System freezes with black display and limited memory access
System freezes with black display and limited memory access
The system runs AMD Ryzen 5 1600 with two EVGA 8GX-DR-3000-MR cards and a MSI B350 Tomahawk MSI RX 580. It’s running about three years, but the hard drives and AIO cooler are older than six years. Since last year I’ve experienced occasional crashes during games where my display shuts down but audio stays. The sound is mostly background noise—like distant sounds without visual cues. If it were a GPU failure, I’d still hear the action, just not see it. This suggests another cause.
During troubleshooting, I found my second memory channel is almost unusable. Moving RAM to the wrong channel corrupted the BIOS display and caused freezing. If I boot directly into Windows, I can use it for a few minutes before a memory-related crash occurs. The error codes aren’t consistent, but one mentioned the kernel. This points more toward the CPU than the motherboard or PSU.
I’ve already checked the motherboard (RMA’d) and PSU (replaced), but no clear board fault was found. The RAM issue seems unlikely because the problem only appears in a specific channel. A friend suggested it could still be GPU-related, though I’m not sure. The black screen crashes are hard to reproduce often enough for testing, making them tricky to diagnose.
Current steps: reinstall Windows, reset CPU overclock, update GPU drivers, re-flash BIOS, and reassemble the system (due to RMA). I’m considering hardware failure as the most probable cause, but I need more guidance.
Hello, I've experimented with several setups based on your suggestions. The slots you mentioned—number 1 and 3, which are the closest to the CPU—are currently suboptimal. I tested each slot individually using both sticks, and all four configurations led to BIOS corruption. I've attached a picture showing the current state. Additionally, I encountered a BSOD with stop code 0xc000021a while working through this; it might help identify the issue.