[SOLVED] New build randomly freezing - Tried everything with no avail!!!

[eduardowoj]

SOLVED: Those crazy problems were just Microsoft's fault. A simple Windows reinstall solved them all.

Hello guys,

Tom's Hardware's community already helped me a lot, this is my first source for answers and information whenever I have a problem. However, unfortunately, my time to ask has come.

I recently build a PC from scratch. Not my first build, I had built some other PCs for me and for friends in the last years. But this is the only one which is giving me a bit of trouble.

Since after I built it, and installed Windows, it randomly freezes. It happened on all circumstances: In game, playing Pinball FX2 or Fallout 3, by just internet browsing, by watching Netflix, by watching downloaded video... But it's impossible to know when it'll freeze. There were times when if froze down like 10 minutes after turning on and other times when I played games for hours without any problem.

Before describing my problems in details, my specs are:

Mobo: Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
CPU: AMD FX8320E
RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury 16 GB (2x8GB, 1866MHz)
PSU: Corsair RM650x
GPU: Asus GTX970 OC Turbo II

Those freezes are complete lock-ups. The mouse pointer doesn't moves, neither ALT+TAB, CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, CTRL+ALT+DEL, ALT+F4 or any key combos work, nothing works. Plus, when it freezes ingame, or with a video playing, the audio gets stuck on an infinite loop.

By all I read, two thing could be the culprits. Temps or RAM. I highly doubt of temps, because we're on a very cold season here in southern Brazil, with day temperatures barely reaching 10°C, and the CPU is watercooled. HWMonitor shows my CPU temps are around 25°C, with my package temperature around 10° to 15°C. My motherboard and GPU temperatures are also very stable and low.

So the only suspect left is RAM. I tried several things:

1) Fiddled with CPU multiplier on BIOS to fix the RAM frequency at 1866 MHz (it was at 1151 MHz before)
2) Increased the RAM voltage from 1.5V to 1.55V and from 1.55V to 1.6V, to try to make it more stable
3) Returned to auto configurations
4) Tried fitting the RAM chips on different slots (DIMM A_1 + B_1 and A_2 + B_2 combos, brown and beige, respectively)
5) Tried refitting the chips

But nothing worked. My PC is still freezing often. One thing I noticed, though, is that if I reset the frozen PC and resume gaming, it locks up quicker.

What can I do now? I used all my ideas, and can't think of anything else.

Thank in advance!

 

[tshrjain]

Tru running the computer with just one RAM and see if it works fine. Then replace it with the other one and then try running the PC. If there is problem, it would be with one of the two RAMs.

By run I mean stressing out the PC by playing Games and watching videos etc.

 

[eduardowoj]

Thanks, I'll try that. I just removed one of the RAM chips and left Memtest running all available memory. After the tests finish, I'll play a video. I didn't thought about how just one of the chips could have a problem, even though it's quite obvious, haha.

I have another gaming PC, I think I'll swap the RAM modules between them to cross test. If the other freezes and this one don't, the RAM is clearly guilty.

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

[tshrjain]

Also, this might be nothing, but a guy had a similar problem of sudden freezes. Here's his solution

"
Yes, and it turned out my stock cooler for the CPU was not able to handle the CPU's Turbo Cores option... It literally couldn't keep up with cores going over 3.7GHz clock speed. Disabling Turbo Cores made a huge improvement to the freezing of applications and setting the fan speed to Full Speed (full speed even when idle) seems to have fixed all issues. I think I will get an aftermarket cooler to get be able to fully utilise the CPU's power."

 

[eduardowoj]

I'm not using the stock cooler though, I'm cooling the CPU with a Corsair H60 water cooler. I logged some data to check that my CPU barely touches 40°C while playing... However, I'll try to do that.

Yesterday I began the single RAM chip test. With only one chip, I managed to play heavily for like 3 hours, before it froze. Then, I swapped it for the other chip and played for almost two hours without problems.

During this week, I'll continue the testing. If the other ram chip freezes the PC too, I'll try changing the Turbo Cores and setting the "fan" (actually, the pump) to full power.

 

[tshrjain]

I'm not using the stock cooler though, I'm cooling the CPU with a Corsair H60 water cooler. I logged some data to check that my CPU barely touches 40°C while playing... However, I'll try to do that.

Yesterday I began the single RAM chip test. With only one chip, I managed to play heavily for like 3 hours, before it froze. Then, I swapped it for the other chip and played for almost two hours without problems.

During this week, I'll continue the testing. If the other ram chip freezes the PC too, I'll try changing the Turbo Cores and setting the "fan" (actually, the pump) to full power.

sounds like a plan 😀

 

[eduardowoj]

What if I disable Turbo Core? I've read it causes more harm than good... Since the other ram chip didn't froze my PC yesterday, I'll try to plug both and to deactivate Turbo Core. If it freezes again, I'll swap the memories for a pair of Corsair Vengeance 16GB (pretty much identical on specs) I have on other PC and run a Memtest on the Kingston chips...

Update: The other RAM chip also froze the computer. I swapped them for the pair of Corsairs and I'm now running Memtest86+ until tomorrow morning (Brazil's time), or at least 6 passes...

 

[eduardowoj]

No success. With the Corsair RAM kit, the PC still freezes. Plus, Memtest ran overnight, did 3 full passes and found no errors whatsoever.

I'll try to completely reset the BIOS, or even reflash it to the current version (2501 x64, according to ASUS). If it's still freezing, I'll boot up a Linux live CD and do a stress test, to rule out any Windows bug, even though, due to the complete lock ups, I doubt this is a Windows problem.

Any other ideas for tests? Now I think there's only the CPU and mobo to test...

 

[tshrjain]

Then its definitely not the RAM. Might be a problem with CPU configuration. Better to reset BIOS by clearing the CMOS.

 

[eduardowoj]

Just reloaded the defaults on the BIOS. If this don't work, I'll try to manually clear the CMOS by removing the battery and letting the mobo to drain the BIOS power...

Also, if this PC freezes again, with the refreshed BIOS, maybe I should try to check the connections between parts on my mobo. The water cooler CPU block was a bit hard to put in place, maybe I had dislodged some other part or connection.

 

[eduardowoj]

Right when the browser said it was submitting this last reply, it froze. I took it apart, checked all connections, removed the CMOS battery and hold the power button, to drain all energy. When I booted it again, it asked for me to enter BIOS setup to enter the configurations.

Something I read was to configure the memory control to 2T, instead of Auto or 1T. I did this.

If it freezes again, what can I do? My two last resorts are downloading a BIOS file from Asus and reflashing the mobo and trying to do a stress test under a Linux Live CD, to rule out Windows problems...

 

[eduardowoj]

Weird. Yesterday I ran PRIME95 for more than five hours with absolutely no freezes. I ran also FurMark GPU benchmark utility, got more than 5900 points on my rig. Did a stress test until my GPU reached 80ºC and nothing happened.

Today, I went to YouTube and the PC froze.

I'm out of ideas 🙁

 

[tshrjain]

Might be a long shot, try uninstalling the Antivirus and then see if problem still persists

 

[eduardowoj]

I solved it!!

After all the stress tests I did, I ruled out any hardware problems. I mean, how could a faulty piece of hardware make the computer freeze by playing youtube videos or by scrolling through internet pages and to successfully pass 7 hours of PRIME95, 4 hours of FurMark and 10 hours of a heavy test using StressLinux without a single freeze?

I ran SFC /SCANNOW and it found errors that it couldn't correct. Then I tried every possible DISM command, getting errors everytime.

Then I just reinstalled Windows. It's working as a intended, I played games almost nonstop this weekend and it didn't froze a single time.

Damn Microsoft!!!

Thank you all, especially tshrjain for taking your time to help me with this one.