I apologize in advance for this long drawn out post but it seems rather complex so I thought I'd share all my thoughts. So to start off I just finished my 13700K build and I did use the Thermal Grizzly Contact Frame for my ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero. I followed der8auer's and Gamer's Nexus instructions on how to install it and everything seems to be working fine. The only issue that I've been having is the inclusion of my RTX 4090 FE. My new build specs:
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero
CPU: Intel i7 13700K w/ Noctua NH-U12A Chromax.Black
RAM: 2x 16GB Corsair Dominator 32GB DDR5 @ 6200Mhz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founder's Edition W/ Seasonic 12VHPWR Cable
PSU: Seasonic PX-1300 1300W 80+ Platinum
SSD: Samsung 980 Pro 2TB
OS: Windows 11 Pro
I would assume everything in this build would be compatible and just work but for some reason the inclusion of my RTX 4090 FE has caused frequent instability. At first, I only used the BIOs version that introduced 13th Gen Intel CPU support to my Z690. When using this BIOs I seemed to get mostly black screens after about 1-5 minutes of being on Windows 11. I have since updated to the second to newest BIOs and I seem to be getting a frozen screen now instead of the screen turning black. Within BIOS I've tried disabling the ASUS Multi-Core enhancement as well as the XMP profile of my RAM but neither fixed it. I ran memtest86 from my BIOs and came back with 0 errors (passed 40/40 tests) so I think the ram is good. I actually ended up changing my GPU out for my 3090 to see if that would change anything, and in fact it did. I was able to browse the internet, watch Youtube, and play games for an hour or so without one black screen or issue. And what's even stranger is that I was able to use my RTX 4090 on my old 9700k build just prior to building this new build with ZERO issues. The issues seem to only occur with this 13700k build... Here is my old build for reference:
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z390 GAMING PRO CARBON
CPU: Intel i7 9700K w/ Noctua NH-D15
RAM: 2x 8GB G.Skill 16GB DDR4 @ 3200Mhz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founder's Edition W/ Seasonic 12VHPWR Cable
PSU: Seasonic PX-1300 1300W 80+ Platinum
SSD: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB
OS: Windows 10 Pro
I ended up swapping out my 1300W PSU for my Seasonic PX-850 850W PSU and installing my 3090 inside the 13700k build. Worked fine without issues. I went back to my 1300W PSU and 4090 installed on my 9700k build, no issues at all. So the issue to me seems to be a hardware configuration with the Z690 Hero motherboard and the 4090 but it appears to only affect the 4090 and not my 3090 at all.
After scouring the internet endlessly for any kind of solution I was able to find a workaround. Within NVIDIA Control Panel, by setting the Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance, my system no longer unstable with the 4090. I no longer get black screens or even complete freezing (requiring a hard reboot). Has anyone here had this issue before and does anyone know of any possible fixes for it?
