Question Severe issues and diagnostics says no errors

[McOnion]

I honestly did not know where to post this & will take quite some explaining.

For just over a year, I have had several issues progressively becoming worse, and do not know how to proceed. My system specs are Ryzen 5900X, ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi, 2x16GBB G.Skill TridentZ RGB 3600MHz (Ryzen certified), RTX 2080 Super, 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus, 512GB Samsung 950 Pro, 2TB Seagate SSSHD.
It started as simple BSOD, which I assumed was attributed to an unstable overclock; upon restoring defaults, system temporarily became read-only (boot SSD, 970 EVO at the time, only reading files & not writing anything; disk LED went dark as well). I ran the command in Powershell dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth to restore Windows, which temporarily solved the issue, before the start menu would not open; ran dism again. and it temporarily solved the issue. Some time went by with no issues, so I overclocked the system again (CPU, GPU , and RAM) and tried Bitcoin mining for about a month (Don't judge lol. Ran with no downtime for about a month, no issues); made no profit, so quickly stopped that & returned to normal usage. Began encountering frequent crashes without BSODs, and boot drive became read only again. Reset system to defaults and left RAM at 3600MHz. Moved cities, and encountered more crashes than ever without BSODs; decided to check SMART diagnostics on both SSDs, no errors (Samsung Magician & CrystalDisk Info) -- no errors, all good. Ran MemTest86 on the RAM at 3600MHz, no errors (though RAM was toasty at 50 Celsius). Completely wiped Windows & reinstalled from scratch, had no issues on stock settings for just over a week before Windows frequently crashed again without BSODs (which is a sign of failing RAM, but no errors). Wiped Windows probably three times in the span of a week, still encountering crashes at stock settings. Installed Windows to the 950 Pro, still encountering issues. I have now also encountered a new issue where I some random things cause the file explorer to fail to open, other applications fail to open, and the task bar becomes unresponsive, and the GPU usage tanks to -1% usage. After doing digging, the potential issues are failing RAM or SSD, though again no errors have been found when running tests; the only commonality I have found with people encountering the same -1% GPU thing is that they all have Ryzen systems. I have an older CPU, motherboard, and RAM that I am going to use to swap out individual part to hopefully better pin point what the problems is, because I have reinstalled drivers countless times, and I will no the same for the BIOS shortly.
My apologies for the long explanation. These problems have become extremely frustrating as I feel I have almost exhausted all my potential solutions. Any advice or opinions are very much welcomed. Thank you.

 

[Darkbreeze]

EXACT PSU model number?

How long it has been in service?

WHICH slots, SPECIFICALLY, from CPU to the edge of the motherboard, 1, 2, 3, 4, are your DIMMs installed in?

Case model?
How many case fans AND orientation of each, ie, in/out (intake/exhaust), for each specific location?

Aside from CPU, GPU, GPU hotspot and VRAM temps, have you looked at ALL at the motherboard or VRM temperatures?

What cooler are you running?

And, in the future, PLEASE don't post a wall of text. Break it up into paragraphs based on content. It just makes it so much easier to follow and to help with. Thanks.

 

[McOnion]

My apologies. I appreciate your responding.

The PSU has been in service since I built the PC, so almost 6 years ago. Just about every other component has been swapped since.

I don't know the model number to the PSU; the P/N is 220-PS-1000. An EVGA 1,000W 80+ Platinum PSU.

The chassis is a Corsair 760T.
There are 6 fans: five 140mm, one 120mm; all orientated as intake except the rear as an exhaust fan.

VRM temperatures sit between 25-30 Celsius regardless of load; and motherboard creeps up to 35 Celsius under load.

The cooler is a Corsair H115i Platinum; I did some reading, and the coolant may be a bit hot sitting at 40 Celsius under load. Presets for pump & fans are set to extreme.

Thank you.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Where are all these five 140mm intake fans located, exactly?

Where is the AIO located and is that included in the fans you listed or in addition to them? How are they oriented, intake or exhaust?

Which motherboard BIOS version is currently running?

After doing a clean install, have you gone to the product page for your motherboard and downloaded/installed the latest drivers for chipset, network adapters (LAN and WiFi) and audio chipset, or are you running off the Microsoft (Or some third party driver updater) supplied drivers?

When you installed Windows, did you actually do a CLEAN install, or did you simply do a refresh, reset, restore or re-install, without disconnecting all the secondary drives and without deleting all the existing partitions on the drive Windows is to be installed on and installing to the unpartitioned, unformatted space?

 

[McOnion]

2 of the 6 fans (I miscounted last night) are on the AIO. Up until 20 minutes ago, the AIO had been top mounted as an intake -- per the manual -- now I've changed it to exhaust out the top; the two front fans are intakes, a bottom fan intake, and a rear for exhaust.

The BIOS is 4201 from ASUS, which is the latest. I don't believe the BIOS is damaged, but I tried flashing the BIOS last night just to see, and that failed the first try and corrupted the USB stick; now I cannot reformat the stick for some reason.

All drivers are up to date from ASUS, and the chipset driver is up to date from AMD.

I have a Windows image on a USB to do 100% fresh install of Windows, and install all the drivers & update Windows. And yes, except the boot drive, the other drives are unformatted & wiped when doing this.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, good that you got back with the right answers.

I know you are not going to like this suggestion, but, a Windows "image" is NOT a fresh or CLEAN install. In fact, it is OFTEN the exact problem. Do a CLEAN install and follow it up with manual installation of the latest chipset, audio and network adapter drivers as available from your motherboard product support page and I would be REALLY surprised if that wasn't the end of it.

Refresh, reset, restore and other image type fixes, are not the same as a clean install. Not by any measure.

The problem with the "restore" image on laptops and prebuilt OEM systems, is that when you use THAT, you also put all of the preinstalled bloatware back on there as well. We've seen such high numbers of cases where brand new systems could barely hold their own necks up due to the weight of all the bloatware that they ran as though they were terribly infected with malware when they actually only had piles of useless "optimization" and other bundled software installed.

I ALWAYS recommend doing a clean install whenever there's a question of which way to go. That includes every time Microsoft releases a major update. Microsoft does not have a very good track record of making transitions between upgrades or major updates terribly smooth, seamless or trouble free. Usually, more often than not, problems are created that did not exist before the update or upgrade. Not in every case to be sure, but often enough to warrant avoiding the process when it is at all possible or at the very least, every other major update/upgrade.

Continuing to simply upgrade/update or reinstall the factory bloatware often just continues to put the same problems that existed from the start, right back where you left them prior to the process. I would never allow one of my machines, or any machine I work on, to go longer than two major updates without doing a clean install to the newest available Windows ISO release, and usually, unless there are circumstances that make it terribly inconvenient to do so, every major update.

If you wish to DO a clean install, you can do so as follows. This is totally up to each person to determine if that is the best course of action for them or not. In some few cases, there are very good reasons such as having software installed that cannot easily be reinstalled or a really terrible internet connection that makes it difficult to download the installers. Otherwise, I highly recommend it.

The Pro and Enterprise versions DO have better administration tools, and that is the ONLY reason to go with those versions IMO.

How to associate your windows 10 license with a Microsoft account

Reactivating Windows 10 after a hardware change

Windows build 1607 (Or newer) and activation after a hardware change



and in case you should ever need to do a CLEAN install of Windows, this guide will help to ensure it gets done properly.

How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10, the RIGHT way​