Random Black Screen-s (Ryzen Win 7)

Lacceh · July 21, 2019

I'm having sudden black screens, maybe once or twice a week, they seem to be random, but I've had longer periods(weeks) without any. What happens is that I lose both video and audio abruptly, much like a power cut. GPU fan is not spinning at this point(idk if this means anything), CPU and case fans however are. If I hit reset, it won't boot, I have to power down, and up again(turning off PSU at the back is not necessary, just power button).

Now, I've also had occasional BSOD-s(blue screen error, not sure if the two issues are related), and since I've read a lot about it, I'm almost certain it's an issue with Ryzen and my OS, because many ppl have had this particular BSOD on Ryzen Win7(DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL PCI.SYS code D1).

Anyway, can this type of black screen that I describe above be caused by OS, or do I have faulty hardware?

My problems began after upgrading to Ryzen and replacing just about everything. However, I did not do a clean OS install, just removed a bunch of drivers in Win7, replaced hardware, then booted up fine, and installed new drivers...

I got the new GPU about a month before the Ryzen system, but I don't remember if I had any issues during that month(according to Event Viewer kernel power loss/Bluescreenview, I did not).
At this point, I'm guessing(hoping?) that it's caused by the ancient Win7 install, and/or the Ryzen suddenly losing power for some reason? I have played around a lot with BIOS settings(clocks, voltages, turbo boost, C-states, XMP, etc.), but it's hard to say if they make any difference or not, and it's hard to test since like I said I might go days or a week without anything occurring.

So I'm going to do a clean Win10 install and wait, see what happens, but in the meantime, do you think I might have faulty hardware? Any help will be much appreciated.

PS: my temps are fine, and it's not related to CPU/GPU load. Also no OC, but turbo boost and C-states enabled as default, RAM is on XMP which automatically boosts it above 1.35v and SoC to 1.1v . Oh and I'm using latest BIOS and drivers.

Specs:

Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 Ghz
Gigabyte A320M-S2H V2 (B350 chipset)

G.Skill Aegis 2x8GB 3000Mhz CL16

ASUS RX 570 Expedition OC

Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 400W

Skiiwee29 · July 21, 2019

Yes, clean install should fix your issues. Its never advised to re-use an install with a new system for this very reason, driver conflicts.. even if you uninstall, there are still registry entries and files left over that cause issues.

Zband · July 28, 2020

I have a brand new Ryzen 5 2600 system with the same problem. All hardware is brand new, the install is Win10 64bit <New install), 8gb XFX Radeon gpu, 32gb ram Corsair.

I have been having random black screen just as you mentioned above. A clean install may or may not fix the problem. I found out that according to this site that the problem lies in the power plan that Windows 10 runs.

Go to Power Options and choose Performance instead of Balanced Power Plan. Also I hear that there's apparently a Ryzen Optimized Power Plan for these systems.

Just as another thought:

When I first got my GPU I tried running it in a system with a 500 watt PSU and the system had trouble staying powered up with it and all the other items that I had in it (4 other Drives) I upgraded the PSU to an 850watt and the problem went away. BTW don't buy cheap PSU's get a Phantek for example. Phantek has a 10 year warranty and a hybrid setting for running with or without the fan built into the PSU.