Pc freezing at random times, no idea what to do

[DavesADV]

Hi, 

I've had this problem for a while now and I'm getting pretty desperate. 

My pc will, at random times: freeze completely, pull up a random solid color and make a consistent buzzing noise until I do a hard reset. 

It's happened multiple times while gaming, browsing Facebook, watching YouTube videos, even when idle. It's completely random and sometimes won't happen for several days. 

Most recently, I've been trying to play Mortal Shell, and while the game is working properly the aforementioned problem occurs every time after around 5 minutes of gameplay. 

I've stress tested both my graphics card and my cpu and they both seem to be fine, Temps included. 

Does anyone have an ide what the problem might be? 

 

Specs:

AMD FX 8370E with a Thermaltake Contax Silent 12 cooler

STRIX Direct CU II GTX 970

2X 4GB DDR3 1333MHz

Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P

500W Cooler Master PSU

2X 7200RPM HDDs

Windows 10 Enterprise 1903

 

[BoKiller]

Might be that graphics card that you bought from the shady bodybuilder.  (I know him IRL, it's a joke)

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

It's probably the HDD

[DavesADV]

1 minute ago, KingTdiGGiTTy said:

It's probably the HDD

That's my main suspect as well

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

Run a backup for sure. Probably upgrade to SSD 

[Mn3m3nth]

4 hours ago, KingTdiGGiTTy said:

It's probably the HDD

It's highly unlikely to be the HDD, the symptoms are much more indicative of a faulty stick of RAM, an overheating GPU or faulty VRAM on the GPU.

 

@ The OP The fact that it occurs at random times would lead me to think faulty RAM first. Try removing one stick of ram and trying your game, if that works fine for 10-15 minutes then swap it out for the other one and test again.

 

If the game still fails with either stick of RAM then you've pretty much eliminated that as a cause, if it only fails on one stick then you've found the cause.

 

If the RAM is fine then try a different GPU if you have access to one.

 

If you want to test the HDD then move your game to the HDD it's currently not on and test it again.

 

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination, try everything that doesn't cost you any money first rather than throwing money at something that is unlikely to be the cause (though an SSD is always a worthy upgrade )

[tkitch]

Step 1 of testing:

 

Pull out 1 stick of RAM and test just the second.

Swap, retest.

Put both in, and test again.

 

See if any of that does anything.

 

If nothing useful comes from that:

 

Buy a 20$ (or so) SSD, so a 120GB (Or a cheap 250 if you can find one) and plug it in.  Install windows on it clean, and then see if freezing happens.

 

At a minimum, you'll be upgrading your experience across the board.  (Trust me, it's worth the 20-30 bucks.)

[DavesADV]

1 hour ago, Mn3m3nth said:

It's highly unlikely to be the HDD, the symptoms are much more indicative of a faulty stick of RAM, an overheating GPU or faulty VRAM on the GPU.

 

@ The OP The fact that it occurs at random times would lead me to think faulty RAM first. Try removing one stick of ram and trying your game, if that works fine for 10-15 minutes then swap it out for the other one and test again.

 

If the game still fails with either stick of RAM then you've pretty much eliminated that as a cause, if it only fails on one stick then you've found the cause.

 

If the RAM is fine then try a different GPU if you have access to one.

 

If you want to test the HDD then move your game to the HDD it's currently not on and test it again.

 

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination, try everything that doesn't cost you any money first rather than throwing money at something that is unlikely to be the cause (though an SSD is always a worthy upgrade )

The strange thing is, I just reinstalled my Gpu drivers and Mortal Shell works fine now, been playing for about an hour and a half. 

I'm still not too optimistic though since it's happened before that the problem doesn't occur for quite some time and then reappears. 

I don't think I can test out the RAM for that very reason, since everything could work fine and then break with the same setup. 

[DavesADV]

1 hour ago, Mn3m3nth said:

It's highly unlikely to be the HDD, the symptoms are much more indicative of a faulty stick of RAM, an overheating GPU or faulty VRAM on the GPU.

 

@ The OP The fact that it occurs at random times would lead me to think faulty RAM first. Try removing one stick of ram and trying your game, if that works fine for 10-15 minutes then swap it out for the other one and test again.

 

If the game still fails with either stick of RAM then you've pretty much eliminated that as a cause, if it only fails on one stick then you've found the cause.

 

If the RAM is fine then try a different GPU if you have access to one.

 

If you want to test the HDD then move your game to the HDD it's currently not on and test it again.

 

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination, try everything that doesn't cost you any money first rather than throwing money at something that is unlikely to be the cause (though an SSD is always a worthy upgrade )

Will definitely buy an SSD in the near future regardless of this problem. I've tried different RAM setups and everything seems to be fine. Then again, the problem is very random as everything may work fine for a couple of days even, and then break multiple times the day after. 

[Mn3m3nth]

1 minute ago, DavesADV said:

The strange thing is, I just reinstalled my Gpu drivers and Mortal Shell works fine now, been playing for about an hour and a half. 

I'm still not too optimistic though since it's happened before that the problem doesn't occur for quite some time and then reappears. 

I don't think I can test out the RAM for that very reason, since everything could work fine and then break with the same setup. 

It's still worth testing the RAM, if it is a faulty stick then the PC will run fine until it tries to access the faulty bit.

 

The odds of that happening are much greater with only one stick of RAM installed rather than two.

 

It is also possible it was a corrupt driver, another reason for not spending money on new kit before testing the stuff you can do for free

[DavesADV]

2 minutes ago, Mn3m3nth said:

It's still worth testing the RAM, if it is a faulty stick then the PC will run fine until it tries to access the faulty bit.

 

The odds of that happening are much greater with only one stick of RAM installed rather than two.

 

It is also possible it was a corrupt driver, another reason for not spending money on new kit before testing the stuff you can do for free

Actually that makes sense, if it happens again I'll pull out a stick and see how it goes

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

On 9/18/2020 at 4:09 PM, Mn3m3nth said:

It's highly unlikely to be the HDD, the symptoms are much more indicative of a faulty stick of RAM, an overheating GPU or faulty VRAM on the GPU.

A faulty stick of RAM would usually result in BSOD. An overheating GPU wouldn't freeze at random times; it would only freeze while under load. Faulty VRAM on the GPU would likely cause other instability like artifacts or crashes in 3d applications.

 

The problem OP is describing is a problem I have experienced. Just for me it was with a cache-less SSD. The system freezes at random times because the disk the operating system is installed on stops responding for awhile. That's why it happens randomly and why it can work for awhile without issues.

[Mn3m3nth]

1 hour ago, KingTdiGGiTTy said:

A faulty stick of RAM would usually result in BSOD. An overheating GPU wouldn't freeze at random times; it would only freeze while under load. Faulty VRAM on the GPU would likely cause other instability like artifacts or crashes in 3d applications.

 

The problem OP is describing is a problem I have experienced. Just for me it was with a cache-less SSD. The system freezes at random times because the disk the operating system is installed on stops responding for awhile. That's why it happens randomly and why it can work for awhile without issues.

If it had been just a freeze I would agree with you, however "freeze completely, pull up a random solid color and make a consistent buzzing noise until I do a hard reset" is not indicative of a faulty HDD (SSD yes possibly, HDD no).

 

I'm not trying to get in to an argument as it's very difficult as I'm sure you're aware to diagnose something on an internet forum with varying levels of knowledge and experience, that's why I prefer to give troubleshooting steps to follow rather than blanket statements of "it's this" (which I know you didn't do), I've found over the years that once someone gets it in their mind that it's a particular thing causing their issue that you can't budge them from it no matter what proof you give.

 

Hopefully the OP will try all suggestions and come back and let us know what the problem was, hopefully without having to spend too much money