[SOLVED] Screen pixelating and rgb freezing before crash. Threatening to brick.

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Sep 2, 2022
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Okay so this is a complicated issue. I've been fighting it for about 12 hours now and frankly I'm out of ideas. I'm going to try to explain this as best I can given how strange it is, starting with my specs.

Specs:
Motherboard ASRock B450M Steel Legend
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
GPU: XFX Radeon RX 580 Series
PSU: Corsair CX750
RAM: At beginning: 2x Gskill TridentZ 16GB... Replaced with 2x Gskill Ripjaws 8GB DDR4 during troubleshooting
Cooler: Corsair AIO liquid cooler (not sure of the exact model but I can hunt it down if I need to)

The Problem:
So this started about a week ago, when I would wake up and my PC would be totally frozen. I'd just shut it off, turn it back on, and everything would be okay. Didn't happen every day, didn't think much of it besides buying some air and cleaning it out really good. A few days ago, it would happen while I was playing games, the screen would flash with green and white pixels, freeze up, and the RGB on my cooler would freeze. Again, only happened once a day, if that, and so I pulled some components to clean them out better.
Yesterday things came to a head. Same problem, green and white pixels, screen would flash, RGB would freeze, but this time the pc would reboot itself and freeze up (pixelated) on the lock screen. This was just the start, since some of the fixes I tried changed the nature of the problem. I'll outline these as best I can in the next section.

What I've tried: (Stress tested using Final Fantasy 14. It's the only game I play and probably the program that is toughest on my PC)
Uninstalling/fresh installing graphics drivers (After doing this twice, my PC had trouble booting up. The RGB inside the case would light up as if booting, but I had no signal to my display, and my mouse and keyboard had no RGB)
Swapping out the PSU for a Corsair RM 1000x (PC booted after this, so stress tested. Went to tab out of the game, PC completely shut off. Power button would not work until I unplugged the power cord and plugged it back in)
Swapping out the GPU for an XFX Radeon 470 (Same results as above, but would only get to the lock screen. As soon as I pressed anything on the lock screen, PC would power down)
Reseated CMOS battery (Longshot but same results as above, could not get further than the lock screen)
Removed one stick of RAM (Same results as above)
System restored PC (Same results)
Swapped out RAM as detailed in specs (Same results)
Put original PSU and GPU back in PC (Same results at first, tried again and PC booted fine. Stress tested with no issue. Threatened crash after closing program)

Where I'm at:
So far, things are okay. I'm not convinced the issue is resolved though, since after my stress test, the screen flickered a bit, and the green and white pixilation returned for just a moment. However, this was the first time I've seen this pixilation without a crash coming immediately after it. Looking for any and all suggestions to put this issue behind me once and for all. I'm happy to answer any questions or provide any information I may have missed.

Thank you all so much!
 
Oh whoops! I totally forgot I left this here! I actually solved the problem after several hours of troubleshooting. I'll outline it in case anybody else has a similar issue.

So you're right on the money with BIOS. I went in and reinstalled the version I already had installed (UEFI 3.3) I wanted to try that first since an update can create issues in some cases. That solved the problem with the crashes and difficulty booting up. However I still had display issues, after reinstalling the most stable version of drivers I could get my hands on, I found out that the GPU just wasn't loading the drivers properly no matter what. So I took an older model I had (RX 470) and installed that. Issues completely solved. So it looks like the whole thing was a combination of bad BIOS and a faulty GPU. It was a wild ride!

Thank you for the welcome as well! I'll certainly post here again in the future if I run into any issues.
 
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