[SOLVED] Ryzen 5 3600 system highly unstable when using SSD OS but okay with HDD OS.

Bloody George

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Hi guys!

TL, DR: My newly-acquired Ryzen 5 3600+B450 Tomahawk platform freezes my SSD Windows 10 after about 5 minutes of use; the system is highly unstable. However, it works completely fine with my other OS installed in my HDD. On the other hand, SSD OS used to work fine with my previous i5 6600k. I've fresh-installed Windows 10 3x but the problem persists. What gives? Lords and ladies of the hardware realm, please help me!

The whole thing: I've got a huge problem. Ever since I bought my Ryzen 5 3600+MSI B450 Tomahawk combo (about 3 weeks ago), the platform and my 480GB SSD haven't been getting along well at all. The OS was highly unstable, kept hitching and the Internet connection was a no-go. At first, I thought it just needed a fresh Win 10 install, but then it worked fine with a friend's 1TB HDD (which I'm using now).

My previous platform was an i5-6600k and a Gigabyte Z170M-D3H. I was waiting for a new flash drive order to arrive, so I just kept using the HDD system and played the games previously installed in the SSD. It worked great.

Now the flash drive has arrived, and I decided to finally format the SSD and fresh-install Win 10 in it. Nothing improved. If anything, things are much worse now. What used to be a few 2-seconds-long hitches became full-fledged perma freezes, the mean kind, and sometimes the OS BSODs too, although that has only happened a couple of times.

The thing is, the SSD used to work perfectly with my 6600k system, but now the OS is behaving like this. And I find it strange that I can still play games installed in it while running Windows from the HDD, which makes me think that the problem is not with the SSD; I could be wrong, I don't know.

Oh, and there's more: while running HWinfo to monitor the parts, I noticed that only 2 CPU cores really work hard while the other 4 kind of idle there, the lazy gits. That doesn't happen in the HDD system, by the way.

I don't know what to do, guys. I've fresh-installed Windows 3 times tonight already, restarted the PC like a million times, and I can't seem to work on anything for more than 5ish minutes before the damn system freezes. I've been struggling with this for 4 hours now, and it's 4:28 am here in my country.
What could it be? Firmware? Power delivery? Memory? A naughty hardware-loving gremlin playing tricks? I'm out of ideas, please help me.
Specs are in the signature.
Cheers, folks! I hope you can give me some light!
George.
 
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Solution
Definitely make sure you are using the latest Win 10 version, for your installation, and the bios is up to date. Use the chipset driver, from AMD, not MSI.

Bloody George

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Definitely make sure you are using the latest Win 10 version, for your installation, and the bios is up to date. Use the chipset driver, from AMD, not MSI.

The BIOS came updated from the shop to accomodate 3rd gen Ryzen CPUs. However, there's a new version available on MSI's website. Is it okay to update it again? Isn't BIOS something too delicate to be updated several times?
 

Bloody George

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If that board has the initial Ryzen 3000 support bios, it is possible that it is buggy. I would probably update it.

I see. Thanks for clearing that up!
I have two final questions before I go on with this:

1. The latest BIOS update on MSI's website says it's a beta version and advises that "MSI do not recommend updating the BIOS unless it is necessary". Should I download the earlier version (from August 30th, still newer than my current one) or is it okay to go with the beta version of the latest one anyway?

2. Some people say that B450 BIOS chips are really small and do not support an elaborate BIOS. Do multiple updates affect the capacity of a BIOS chip, or is the chip sort of "formatted" before the update takes place?
 

Bloody George

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I would not update to the Beta bios. The bios chip is overwritten, kinda like when you copy and paste a new file over an old one, and the new file replaces the old, with updated information.

It was Windows 10 all along. Flashing the BIOS yesterday didn't work, the PC kept freezing. I went to sleep, uber frustrated.

This morning I installed the newest Windows 10 version and I'm installing all drivers and basic applications right now. It's been running for 25 minutes and no freezing so far. But the problem happened so many times that I've kind of got afraid of being happy when things seem to be turning out alright. But yeah, this may be it, I'll finally get my Ryzen system working the way it's supposed to.

Thanks a lot, folks! Your help was invaluable, and it was great to learn about all these possibilities so that I can know what to do if that happens again in the future. Cheers!