- Jul 23, 2023
- 3
- 0
- 10
Hi everyone.
First of all my specs:
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
ASUS ROG Strix B650-A GAMING
XFX Radeon RX 6800XT
2x16GB ADATA XPG LANCER RGB - DDR5 6000 MHz
Corsair SF750
Lian Li Galahad 240SL V2
Crucial P5 Plus M.2 500GB
Crucial P5 Plus M.2 2TB
Windows 10
BIOS is on vanilla settings
When I first assembled the system, it was with my old Nvidia GeForce 1660 super and I had massive problerms, mainly with random reboots (without bluescreens though). I researched and tested a bit and I decided to
1. Redo the system on the software side. I disabled the auto-download of the ASUS software and reinstalled Windows
2. Buy the 6800XT and replace my old GPU although it was very unlikely it caused the problem - I wanted the upgrade 😀
After the fresh install, I downloaded the newest BIOS and uograded it as well as all necessary drivers. I did it manually though and did not download the ASUS crap software suite. It seemed to be fine initially but I still have regular issues with my system. One of these two things happen randomly but to my dismay rather frequently:
1. Uncalled for restart of the system. Looking into the windows reliabilty monitor and/or event viewer it is always the same culprit: The system watchdog timer was triggered. No bluescreens, just a restart.
2. I get softlocked. The PC is still "running", I can move the mouse cursor but clicks don't do anything. Music in spotify loops if that happens, youtube videos freeze but the sound continues as if nothing happened. Only way out of this is a manual reset. Maybe of note: After the restart, when I reopen the browser and restore the last session, I have multiple new tabs open because I click on the "new tab" button a few times to confirm the system crashed. So the clicks somehow get registered? Apart from not liking the forced restart without shutting down, Windows does not seem to register any errors when this happens.
Both things happen randomly, I cannot force the errors which makes troubleshooting a pain.
The strange thing is: this absolutely never happens while I am gaming. It only happens when the PC is idle or I am on youtube or whatever. As soon as a game is running, the system so far never crashed (roughly 4 months now after the reinstall mentioned above). The PC also passes every test I did so far: OCCT stress test works fine, Memtest is a success, windows own RAM test says everything OK. Monitoring with HWinfo ist not really helpful because so far it never tracked the actual event. So I could not see any potential power shortages or something like that.
I really am at a loss here. Googling this mostly leads to software issues but I have a really hard time believing this. Those issues were there from the very start with all fresh BIOS and drivers. So my conclusion is that this is a hardware issue. I can rule out the graphics card since problem persisted with two different GPUs (and the old one was known to work as well).
So that leaves me with RAM, PSU, CPU or mainboard. Is there anything I can do to further narrow it down? It doesn't seem like a power issue to me but this is of course only speculation at the moment. RAM is passing every test I throw at it so I would also rule that out. That leaves the mainboard or CPU. I unfortunately don't have access to known working components to rule out that way. Does anyone of you have any idea how to further troubleshoot? I am willing to buy a replacement if needed but I'd like to know what is causing this.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
First of all my specs:
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
ASUS ROG Strix B650-A GAMING
XFX Radeon RX 6800XT
2x16GB ADATA XPG LANCER RGB - DDR5 6000 MHz
Corsair SF750
Lian Li Galahad 240SL V2
Crucial P5 Plus M.2 500GB
Crucial P5 Plus M.2 2TB
Windows 10
BIOS is on vanilla settings
When I first assembled the system, it was with my old Nvidia GeForce 1660 super and I had massive problerms, mainly with random reboots (without bluescreens though). I researched and tested a bit and I decided to
1. Redo the system on the software side. I disabled the auto-download of the ASUS software and reinstalled Windows
2. Buy the 6800XT and replace my old GPU although it was very unlikely it caused the problem - I wanted the upgrade 😀
After the fresh install, I downloaded the newest BIOS and uograded it as well as all necessary drivers. I did it manually though and did not download the ASUS crap software suite. It seemed to be fine initially but I still have regular issues with my system. One of these two things happen randomly but to my dismay rather frequently:
1. Uncalled for restart of the system. Looking into the windows reliabilty monitor and/or event viewer it is always the same culprit: The system watchdog timer was triggered. No bluescreens, just a restart.
2. I get softlocked. The PC is still "running", I can move the mouse cursor but clicks don't do anything. Music in spotify loops if that happens, youtube videos freeze but the sound continues as if nothing happened. Only way out of this is a manual reset. Maybe of note: After the restart, when I reopen the browser and restore the last session, I have multiple new tabs open because I click on the "new tab" button a few times to confirm the system crashed. So the clicks somehow get registered? Apart from not liking the forced restart without shutting down, Windows does not seem to register any errors when this happens.
Both things happen randomly, I cannot force the errors which makes troubleshooting a pain.
The strange thing is: this absolutely never happens while I am gaming. It only happens when the PC is idle or I am on youtube or whatever. As soon as a game is running, the system so far never crashed (roughly 4 months now after the reinstall mentioned above). The PC also passes every test I did so far: OCCT stress test works fine, Memtest is a success, windows own RAM test says everything OK. Monitoring with HWinfo ist not really helpful because so far it never tracked the actual event. So I could not see any potential power shortages or something like that.
I really am at a loss here. Googling this mostly leads to software issues but I have a really hard time believing this. Those issues were there from the very start with all fresh BIOS and drivers. So my conclusion is that this is a hardware issue. I can rule out the graphics card since problem persisted with two different GPUs (and the old one was known to work as well).
So that leaves me with RAM, PSU, CPU or mainboard. Is there anything I can do to further narrow it down? It doesn't seem like a power issue to me but this is of course only speculation at the moment. RAM is passing every test I throw at it so I would also rule that out. That leaves the mainboard or CPU. I unfortunately don't have access to known working components to rule out that way. Does anyone of you have any idea how to further troubleshoot? I am willing to buy a replacement if needed but I'd like to know what is causing this.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
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