Warelf

Yes it could. You should be able to see the "dust-grime" when the system is powered down, without removing any hardware. If you can't see the dust layer, then it's probably not the problem here. BUT if you are using an AIO watercooler, idle should be high 20's - low 30's. So you could be looking at thermal hotspots as well (it usually happens when the cpu and cooler has been a combo for a while. The paste (most factory on stock coolers) "lasts" anywhere to about 2 - 5 years, depending on manufacturers. In this case you just have to remount your cooler using some fresh paste. (about the size of a cooked rice grain).

Driver issues can cause "behaviour"of hardware issues, but the hardware is still 100%. If it is the SSD it's probably reached its write limit - check your warratee of ssd for specific numbers. SMART will tell you exactly how many cycles of data has been done. if the memory of they ssd failed and the write limit has not been reached, you have a case for RMA unless you are out of time spec (usually 3 - 10 years) depending on the manufacturer. Maybe that can save you some cash at least.

Ok the bench shows that its more worried about the cpu load than the 58% performance of your ssd - the way it should be. So the cpu load should be adressed before it will flag a sata cable (and it would only suggest it, it won't say for sure) The other suggestion is either too much (thick) dust on the heatsink (it forms a dust grut) the fans spins fine and all looks good but the heat sink can't "breath" - Try the malware scan first, that would be a lot less time and it's not a bad suggestion.

I never got to the actual OC part, just installed the AMD utility (somtimes bundles with drivers) because I never manually OC 1st up on a new build. All I'm trying to say that - if it works and then it doesn't, then most of the times it's a simple (but not so simple) driver conflict. Drivers conflicts can cause error messages and behaviour of hardware malfunction, and AMD (think of catalyst control center) has a knack for embedding themselves deep in the system. But I hear ya.. RMA / replace the board, but no damage should come from not being plugged in, the bios will flag that immediately. That being said your PSU might also have 1 loose pin/wire frim the 8. Depending on the quality and age of your PSU. Just keep in mind that you can damage an onboard display connector and still have a working motherboard. PLUS dimms and pci slots are some of the less fragile parts of the board so to speak. Try the utility, it might save you some cash and time, when you tried all else of course. Good luck.

Check the system without the GTX 980, that is what is causing your PSU to go all nuts. I've had 1080 and 2080 do the same thing. the don't discharge all the power on shutdown, especially on a hard reset or power failure and they cause all sorts of cr... hang-ups -> Shortest way 1: Uninstall drivers in safe mode, boot normal, re-install drivers using "clean install" option. (if not move to next and so on) Short way 2: Use any other 9 series GTX card (since you have a 980) and reinstall the drivers - THEN shutdown and put the 980 back in, (don't uninstall and shutdown). start the system. now do a reinstall with the latest driver from the geforce driver download website, but without selecting the clean install option. You should be good to go. NOTE: the Geforce experience should not be checked, after you fixed your problem, install from seperate download, if you use geforce experience. Long way: reinstall windows and let windows update everything by itself. Good luck M8

Sounds like a job for the AMD Cleanup utility. https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-601 I had a similar problem, right after trying to OC a GTX 1070 (strix) on a Ryzen 5 1400 system with a B250 pc mate (msi) board. The trick is getting into your system to run the utility. I have to be quick on the startup to get into safe mode (SSDs lol) but I could "run as administrator" After that the system would be clean of "gremlins" and you can go about installing the RTX drivers and enjoy. Just don't OC the GPU, or allow the system to try to OC the GPU. Just a note, this happend when I tried to OC the CPU by itself as well. (It seems AMD will tolerate Nvidia, but not to the point of OC. - lol - I miean c'mon they actaully have a utility for this.., it's sooo funny really) If this turns out to be your issue as well. Good luck.

WARNING - If it ain't broke, don't fix it?, it's actually a compliment to your system; your task manager updates fast enough that you can actually see the CPU usage, your cpu use to invoke the (massive index) list of all tasks running on your system. That is also why it drops, once your in, your in.., lol. if you want to be sure just run https://www.userbenchmark.com/

This may sound like a silly question, but you are using a SATA III Cable right? (6Gb/ps) [Not all SATA cables are marked or labelled and they look identical, but SATA II Cable will result in (3Gb/ps everytime) Do a sytem bench withuserbenchmark. https://www.userbenchmark.com/ It's a small download and the results are quite informative on all of your main components. This should flag where your issue is if not your SATA cable itself. Good Luck. That EVO should be giving you at 580 - 620, not 418.

The default Bios settings on most board is set to "auto" under latency timings, so a reset to defaults in the bios should automatically correct a memory timing issue. MSI boards have EZ debug LEDs marked CPU | GPU | RAM on the board. When the system gives issues, is it just the RAM light red or is the RAM led an CPU or GPU LED blinking between one another? Otherwise you could use a pc speaker to hear the "beep codes" when the system posts. They often give you more specific issues. Oh and RE: "Trying to get a stable overclock was a learning curve" on the skylake chips the stability improves when you actually lower the voltage on the cpu, becuase DDR4 range is 1.20 - 1.35V. I got my 6700(non-k) running stable at 4.3 with BCLK freq of 120 and voltage at 1.25 but I had to set the RAM from 3000MHz to 2666MHz to get it stable. Here less is actually more.

Glad you found the problem, must have been BIIIIG relief. Just goes to show, always check the cables first? ( Just a thought, if you removed the gpu you would have found the riser problem earlier 4:21 Tuesday, lol) You did not mention a riser adapter in your original post. (if you did I missed it) NOW the question is which game's fps counter are you going to destroy.? Have Fun M8.

Bios SATA set to AHCI for the SSD, but the HDD probably wants standard IDE. Maybe this article would help; https://www.askvg.com/how-to-change-sata-hard-disk-mode-from-ide-to-ahci-raid-in-bios-after-installing-windows/ Good Luck.

Cool, let me know if you get sorted.

Usually freezing is a sign of too much heat or memory proplems. If the system is fine without that card I would return the card, however all is not lost. First I would remove the craphics card completely. Run the system on the CPU graphics (Intel® UHD Graphics 630.) to see if there are any issues. I would run userbenchmark, it gives you a good quick overview of all the pc components and tell you which components are giving below average results. Do all the necessary OS updates and flash the bios to the latest version before re-installing the GPU. Now go download the v418 driver from the geforce site. To be on the safe safe set your UAC notifications (user access control) to off. Power down, install the 1080ti, power back up run the driver install, without the Geforce experience and "perform a clean installation". If this does not work I ould test a differnt GPU and if that works, well RMA would be best since your rig is new. I would also get another 16GB RAM, it would just round up that monster nicely.

i5 8400 (more than enough power and threads for any browser) you will also be looking at a cheaper cooling solution, as the 8600k wants more cooling performance | 390 (for 9th gen CPU upgrade option) | 32 GB RAM (if there is a sale) the browser would do much better with the RAM, as the 980 GPU would be 3D overkill - I would sell the 980 and get a 1050 (Simply for added display management and options) and some RAM for the "office PC"

Hi jv, sounds like dust is in one of the (once) unpopulated DIMM slots, maybe try a little air blower or an air compressor. Be very gentle with the air compressor's air pressure if you are going that route. HOWEVER, I had a Q97 chip set board a few years back that was listed with Dual channel dims, but ONLY when 2 out of the 4 slots were populated. When I wanted to use all 4 I had to use single channel memory. This was confirmed by the boards product manual - it's a kind of spec manufacturers don't really market. - But this shouldn't be your problem with the M7 board.