TR 1920X system upgrade problems.

[DemonicOwl]

Hello all,

 

This summer I decided to upgrade my i7- 4790k to something more professional (for video editing/graphics etc...but I also do gaming on the side).

 

The system I built had an Asus Prime X399-A motherboard, the 1920X threadripper processor (using Corsair h100i to cool it), gtx 980ti evga sc+, 16gb ram (tried 32 and that made issues worse later on), 1tb boot SSD, and a an SSD raid array (4 drives ~1 TB). 850watt powrsupply and no overclock. 

 

At first I was lazy and did not reinstall Windows, and had lots of freezing and crashing. After a month or so of intermitted usage, I decided to reinstall Windows. Since then everything just got worse. 

 

Unfortunately I was tolerating the issues because I was in University and had no time to use my desktop much besides the usual word/Matlab. 

 

As of right now:

Premiere crashes at the last second on outputs intermittently. After effects refuses to boot. (I have surfed all Adobe forums for solutions). Games like far cry 5, AC Odyssey, PUBG, Doom, and Minecraft (of all things) freeze in the middle of gameplay intermittently. Also they sometimes take like 5 minutes to do an automatic save. 

 

Things I have tried:

- Reseating EVERYTHING.

- Replacing ram to 3 different kits I had lying around.

- checking pins with a magnifying glass

- checking pins with a microscope

- new thermal compound on cooler

- moving ram sticks to different slots in all permutations and configurations I could possibly conjure up

- changing graphics card to gtx 960, gtx 660, r9 290x (dual and single)

- used different boot drives and sata ports (200 gb SSD [this one died during testing, idk if that's significant], 1tb SSD, 4tb hard drive, and a couple of other options I had laying around)

- installed bios updates sequentially to try each (I went in order of release dates)

- reinstalled windows between each trial (I am on break rn)

 

I am at a loss of options as of right now. I have been building professional systems for video editing, gaming, and some other niche purposes and never encounted this sort of behaviour - I guess I've been getting lucky?

 

I think I have isolated the problem to CPU/motherboard as the other components work fine on other machines. The problem is that the system boots up, works apparently fine and then an hour in you realise that chrome starts to glitch and do weird things, games still behave erratically (even stupid simple ones like minecraft)

 

I guess my question is how do I isolate the to problem to CPU or the motherboard as I'm on a limited budget right now (and for a good bit)? 

 

Is there anything else I should try what I have not?

 

Any and all help is appreciated

(Also this is my first post on this forum, so if I butchered something I apologise ahead of time)

[Enderman]

When you reinstall windows you unplug all except one drive and also delete all the partitions during installation, right?

 

At this point I would take it to a computer store like memory express or something where they have a bunch of hardware to do a diagnosis.

[samcool55]

Maybe really random but, have you tried Ubuntu and checked if that's also having issues?

Because it sounds to me like it should be reproducible on another OS.

 

You can create an Ubuntu live-usb and might be worth giving it a quick install.

Just make sure you only connect the SSD you are going to install Ubuntu on if you plan to go that route, just to be sure it doesn't mess up something else.

 

You can create a bootable usb with this: https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

Iso can be found here: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

[mariushm]

Have you installed all your software after you reinstalled you Windows?

Could it be that maybe you've installed some codecs or direct x filters or some third party software that causes those Adobe products to crash (maybe because the adobe products enumerate codecs from system when they start up, or something software.

 

I'd recommend starting from scratch, put the latest stable bios version, make sure ssd and sata ports are set on AHCI/nvme , install Windows by formatting/deleting all partitions on boot ssd. then download chipset drivers from AMD's site as they may contain processor drivers for Threadripper.

Then I'd suggest maybe downloading the latest .Net runtimes and only then install ONLY the Adobe products and see if they still crash.

 

[DemonicOwl]

11 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Have you installed all your software after you reinstalled you Windows?

Could it be that maybe you've installed some codecs or direct x filters or some third party software that causes those Adobe products to crash (maybe because the adobe products enumerate codecs from system when they start up, or something software.

 

I'd recommend starting from scratch, put the latest stable bios version, make sure ssd and sata ports are set on AHCI/nvme , install Windows by formatting/deleting all partitions on boot ssd. then download chipset drivers from AMD's site as they may contain processor drivers for Threadripper.

Then I'd suggest maybe downloading the latest .Net runtimes and only then install ONLY the Adobe products and see if they still crash.

I guess I forgot to mention this, but I have installed the whole ryzen updates and Asus updates from their site AFTER windows had it's dirty hands in the drivers.

 

Also Bios has sata set on ahci

 

When I first started to troubleshoot I would just reinstall Windows and format the SSD in the installation screen (you know when you put in the flashdrive and it asks you to choose drive and gives option to format? I would do that every reinstall). I would then install some rudimentary tools off ninite, then Adobe, and then visual studio (because it would install the net runtimes automatically and b/c I use it occasionally). Then I would go on my merry way (I have all my footage and data on a separate drive so I can jump into testing pretty quick). But you have given me a great idea. I will try not to let windows download any updates automatically for any of the hardware (or anything at all) and see if that helps (starting with those .net runtimes by hand). Will report back asap! )

 

 

[DemonicOwl]

26 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Maybe really random but, have you tried Ubuntu and checked if that's also having issues?

Because it sounds to me like it should be reproducible on another OS.

 

You can create an Ubuntu live-usb and might be worth giving it a quick install.

Just make sure you only connect the SSD you are going to install Ubuntu on if you plan to go that route, just to be sure it doesn't mess up something else.

 

You can create a bootable usb with this: https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

Iso can be found here: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Great idea. My issue is that last time (~4 years ago) I tried to use linux full time, I was unable to use Adobe or to try to run anything else that I use. I can get it running again after I try mariushm's solution.

 

My question to you is this: how would you test those freezes and inability to load certain programs, just synthetic tests? If so, which ones would you recommend?

 

Another idea I had is that maybe my power supply is doing something iffy, could it be that at all? I'm just spitballin' here

[samcool55]

3 minutes ago, DemonicOwl said:

Great idea. My issue is that last time (~4 years ago) I tried to use linux full time, I was unable to use Adobe or to try to run anything else that I use. I can get it running again after I try mariushm's solution.

 

My question to you is this: how would you test those freezes and inability to load certain programs, just synthetic tests? If so, which ones would you recommend?

 

Another idea I had is that maybe my power supply is doing something iffy, could it be that at all? I'm just spitballin' here

Yea a bad PSU could cause all kinds of weird problems.

What PSU do you have?

 

If you get Ubuntu running, play some games, browse the web, just do something. I'm not saying you should ditch Windows and go Linux just to be clear. I just want to know if Ubuntu works fine or not just to be sure it's not the OS being stupid.

 

For games i would suggest taking a dive into your steam library, any game that has Linux support will be there and you can just install and play it as you would on windows. That should put a nice load on everything.

[DemonicOwl]

40 minutes ago, Enderman said:

When you reinstall windows you unplug all except one drive and also delete all the partitions during installation, right?

 

At this point I would take it to a computer store like memory express or something where they have a bunch of hardware to do a diagnosis.

Yeah I went pretty methodically with the hardware testing, I don't really have non-scammy computer repair stores in my vicinity. 

 

Although, I just ordered my boss a TR 2920x system and I will try to put his CPU in my socket and vice versa (they are backwards compatible from what I understand). That will take a while with shipping though. 

[Enderman]

7 hours ago, DemonicOwl said:

Yeah I went pretty methodically with the hardware testing, I don't really have non-scammy computer repair stores in my vicinity. 

 

Although, I just ordered my boss a TR 2920x system and I will try to put his CPU in my socket and vice versa (they are backwards compatible from what I understand). That will take a while with shipping though. 

If you have a friend then then maybe you could borrow his PSU and ram and everything except motherboard+CPU.

[DemonicOwl]

Alright so update.

 

I was able to reinstall Windows and the .net frameworks one by one. I also installed all the drivers once again from Asus website, and amd.

 

Restarted between each driver installation. And did not log into to my MS account (watched the recent WAN show and didn't want the enthusiast updates to load themselves). Also I did not connect the computer to the network except to provide Adobe login. 

 

Adobe PrP and AE and the rest of the suite works normally again and I was able to take a project from work and get it done at home.

 

Now, in terms of performance on any games: 

 

After reinstalling everything, games exhibit same behaviour of intermittent freezing, slow loading times and then it shoot up loading very quickly. Tried the games on raid and on the system ssd's with same results.

(Games: Vampyr, Far Cry 5, PUBG, and Witcher 3) only witcher exhibited no problems, but did get a little stuck the first time I ran it.

 

Next thing I will try is Ubuntu and then will track a friend down who doesn't need to use computer any time soon (to test PSU).

 

Will report back as soon as I have results. 

[DemonicOwl]

One more thing: when these freezes occured, task manager says that the respective game is not responding.

[guillow]

I have the same issue. Was wondering if you ever figured it out?