Can't pin point why my two systems are shutting down

[Ericarthurc]

Side note: I only use one system at a time.

So I have two different motherboards, one is a gigabyte Z170 intel board, one is a asus X570 amd board. And I am having a really weird shutdown issue, that has occurred on both systems. I will loose signal but the computer stays on (most of the time), I can still hear any audio I was listening to; but the system wont register any keyboard or mouse events, so I cant use the keyboard to change the volume. After a couple minutes the audio will stop but the computer is still 'on'. I have changed PSU's between the two systems. I have tried different GPUs. I have moved ram around. The only variable that is present when the different systems 'half-crash' is a 16gb ram stick I just purchased; but I memtested the ram and no errors came up. 

 

I want to pull my hair out lol. It happens at random times.. yesterday I used the system for 8 hours and didn't have any issues, today it crashed twice. The first crash the monitor turned purple and it restarted. Second crash was the 'half-crash'. I pulled the 16gb ram chip and put in a good 8gb chip and am testing that currently. 

Another thought I had, if its not the ram, was maybe static electricity..?? I don't have the computer in a case, the mobo is sitting on its anti-static bag on top of its box on my desk. The static electricity has been bad lately.   

I know that it's hard to determine exactly what is happening; and I have built many computers in my life but never had this issue. Logic points to it being the ram chip but no errors on memtest threw me off. 

 

Does anyone know a tool I can use to monitor crash logs or something, to better pin point what it may be? Or any advice? Thanks! :D

[astranger200]

might be a dumb question but have you checked the drive and formatted windows? otherwise I would be pointing at that ram

[Ericarthurc]

1 minute ago, astranger200 said:

might be a dumb question but have you checked the drive and formatted windows? otherwise I would be pointing at that ram

Yeah it's happened on a 500gb ssd and a different 1tb ssd; and I just did a clean install of Windows on the AMD system 4 days ago.

[TomvanWijnen]

39 minutes ago, Phoinix said:

the mobo is sitting on its anti-static bag

I thought that the inside of anti-static bags is actually anti-static, while the outside of the bags attracts static energy. I'm not 100% sure, but I do think that it would be a good idea to try again but with the mobo on the cardboard box instead of on the anti-static bag.

[MkaiL]

42 minutes ago, Phoinix said:

the mobo is sitting on its anti-static bag

I feel like this might cause your issues, place it directly on top of the box. I've seen warnings not to put components on top of esd bags, you're taking it to the next level and power the motherboard on (with pins touching the bag).

[Ericarthurc]

I took it off the anti-static bag and will give it a shot thanks!

[Kilrah]

Bad power coming from the wall?

[Ericarthurc]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

Bad power coming from the wall?

I thought that too, but I don't think that would cause that weird half-shutoff. If it was bad power from the wall, wouldn't the PSU just fail and the whole system shutoff?

[Kilrah]

No, a dip/spike can travel through and cause that kind of thing. Used to have that kind of stuff when I stayed in a country with pretty bad power, display blanking out at times and either recovering or needing to be rebooted... Also killed both my PC and TV's PSUs in a couple of years. After that I left the country but if not I'd have gotten a power conditioner.

[Ericarthurc]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

No, a dip/spike can travel through and cause that kind of thing. Used to have that kind of stuff when I stayed in a country with pretty bad power, display blanking out at times and either recovering or needing to be rebooted... Also killed both my PC and TV's PSUs in a couple of years. After that I left the country but if not I'd have gotten a power conditioner.

oh okay, if after everything it's still happening I will change power sockets. I also have a power conditioner laying around so I will use that as well.

Thanks 

[TomvanWijnen]

2 minutes ago, Phoinix said:

I thought that too, but I don't think that would cause that weird half-shutoff. If it was bad power from the wall, wouldn't the PSU just fail and the whole system shutoff?

Possibly. I'm not sure if this is related, but a while ago I had a computer and (I don't exactly remember what the monitor showed because it was so long ago) it weirdly somewhat froze and the monitor showed black a few times. I immediately head under my desk and find that the power cable going into the PSU had almost entirely left the PSU. To this day I still do not know how it even got power with the cable being so unplugged.... I quickly pushed the cable back in and the PC continued running without any further problems.

[TomvanWijnen]

2 minutes ago, Phoinix said:

oh okay, if after everything it's still happening I will change power sockets. I also have a power conditioner laying around so I will use that as well.

Thanks 

Do remember to try to (if reasonably possible and safe) change only one variable at a time, so the exact source of the problem can be found.