Question Seemingly random freezes in light tasks on a newly built PC ?

May 7, 2023
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Situation:
Around 2 weeks ago I bought a new PC (parts below) and I keep getting random freezes in light tasks, noticed it mostly happening when watching videos on Youtube. It's not a BSOD, just all apps freeze one by one, I'm able to alt+tab between them for some time, able to open Start menu and click on Shut Down button multiple times but nothing happens. The longer I interact with a given app during a freeze the more locked up it gets, eg. clicking on desktop or dragging a box will freeze it, same with Steam, Discord or Start Menu.
But, on one occasion I was able to continue watching a video (Redfall review by SkillUp) until the end for around 15 minutes during the freeze, I had to reset the PC afterwards as it didn't unfreeze, though.

My PC:
ASRock B650E STEEL LEGEND WIFI (v1.21)
Kingston FURY 32GB (2x16GB) 6400MHz CL32 Renegade RGB DDR5 (running on 4800 CL38 now)
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Gainward GeForce RTX 4080 Phoenix 16GB GDDR6X
Seasonic Prime PX 850W 80 Plus Platinum
Samsung 500GB M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe 980 PRO (system drive)
Samsung 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe 990 PRO (game drive)
Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360R RGB 3x120mm
Cooler Master Mastercase H500M ARGB
Windows 10 Pro, later upgraded to Windows 11 Pro

My troubleshooting:
  • Right after getting the build I updated BIOS to 1.18 and then 1.21 to ensure the X3D exploding issue does not happen to me.
  • I disabled hardware acceleration in Chrome and later switched to Brave, both didn't help.
  • Windows Memory Check did not find issues, also ran memtest with no issues
  • Disabling EXPO didn't help
  • Playing games does not cause issues, tried X4 Foundations, CP2077 in the overdrive mode, WH40k Darktide, Fallout 76, JWE2.
  • Game temps spike up to 80 on CPU during startup or loading but fall back down quickly and stabilize around 50C
  • Finally upgraded my Win 10 Pro to Win 11 Pro, didn't help.

Any ideas what I could do next?
 
Have you tried using high performance in windows power setting? Sometimes when power setting is set to power saver or even balanced it can cause this behavior.
I had it set on balanced.
Switched it now to high performance, I'll let you know after a few days or as soon as it crashes again.
 
Situation:
Around 2 weeks ago I bought a new PC (parts below) and I keep getting random freezes in light tasks, noticed it mostly happening when watching videos on Youtube. It's not a BSOD, just all apps freeze one by one, I'm able to alt+tab between them for some time, able to open Start menu and click on Shut Down button multiple times but nothing happens. The longer I interact with a given app during a freeze the more locked up it gets, eg. clicking on desktop or dragging a box will freeze it, same with Steam, Discord or Start Menu.
But, on one occasion I was able to continue watching a video (Redfall review by SkillUp) until the end for around 15 minutes during the freeze, I had to reset the PC afterwards as it didn't unfreeze, though.

My PC:
ASRock B650E STEEL LEGEND WIFI (v1.21)
Kingston FURY 32GB (2x16GB) 6400MHz CL32 Renegade RGB DDR5 (running on 4800 CL38 now)
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Gainward GeForce RTX 4080 Phoenix 16GB GDDR6X
Seasonic Prime PX 850W 80 Plus Platinum
Samsung 500GB M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe 980 PRO (system drive)
Samsung 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe 990 PRO (game drive)
Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360R RGB 3x120mm
Cooler Master Mastercase H500M ARGB
Windows 10 Pro, later upgraded to Windows 11 Pro

My troubleshooting:
  • Right after getting the build I updated BIOS to 1.18 and then 1.21 to ensure the X3D exploding issue does not happen to me.
  • I disabled hardware acceleration in Chrome and later switched to Brave, both didn't help.
  • Windows Memory Check did not find issues, also ran memtest with no issues
  • Disabling EXPO didn't help
  • Playing games does not cause issues, tried X4 Foundations, CP2077 in the overdrive mode, WH40k Darktide, Fallout 76, JWE2.
  • Game temps spike up to 80 on CPU during startup or loading but fall back down quickly and stabilize around 50C
  • Finally upgraded my Win 10 Pro to Win 11 Pro, didn't help.

Any ideas what I could do next?
Monitor performance monitor under task manager and see what's happening at the time the problem occurs.
 
I had a problem like this caused by AV software. The problem would go away after several seconds or minutes or so (in my case). The software in question was Comodo antyvirus. After getting rid of it, the problem went away. Starting monitoring software (Crucial Storage Executive) for my SSD could always trigger this issue while AV was present. Maybe Samsung has something like this as well. Being able to recreate the problem at will can really help finding the cause. Change one factor, run the trigger.

This issue could indicate problems with accessing SSD. If everything else fails, you can try updating SSD firmware.

Just to be on the safe side, make sure to have AMD chipset drivers installed. They come with their own power plan and I was getting all kind of weird issues without them (PC rebooting when idle) albeit it was on AM4 platform hardware. Other things that could help, but are probably unrelated:
- don't use sleep/hibernation (you might even disable hibernation)
- disable fast startup.
 
Have you tried using high performance in windows power setting? Sometimes when power setting is set to power saver or even balanced it can cause this behavior.
It's been more than 1 week since I switched power setting and so far I haven't had this issue - thank you!