[SOLVED] Strange behaviour from a previously stable pc.

FltDag

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Jan 17, 2016
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Pc specs:
Motherboard: ASUS Prime A320M-K
CPU: Ryzen 5 2600
Ram: 16GB 3000mhz corsair vengeance
GPU: Sapphire RX580 Nitro+ 8gb
PSU: Cooler Master G550M
Storage: 2TB HDD 240gb SSD

Over the past few months I've started getting a lot of system instability that has slowly been becoming more of a problem, and I honestly can't figure out what is causing it, I originally thought my problems were tied to the hard drive, ran some troubleshooting as the drive was displaying errors and the problems went away temporarily, they then came back, the drive now didn't show any problems so I did a fresh windows install, and again, the problems resolved for a short period of time. I've noticed over time eventually the issues come back in full force and i get a significant amount of system interrupts and loss of performance from my pc, usually a quick restart can fix it but other times it makes no difference. The problems only seem to get worse when the system is under a heavier load, games such as RE7 and DMC5 were able to completely freeze my system sometimes, and other times run without a single hitch.
The most noticeable part is almost every issue seems to be tied to high system interrupts 20-80% at a time

Cpu temps are: 37 C idle and maxing at 70 C
Gpu temps are: 42 C idle and 75 C under load

I've troubleshot everything I possibly know on my pc and cannot seem to find any issues, if there's something I've missed please make me aware so I can try to fix this problem.
 
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Solution
however I've ran memtest86 multiple times to really check if there's an issue and haven't actually found one while testing yet.
memtest isn't perfect, I have seen cases where it checks out fine but swapping it still fixed the problem

motherboards are impossible to test, so what you do is
I've also ran multiple tests across everything on my pc I can, including the Drives/CPU/GPU/RAM
pretty much what you have done, test everything else and if it checks out, you have to blame the things you can't test.

So it could be motherboard.

having system interrupts doesn't necessarily mean its a problem, the problem with windows is a lot of normal actions have scary terms - System Interrupts are a normal operation of windows...

FltDag

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Jan 17, 2016
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what brand hdd is it? Most of the brands have software you can use to test drives.

How old is the PSU?
PSU is probably 3-4 years old at this point, but isn't exactly showing any signs of problems from what I can tell, and the HDD is western digital, and checking their software also seems to show my drive is still fine now.

I realise now that the issues actually could be tied to my ram and XMP profile, so I'm going to troubleshoot that to double check I haven't missed anything
 
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FltDag

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Jan 17, 2016
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I'm wondering now if its at all possible that the motherboard could be to blame for the inconsistency of issues, because I've noticed on the rare occasions a blue screen or crash actually occurs, its never actually the same error consistently, besides often being RAM based errors, however I've ran memtest86 multiple times to really check if there's an issue and haven't actually found one while testing yet.

I would like to note I am aware that one of my RAM slots has been dead for a long while, and the motherboard being about the same age as the PSU 3-4 years at this point, could it be possible that the system instability is because of the motherboard?

I've also ran multiple tests across everything on my pc I can, including the Drives/CPU/GPU/RAM and checked everything i can on the software side, and I can't find any issues with anything on either side.

I'm considering doing 2 things, Changing the HDD and seeing if that makes a difference, or possibly trying to switch out the motherboard, I've been looking for an excuse to swap to a new case anyways.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
however I've ran memtest86 multiple times to really check if there's an issue and haven't actually found one while testing yet.
memtest isn't perfect, I have seen cases where it checks out fine but swapping it still fixed the problem

motherboards are impossible to test, so what you do is
I've also ran multiple tests across everything on my pc I can, including the Drives/CPU/GPU/RAM
pretty much what you have done, test everything else and if it checks out, you have to blame the things you can't test.

So it could be motherboard.

having system interrupts doesn't necessarily mean its a problem, the problem with windows is a lot of normal actions have scary terms - System Interrupts are a normal operation of windows, they are communications between hardware and windows - https://www.howtogeek.com/271400/wh...rupts-process-and-why-is-it-running-on-my-pc/
how many and how high are the questions, really.
 
Solution

FltDag

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Jan 17, 2016
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Looking at it now, there is two occasions where the system interrupts will start to cause massive system instability, a lot of the time when downloading anything, other tasks will start to seize up and hang on loading for a significant amount of time, which typically was never an issue previously, even the smallest of downloads can cause massive hitches.
The other occasion is any modern high demand game, typically something like Cod cold war. In those occasions it can get so bad that the entire system can completely freeze up, not resulting in a blue screen but becoming so unresponsive that a reboot is required to fix.

At this point I feel replacing the motherboard isn't the worst option, and I'll likely pick up a new drive because even if the current drive isn't faulty extra space isn't a thing to turn down and a good bonus is being able to get a case with significantly better airflow.

There is one last thing I might give a try, and that is to update the motherboard's BIOS and see if that could possibly make a difference.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Looking at it now, there is two occasions where the system interrupts will start to cause massive system instability, a lot of the time when downloading anything, other tasks will start to seize up and hang on loading for a significant amount of time, which typically was never an issue previously, even the smallest of downloads can cause massive hitches.
The other occasion is any modern high demand game, typically something like Cod cold war. In those occasions it can get so bad that the entire system can completely freeze up, not resulting in a blue screen but becoming so unresponsive that a reboot is required to fix.
do you download to c or hdd as both of those could be hdd still. If games are on hdd, that will maybe cause slow down.

hdd cheaper to replace than motherboard, i would lean that way first.
 

FltDag

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Jan 17, 2016
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do you download to c or hdd as both of those could be hdd still. If games are on hdd, that will maybe cause slow down.

hdd cheaper to replace than motherboard, i would lean that way first.
Yeah, i believe the slowdown could be likely due to the drive at this point, i get paid in just about a week, so i'll use that to upgrade to a decent SSD and work out from there if anything else needs to be done
 

FltDag

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Jan 17, 2016
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You are on the latest bios?
After updating bios i noticed no changes to the issues, however i did notice a new symptom is that whenever I run programs from my hard drive it starts to chug the pc completely, i've now ordered a replacement drive to see if that should fix the problem.
 

FltDag

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Jan 17, 2016
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Yeah, after changing drive everything now performs completely smooth, or at least for now I cant seem to see any of the same issues anymore.

Yep, 100% my pc is running smooth now, I tried a game i knew caused issues with a handful of extra stuff that i knew would break before and literally nothing went wrong, the game loaded significantly faster and also even got to use some features I couldn't before
 
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