Problem with New Computer Freezing Without BSOD
Problem with New Computer Freezing Without BSOD
Hello all! I'm kind of going insane here with trying to diagnose what's causing my problem so I was hoping some of you may have some insight. I built a (mostly) new PC around a week ago. In the first few days there were 2 or 3 screen freezes/stutters that lasted less than a second and I didn't think much of it. Starting 2 days ago my computer would completely freeze completely and not recover at seemingly random intervals of time and under varying loads. I've had to manually shut off the PC and restart it every time. I've frozen once during startup load and multiple times during memtests. The parts that are the same from my old PC are two of the SSDs (which I completely wiped during new Windows install), the power supply, tower, fans, and the liquid cooler. I was not having this issue on my previous PC.
I've done an extensive amount of testing so I may forget a few things I've tried, but I'll try my best to include them all here:
Reseated RAM and GPU multiple times. Checked all cables and connections multiple times.
Reliability Monitor has documented many errors of "Windows was not properly shut down", three "Stopped working" that have the description "Faulting Application Path", and one "Windows failed to start because of a problem with the hard disk" where Windows could not detect the problem but booted successfully.
Event Viewer has given a few 1796 errors because of Secure Boot not being enabled. 41 Kernel-Power errors from unexpected system stop. 6008 unexpected shutdown errors. Two 10010 DCOM errors. Occasionally 56 Application Popup errors. The information included with these 56 errors is "ACPI 2". I saw a few threads saying this may indicate hardware issues but I had trouble making sense of it and also determining what specifically was the cause.
Ran sfc /scannow . This found some corrupted files and repaired them.
Ran chkdsk /f /r /x (I believe those were the arguments) on all three of my drives. Found nothing.
Changed power saving settings to High Performance and disabled sleep modes.
Booted in Safe Mode and ran Malwarebytes which did find one adware in Chrome. Quarantined and deleted it and took steps to prevent Chrome sync from reinfecting. Computer has remained virus free on further scans and at the time of writing this.
Upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11.
Uninstalled GPU driver, restarted, then installed the newest GPU driver. Also did this process with an older version.
Ran multiple memtest86+ on both of my RAM sticks together (one alone, but froze pretty fast, could test again). Furthest I made it before freezing was 5 passes, 0 errors.
Updated drivers using the appropriate one from my motherboard manufacturer's website.
Updated my BIOS version to the latest provided for my motherboard from the manufacturer's website.
Ran a GPU stress test using Heaven benchmark. GPU reached 70 C and didn't have any issues as far as I could tell (though I could easily not have known what to look for).
Ran a Prime95 balanced torture test where CPU temps quickly jumped to 100 C (within 2 minutes) but still no freezing. (I did not run this for longer than 10-15 minutes because of my concern regarding temperature. I'm unsure to what degree this is expected as I'm again unfamiliar with what to look for).
This being said, the computer still freezes at much lower CPU temps, sometimes even while idling for only a few minutes after startup.
My main areas of concern at this point are the high CPU temp with my old liquid cooler, a possible faulty power supply, and possible faulty RAM sticks. I've also seen in a number of forums a lot of discussion about CPU and RAM voltage but I've had trouble making sense of it as again I'm not overly familiar with the technical aspects of computers. Any and all help is appreciated
System Information:
OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX, Rev 1.1
CPU: Intel Core i5-14600K, 3500 Mhz
GPU: ASUS Dual 4070 Super
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2x16GB) DDR5 DRAM 6000MHz
Power Supply: Corsair RM850x
Liquid Cooler: Corsair H100i (Roughly 8 or 9 years old, I bought a replacement but it didn't fit. Plan to replace it soon so please be nice).
If you need anything else please lmk, thanks again!
I've been working on this issue for several weeks now, using the same setup: Gigabyte board and memory kit. The system freezes completely without any BSOD, logs appear in the reliability monitor, and it needs to restart. This happened once during a BIOS update that caused me serious concern. I've tried all the tests I can think of—memtests, stress tests—and still nothing. I'm not sure what's causing it, but I've ruled out cooling problems since temperatures are normal. It also freezes even when the system isn't under heavy load, sometimes just after powering on while idle.
I've gone through every step you suggested before, but I'm stuck and feeling really frustrated. I don’t have any new ideas except maybe replacing the motherboard or RAM sticks if I find something. Thanks for your help, even if it's just a suggestion.
Sorry to hear you're experiencing the same problems, but hopefully we can resolve this eventually. I ran another sfc /scannow and it detected more corrupted files. I repeated the process several times and found nothing further. It might be worth trying a fresh Windows installation on a different drive and completely removing the main drive. During that attempt, my computer managed to run for about 10 hours before freezing while idle. After that, I replaced the RAM with two new sticks of the same model I just purchased. When Chrome was open, the computer froze after roughly 4 hours of uptime. The increased power consumption and faster freeze this time suggest I should consider replacing the PSU next—though load didn’t seem to influence the freezing rate before. In the meantime, I’ll run memtest86+ on the new RAM sticks one at a time.
Also, no need to worry! While searching for this issue, I noticed many Gigabyte boards listed in people's specs. Since you're in a similar situation with the same brand, I’ll likely try replacing that next if the above steps don’t help.
It looks like the problem was solved by replacing the CPU. I was able to use the computer for two weeks without it freezing. Just a reminder, this fix might not work for everyone else, so make sure you go through all the troubleshooting steps we discussed and follow the recommendations before purchasing new parts.