New PC keeps hard freezing

[LiljaFX]

Hi everyone,

I put together a PC about 1 month ago and from the beginning random hard freezes occur (meaning the screen just freezes at the last frame and I have to shut the PC down via pressing the power button and buzzing sounds coming from the speakers). Pressing Caps Lock doesn't do anything on the keyboard, so the computer really doesn't respond to anything besides shutting down. I had it run for 1 hour after freezing once to see if anything further happened, but the freeze continued.
These freezes occur randomly, sometimes there a no freezes for a couple of days and then it suddenly freezes twice in a row. Also I had freezes while in idle, during gaming, after booting up in the Windows Login screen and while booting in the frame with the spinning circles (this one happened directly after a freeze, when I tried to boot it after the force shutdown).

The system:

Windows 10 Pro
intel i5-10600KASUS
ROG STRIX Z490G-WiFi
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB)
DDR4 3200MHz
ASUS PH-GTX1050Ti-4G (taken from previos computer)
Crucial MX500 1TB SSD
Corsair CX650M Power Supply

I tried lots of troubleshooting, including stress tests without any success. I first suspected the RAM but couldn't really find any fix, tried adjusting BIOS settings (3200MHz and 1.35V as stated on support page) and one RAM stick at a time in different slots but always got freezes. Actually the freezes seemed to be more frequent when I only used one RAM stick (5-30min directly in a row, mostly the freezes occur every 3 days) but I guess that could just be bad luck.

After all this and more freezes I did a clean reinstall of Windows 4 days ago (thus reverting some of the troubleshooting I mentioned above), this time connecting a CD drive to get the drivers from the mainboard's CD instead of downloading them, suspecting I messed something up with the downloaded drivers. Went well for 4 days until it froze this morning when in a call on Teams in the browser (currently the MOBO drivers are still from the CD, I plan to download the newest later today but don't really see this fixing the freezes).

I'm kind of at my wits end here and am running out of ways to try and fix this.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[XYchromosone]

to me it sounds like hardware since it happened in linux as well as windows. I'm wondering if a CPU socket pin if slightly bent? It happened to one of my brand new motherboards, a Maximus XI Code that I purchased brand new, but it came with numerous bent pins [It was probably a returned motherboard by a previous customer from the local vendor that sold it to me that way ... it's a long story].

I straightened the 10 bent pins as best as I could, enough to boot and install windows and it ran fine for a few weeks. Then it began to freeze and not boot once it ran for a while and the motherboard warmed up. So I checked the CPU socket pins and found just one pin was still ever so slightly bent, probably enough to boot when the motherboard was cold but as the CPU socket warmed up the slightly bent pin lost connection with the CPU contact pads due to the pin being effected by heat causing it to expand twist and move and lose its connection. Straightening that pin fixed the issue.

It doesn't take much to bend the Intel CPU socket pins on the motherboard.... it's just a thought, though.

It might be worth removing the CPU and carefully checking all the CPU socket pins with a jeweler's eyepiece or a good magnifying glass. While you're there check all the RAM sticks golden finger connection pads, the gold contacts should have scratch marks due to the RAM Dim socket contacts making those scratches on the RAM modules and see if there is anything unusual with any scratch marks. There should be thin vertical scratch marks in the centre of each gold connection pad. Heck, even check the GPU for the same thing while you're at it. Once again, it just a thought to try and rule out any motherboard contacts defect.

[LiljaFX]

Sorry for the late update, I wanted to monitor the behaviour before saying "Yay it's fixed" after only a couple of days.

So, it SEEMS to be fixed for now and I feel like I played myself. After the initial freezes I operated the RAM on XMP settings (so 3200MHz and 1.35V as stated on ASUS website) which did not fix the issue. Well, I did no realize I created a second source of freezes here (even though I read about the possibility of XMP causing freezes...) and it seems I fixed the first source for the freezes (I'm guessing it was in fact a driver issue) but with my genius decision to let the RAM stay on XMP the freezes continued, just for a different reason (which I did not realize).
So far it has been two weeks without freezes (since I changed back the RAM settings) and funnily enough the Linux freezes weren't caused by the RAM being overclocked but instead by having WiFi enabled (when WiFi was disabled, no further freezes happened when it froze after an hour at the most with WiFi enabled).

I really hope this will be the end of it but multiple causes for the freezes (Drivers and RAM on Windows and additionally WiFi on Linux) were just too much for me to comprehend. At least I learned a lot and will have a headstart when encountering my next freezing computer. Thanks everyone for your help!

If anyone is interested or finds this post looking to fix their freezes, here is a list of my attempts:

• Chkdsk
  
• sfc /scannow
  
• BIOS RAM Voltage & Frequency (if this does not fix the problem, reset to default!)
  
• Update Device Drivers (manually / Snappy Driver Installer)
  
• Memory Check / mdsched.exe
  
• BIOS Update if available
  
• Adjust Virtual Memory
  
• Turn Off Link State Power Management
  
• Turn Off Fast Startup
  
• New PSU
  
• memtest86 (RAM stress test)
  
• Prime95 (CPU&RAM stress test)
  
• Unigine (GPU stress test)
  
• Check Windows Event Log for hints
  
• Windows New Installation (with drivers from CD instead of USB)
  
• Try each RAM stick on their own in different RAM slots
  
• Remove external devices (Monitor, Mouse, ...)
  
• Exchange GPU
  
• Exchange SATA cable
  
• change SATA Port
  
• SSD Health Check
  
• WiFi only / Ethernet only (disable WiFi in BIOS)
  

[ajm216]

LiljaFX wrote:
Sorry for the late update, I wanted to monitor the behaviour before saying "Yay it's fixed" after only a couple of days.

So, it SEEMS to be fixed for now and I feel like I played myself. After the initial freezes I operated the RAM on XMP settings (so 3200MHz and 1.35V as stated on ....

Has your system remained stable? I am currently chasing the same gremlins on my z490-e system.

[LiljaFX]

ajm216 wrote:
Has your system remained stable? I am currently chasing the same gremlins on my z490-e system.

Yes it did! I didn't change anything further, so I guess my initial problem were the drivers (downloaded them and I guess one didn't install correctly) and then I messed up with the RAM. My suggestion would be to reinstall Windows and make sure your drivers are correctly installed, I used the CD the second time around and updated the drivers with Snappy Driver Installer afterwards. And if you play around with RAM frequency and voltage make sure to set it back to default values if the changes don't fix your problems!