and some below it. You can see for yourself in the TL;DR section. I can boot into Ubuntu (dual boot on the same SSD) just fine though, so this can only be a sign of a corrupted boot loader or the Windows partition or something of that sort.
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